Vancouver temporarily moves homeless residents to address safety concerns

Open this photo in gallery:

The City of Vancouver is temporarily moving dozens of homeless people from an encampment on the waterfront so it can clean up the site to address safety concerns, though residents fear that they will be permanently evicted.

City and park board officials said Tuesday that the move from CRAB Park on the harbour shore to a different location is set to take place on March 25, and that residents will be allowed to return a week later. Officials said they will subsequently work with the province’s housing agency to see whether the residents can be provided with less flammable tents, a possible warming tent and possibly some kind of supervision to ensure safety.

Deputy city manager Sandra Singh said city crews tried doing a cleanup in January at the park while residents remained on site, but it was determined to be unsafe because of the piles of materials and large improvised structures.

“We have no sense of the structural integrity of what’s there. And the peninsula is small. It’s not feasible to phase it,” Ms. Singh said Tuesday. City staff displayed graphic photos of the site during a news conference showing heaps of bicycles, metal, plywood, tents and belongings.

Vancouver’s latest initiative adds to the varying approaches by cities across the country to address the health and social issues posed by entrenched encampments. Methods have included forcibly removing residents, as in Edmonton, Halifax and Prince George, B.C., and providing “tiny homes” for them, as in Victoria and Duncan, B.C.

Ottawa pressed to develop national response to homeless encampments

Canada’s federal housing advocate, Marie-Josée Houle, issued a report last month saying homelessness is a national human-rights crisis. If governments can’t provide suitable permanent housing, the report says, they should at least provide basic services to homeless camps instead of shuffling people from one place to another.

Fiona York, a long-time advocate for homeless people in Vancouver’s various camps, said there’s a fear among the dozens of CRAB Park residents that what officials say is only a one-week displacement could turn into a complete eviction.

“Time and time again, we see [that] in other cities, and here in Vancouver,” she said.

Ms. York said residents frequently clean their area and don’t want to live in an unsanitary environment. She said they’ve suggested the encampment be cleaned in sections, rather than all at once, or that the city provide residents with resources to clean it themselves.

Ms. York said discussions around leaving should await a decision in the residents’ human-rights complaint that alleges the tent city is not being provided with basic needs such as washrooms and electricity. But Ms. Singh said the human-rights complaint is about a different issue from the camp’s safety issues and isn’t relevant to the city’s latest initiative.

The CRAB Park camp has existed for about three years, with some residents moving there after a nearby encampment at Strathcona Park was cleared. The park board tried to get an injunction to move people out of the park in 2021, but a Supreme Court judge in 2022 rejected the request without a guarantee of appropriate housing to move people to.

Since then, people have been allowed to keep tents in a restricted area next to the shore, despite a park board bylaw that requires temporary sleeping structures to be removed by morning so that the general public can use parks. City and park staff work with BC Housing to try to move people into permanent housing when available.

There are currently about 80 tents, although park staff have only identified about 50 people living there.

Park board general manager Steve Jackson said the state of the camp makes it too dangerous for either residents or staff to clean it up manually.

“There is a significant amount of debris. And the larger structures are impossible to move without equipment,” he said.

With a report from The Canadian Press