The Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District says squatters that occupied Rutherford Elementary School this weekend in a protest against homelessness have significantly damaged the building.
School District 68 chair Steve Rae took to Facebook on Sunday to share photos of the aftermath of the occupation, including graffiti and drug paraphernalia.
“All the doors on the ground floor were blown out; it’s going to be significant cost to repair them,” Rae told Global News. “We went upstairs. They were in it for the long haul, there was a full kitchen set up.”
PHOTOS: Images posted by Steve Rae show the aftermath of the Nanaimo squat
“They had drills, they had saws, they had machetes, they had knives, and the most troubling thing was there was drugs there. They had cases of needles, we saw full syringes, we saw tinfoil.”
Rutherford Elementary is not currently in use, and was closed down by the district at the end of June, after trustees voted to shutter it back in 2015.
WATCH: Police shut down ‘schoolhouse squat’
The squatters broke into the building on Friday afternoon, and police using a fire truck with a boom ladder moved in and arrested them on Saturday afternoon.
Const. Gary O’Brien with Nanaimo RCMP told Global News Tuesday, “all were taken into custody and held for various hours. Twenty-six of the 27 were later released with promised to appear and all with charges of break and enter and mischief.”
One male was held overnight. He appeared before a provincial court judge Tuesday morning for outstanding warrants from a previous criminal matter.
The rest of the protesters will appear in court on Dec. 11.
Rae said before that happened, the squatters did “six figures” worth of damage, including holes in the roof and damaged walls.
“These are a group of activists who came in there to take a good cause and turn it bad and it is backfiring on them in the community,” he said.
WATCH: Police move in to remove school squatters in Nanaimo.
Cori Mitchell, a squatter and Discontent City resident who said she moved to the camp when the cost of parking her RV jumped from $300 a month to $1,200 a month said the homeless have been left without alternatives.
“There are no shelters for 400-plus people. They have maybe three beds available and they’re taken every night. The lineup for shelters is ridiculous. Now they’re saying there’s 700-plus homeless people in Nanaimo,” she said.
She also denied that the squatters had damaged the building.
“We cleaned the school, we didn’t damage it. All we did was put chairs on the doors,” she said. “There was one little wall where we signed a name.”
A press conference organized by the squatters to respond to the arrests on Sunday degenerated into a yelling match when a man with a megaphone arrived and accused them of not speaking for the region’s actual homeless population.
It’s a charge the squatters deny.
Isabel Krupp, who travelled to Nanaimo from Vancouver for the squat, told Global News that seven of the people who were arrested were homeless residents of the Discontent City camp.
“They’re trying to break up our solidarity across the province,” Krupp said. “The problem of homelessness is a problem across B.C., it’s a problem across Canada, it’s a problem across the world.”
“There are homeless people freezing and dying in the rain, in the cold, on the street, there’s buildings that are empty. It makes sense to us that homeless people should have homes — empty buildings should have residents.”
RAW VIDEO: Police arrest squatters at Nanaimo school
But others in Nanaimo’s homeless community said the squatters don’t represent them.
On Friday, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing announced 170 beds of dorm-style housing in temporary trailers for Nanaimo, which are expected to be operational by the end of the month.
Watson said she’d apologized to the school district about the mess, and that some members of the camp have offered to help go clean it up.
She said she’s worried that the squat has damaged community support for Discontent City and the region’s homeless.
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