Supporters of a homeless camp on Vancouver’s downtown waterfront were joined by Black Lives Matters supporters in a rally on Saturday, as a deadline to vacate the site came and went.
The B.C. Supreme Court granted an injunction on Wednesday, with a 72-hour window to clear the camp. The encampment is on a parking lot belonging to the Port of Vancouver, next to CRAB Park.
More than 180 people are estimated to be living in the camp.
“It’s heartless,” tent city resident Kylii Murphy said Wednesday.
“Is the judge going to take me in? Where am I supposed to go? He’s not given us any options, he’s just told us what we can’t do.”
Homeless people and their advocates established the camp in mid-May, after the province shut down a long-running encampment in nearby Oppenheimer Park.
Chief Justice Christopher Hinkston ruled on Wednesday that housing options were made available to residents, as they were when 260 people at the Oppenheimer camp were moved to hotels and other temporary accommodations.
BC Housing said it offered options to all residents of the Oppenheimer camp, a statement some at the new camp claim is untrue.
The court heard that there were more than 70 complaints about discarded needles, public urination, defecation, garbage and noise about the camp.
Organizers are demanding that the port recognize the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations as the stewards of the land.
They’re also demanding the province and city house all residents of the camp and former Oppenheimer residents “in places we want to live in and begin construction of 10,000 units of permanent adequate housing renting at welfare/pension rates.”
Organizers are also calling on the city and port authority to follow through on previous support of an Indigenous healing lodge in CRAB Park.
During litigation over the injunction, Vancouver police had asked for a coinciding enforcement order.
Justice Hinkson told police they “have a duty to uphold” the injunction, and that an additional order was not necessary.
Vancouver police have said they will act on the order, but are not saying when or how.
— With files from Rumina Daya
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