Last week, a 13-member delegation from the Crab Park encampment in Vancouver made its way to the Legislature in Victoria to protest ongoing the so-called “sweeps” they regularly experience as part of the tent community in Vancouver.   

Advocate and organizer Fiona York told Capital Daily the group was hoping to build solidarity with unhoused neighbours on Pandora. But they really wanted to tell BCs legislators to listen to people who are experiencing these events first-hand. “The people who are impacted need to be considered the most,” she said.

BC Grand Chief Phillips and his wife Vancouver-Mt.Pleasant MLA Joan Phillips expressed their solidarity with the Crab Park protestors. In her comments to them, Joan revealed that, she too, had been homeless for a time and that her son Kenny was the victim of an overdose on his 42nd birthday. 

“They’re criminalizing poverty and criminalizing their [unhoused] efforts to find themselves shelter,” her husband, the grand chief said.

Green Party Saanich-Gulf Islands MLA Adam Olson also spoke directly to the delegation about the urgent need for housing. He spoke of the need for supportive housing—not just emergency shelters—as well as the seizure of life-saving and personal effects by police. 

In Vancouver, Bill 45 redefined the term “shelter” in a way York says “had the purpose in mind to evict the encampments.” The definition potentially limits options for people who may be railroaded from encampments into unsafe, overcrowded temporary alternatives. For York, the definition of shelter as it is set out in the bill fulfills only four criteria: “a roof over your head, a bed, washrooms nearby and food nearby which could easily be a gymnasium.”

“What we are providing in Crab Park is so much more,” she said.

What does 'shelter' actually mean?

Last year, the BC Civil Liberties wrote an open letter to Premier Eby demanding the province reconsider its new definition of “shelter” and recognize the rights of tent city residents, arguing that “governments continue to respond to poverty and lack of shelter with brutality.”

The shelter systems they are then forced into often are no more humane as an option. Increasingly, courts in various provinces, says the report, are “rejecting claims by governments that shelter systems are adequate alternatives.” 

It’s not just about where unhoused people may end up but the potentially harmful ways they end up there.

Under the auspices of a clean eviction, “three truckloads of belongings were taken from a tiny little encampment in Crab Park, so people were left with nothing and in fact, some of them left with nothing came here [to Victoria] with what little they had left, because they had nowhere to stay anyway,” said York.

“We’re disappointed with their (City of Vancouver’s) heavy-handed approach,” said Grand Chief Philips.

For Fiona, the eviction injunctions have many names: selective eviction, forced eviction, and eviction by attrition. They all have the same outcome. When bylaw officers “sweep” encampments or tents off public property, personal property is inevitably seized and impounded or thrown away. It’s not always easy or possible to get it back. Getting it back often means paying a fine, filling out forms, or writing emails, insurmountable hurdles to many people living on the street.

Tents removed from Irving Park

On Tuesday, Victoria bylaw officers evicted people sheltering in Irving Park, removing people’s tents and possessions while they were at the Rainbow Kitchen food program in Esquimalt. 

There is real complexity to the issue of shared use of parks and public spaces and significant real-life costs in how to manage those when there is conflict.

For Victoria, the burden to enact the provincial Homeless Encampment Action Response & Temporary Housing (HEARTH) program—designed to help move people in encampments or sheltering inside to temporary or permanent housing options—is resource-heavy. 

The labour and resources required to carry out encampment relocation bylaws pose a significant resource concern. According to the city, a typical impound takes roughly three to four hours, while each attempted return of items takes two more. Impounding and returning impounded property translates into 500 municipal labour hours per month. City staff are impounding on average between five and 10 tonnes of material weekly.

These are heavy costs that the municipality bears without financial support from the province.  

The protestors also spoke about the high-stakes emotional and psychological costs they incur when their personal and irreplaceable belongings are removed or disposed of. Custody bylaws recently reduced the amount of time personal effects will be stored by the city to 14 days from 30.

The report Possessions of the Precariously Housed authored by a group of academics from Simon Fraser University exposes the complex legal realities that precariously housed and unhoused people face in simply trying to keep their belongings.

The authors write, “the regulatory realities faced by people on the streets, in parks, and in precarious accommodations in regard to their personal property create significant social inequities that have lasting detrimental effects on people experiencing poverty.”

Criticism in Victoria

During a public engagement session on April 11, Backpack Project founder Nikki Ottenso criticized Victoria’s city council for “taking things” during clean evictions “that keep people human and indiscriminately throwing them away.” At that meeting, Tammy Cardinal, a Vic West encampment resident told the council: “They took everything from me. They make it hell. They make us not want to live.” 

Given that a disproportionate number of Indigenous Peoples experience homelessness, these laws appear to continue to uphold colonial and racist legacies of the control of Indigenous lands and belongings.

Billy, an Indigenous protester at the legislature last week described how a Vancouver bylaw officer took his carving tools, a gift he received from someone he’d met during a particularly dark time in his life in Prince George. “I don’t know what the guy seen in me but he taught me. He changed me. He helped me look at life different. Now I can never get them [carving tools] back.”

The same impulse to empty parks of encampments in Vancouver and to move people into temporary shelters and housing is also driving relocations in Victoria. The city has been gradually reducing the number of parks permitting sheltering. Last month, the council banned overnighting in Vic West and Irving parks, reducing that number to three. 

'No tents' is the idea

“The idea is to have no tents in any parks anymore,” said Coun. Jeremy Caradonna. “Tents are not the solution.”

Julian Daly, Our Place CEO, said his organization “has committed to and must resolve to try and find every single person who’s currently on Pandora, a pathway off Pandora by December of this year.” But where does that pathway lead?

Sonia Furstenau, the leader of the provincial Greens, offered the reminder that there is a solution already working in her Cowichan Valley riding.

 “The success example of this is the Village in Cowichan (Duncan) that was designed and developed working with the people who would need the housing and it's been very successful. It’s exactly the evidence that we need to see that BC housing, local housing providers, and local governments need to work with people, not do things to them.” 

The Village comprises 36 units—3D printed locally for $1million. 

“It costs a million dollars to operate 24-hour wraparound services and care and that is an enormous savings for the community, Furstenau said.

“The fiscally responsible approach to this is to house people according to the needs they have.”