Vancouver Halloween display highlights housing horror

Laryssa Gervan has been decorating her home for Halloween with displays based on real-world fears for the last several years. (Laryssa Gervan)

While most Halloween displays aim to horrify with fiction, Laryssa Gervan's is based on the existential dread that is everyday life for many Vancouverites.

"I always try to play on real fear in the name of Halloween," the visual artist tells CTV News.

Right now, there's perhaps nothing scarier to a Vancouver resident than the prospect of having to find a new place to live.

"The affordability crisis is just affecting so many people that it just seemed like a topic that is very relatable as a genuinely scary situation," Gervan says.

And so, for the last several weeks, Gervan has been gathering and assembling a scene on her lawn in East Vancouver that represents the struggle for housing in the city – and the haves and have-nots it creates.

On one side of a fence made of window blinds on her lawn, Gervan created a wealthy, land-owning family literally eating gold coins. On the other side, dolls and stuffed animals are crammed into tents and other inadequate shelters.

A "land assembly" sign looms in the background, along with posters for demonic real estate agents named "Rich Profit" and "Ken Sin."

"On stolen native land" reads a reminder in the window of the home behind it all.

In the foreground are tombstones for beloved Vancouver music and performance venues that are no longer in operation.

Gervan says the development-themed display is a way to commiserate with the community and find some dark humour in the city's current housing situation.

"I've been very fortunate that I've been in this house for 13 years," Gervan says. "But, I've just seen so many people in my life, currently, struggling like crazy if they have to move – so many friends getting evicted, people moving farther east because they just can't afford to be in the city anymore, paying way more than they can afford. The amount of competition for anyone looking for homes right now, it's just, I don't envy anyone who has to find a new home at this point."

Laryssa Gervan poses with part of her 2023 Halloween display. (Laryssa Gervan)

She says the tombstones for dead venues are her favourite part of this year's display, calling the discussions she had with friends about the project an exercise in "collective memory."

"I only had so much time and energy to make tombstones, but the list was far longer than what I ended up creating," Gervan says.

This is not the first time Gervan's Halloween decorations have trended toward topical terror.

Last year, she adopted "Grave-on-Foods" as the name and organizing principle for the display, highlighting the horror of high inflation. Other themes have included COVID conspiracies and xenophobia. 

Most of the materials Gervan uses in her displays are found or scavenged, including from the free shelf she maintains outside her home, where people are invited to leave items they no longer want or need and to take anything they find useful.

"I try not to buy much new material both in the name of waste-saving, of having this endeavour not cost me a lot of money, and also it just kind of comes out more interesting when I'm just playing with what I can find and thinking of creative ways to use it," she says.

The whole process is both a means of creative expression and community connection, Gervan says, noting that she enjoys the interesting conversations she has while planning each year's display in collaboration with friends and roommates, as well as the response she gets once a display goes up.

"I can't tell you how many times people walking by while I'm working will just, like, stop to thank me, and just be like, 'I love what you're doing here. I love coming by,'" she says.

"It brings a lot of just, like, joy and fun and creative energy to the neighbourhood, and I like being part of that."

The decorations will be up for at least another week outside 715 Victoria Dr., Gervan says.