City, province defend plan to decamp Hastings tents amid pleas for moratorium

Vancouver -

B.C.’s premier and Vancouver’s mayor are defending a sweeping plan to clear campers who’ve become entrenched on the sidewalks of the city’s Downtown Eastside.

The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) obtained a leaked portion of a city report outlining details of a new plan with a “two stage approach to ending (the) encampment.” That report was then provided to journalists.

In the first stage, it outlines “accelerated structures removal” where city engineering staff “will no longer disengage when tensions rise”, pressuring campers at “lower risk sites” to accept shelter offers and “reinforcing the deadline.”

The second stage will target high-risk sites in what is described as a “VPD-led operation” with “significantly larger engineering and VPD staff deployment” to remove all remaining structures over a day or two. In addition, sections of the street will be closed to the public as further offers of housing are made.

While the pages provided to journalists do not cite dates, VANDU claims the enforcement will begin Tuesday, April 4.

“We demand a moratorium on these decampments until there is adequate housing,” said spokesperson Vince Tao.

The city claims 570 structures have been removed from the area since last summer. A week ago, the province said there were 117 people living in 74 tents and other structures along the stretch of sidewalk on East Hastings Street and that 90 people have been moved into housing since last July.

MAYOR AND PREMIER RESPOND

The morning of the leak, the mayor held a press conference to discuss a budget task force but was inundated with questions about the document and the plan, which he did not deny is underway. 

“We're looking for empathetic solutions and providing people with housing options as we look to decamp Hastings,” said Ken Sim, insisting that tent cities are now a problem throughout North America.

“What we're seeing on the streets now is an increased level of violence and the area has become a lot less safe.” 

When reporters pressed him to explain whether his council had asked for a plan, if staff had created it, or if he’d been briefed, Sim struggled to respond. Eventually he said, “(City council) get briefed on a lot of things and at the end of the day, these recommendations -- whatever, like all other recommendations – they pretty much come from city staff and then you know, we get to talk about them.”

Premier David Eby said the province’s role is providing the housing portion of the plan and that they’re working closely with the city.

“We're seeing fires, assaults, this is why we don't support encampments as a response to homelessness and why we feel huge urgency to address this issue,” he said. “We're working with the city of Vancouver to ensure there is dignified, emergency shelter available for people who are moving out of the encampment.” 

BETTER ON THE STREET?

VANDU claimed that there is no shelter space or Single Room Occupancy (SRO) capacity for those living in tents. But two people they brought to their press conference who live on the street said they had been offered housing, which they turned down.

“What we've been offered so far is inadequate, I feel more safer on the street,” said Stuart Panko, who has been living on the sidewalk, keeping tidy and out of the way of emergency exits to avoid a fire risk.

“There's a lot of things happening in these SROs,” he said, citing overdoses, violent deaths, assaults and generally filthy conditions in the century-old buildings.

“They gave me an option to go to a shelter, I have a shelter to stay at,” acknowledged camper Cynthia Fordham, who had to call an ambulance for a woman she found covered in blood at the shelter. “(My tent) is the only place I feel comfortable and like I can hide from the public because lots of people stare at us.”

Homeless advocate Kaylayla Raine said that involving Vancouver police in evicting campers would only inflame tensions when there aren’t reasonable options for people living on the sidewalks.

“They're turning down rat-infested, bug-infested, unsafe, unlivable housing,” she said adamantly. “People don't turn down livable housing. The city has not provided livable housing.”

Eby acknowledged that while some social housing and SRO units have been upgraded over the years, some “have washrooms that are completely unacceptable and they're unlivable in the summer,” and that his long-term plan is to replace those facilities.

“Generally speaking, we don't move people directly from encampments to a permanent housing situation,” he said, with shelters seen as a stop on their housing journey as social workers assess their needs.

“Is this someone who can live in a zero supports kind of environment with a rent supplement? Is this someone who needs the most intensive supports we offer through complex care housing?” 

Supportive housing is in short supply, with government scrambling to provide more as rising unaffordability forces people who’d been living on the bubble onto the street. 

A slide deck leaked to journalists shows the city's plans to decamp East Hastings street.