Leaked documents reveal plan to remove Hastings Street tent encampments: advocates

It appears the City of Vancouver is getting ready to remove the tents and encampments on Hastings Street and the surrounding area of the Downtown Eastside (DTES).

The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users said it received City of Vancouver documents that detail a plan to remove the tents and structures.

“This document signals the end of Vancouver’s so-called compassionate approach to encampments,” Jess Gut, an organizer with Stop the Sweeps, said in a statement.

“The city and the province have failed to create enough dignified housing. They’re now choosing to use blunt force to make people disappear from the street.”

Vince Tao, the community organizer at VANDU, said at a press conference Monday this area of the Downtown Eastside has become a community and residents have nowhere to go.

Tao said this document reveals the plan will be “police-led.”

“The city is escalating its violence on the individuals that most need care in this city,” he added. “There is absolutely no place for these people to go.”

Tao called the move an example of “banishment.”

VANDU is calling for a moratorium on moving any people until there is adequate housing for those living in the DTES.

1:54 Sidewalk tents complicate SRO fire response on Downtown Eastside

The plan was supposed to be put into action as early as Wednesday, with VPD officers and city crews working together to remove the encampment.

However, now that the plan has leaked, there is no word on if that enforcement will go ahead.

“Large entrenched encampments are not an acceptable model going forward,” Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said Monday. “They’re not safe for the people that are living in the encampments and the people in the surrounding communities.”

Sim said they are seeing an increased level of violence in the area and more fires, putting first responders and buildings in the area at risk.

2:14 Province working to get people in encampments housed

B.C. Premier David Eby said at a different press conference Monday that the province is working to solve the problem.

“We’re working in close partnership with the City of Vancouver, along with service providers and people in the neighbourhood around the profound challenge and frankly, the deteriorating conditions in the encampments along Hastings Street,” Eby said.

“It’s a profound concern to us, the fires, the assaults, the safety of the people in the encampments. My message to people who are living in the encampments, we have space in shelters right now, they’re much safer than the encampments. Encourage people to go inside and we’re working with the City of Vancouver to make sure there is dignified, emergency shelter available for people who are moving out of the encampment.”

Eby said there are 110 units “coming online” every month for the next three months to respond to the crisis.

Roughly 400 people are believed to be living, at least part-time, in the tent encampments along East Hastings and in Crab Park.