City of Vancouver crews continue to clear tents and encampments off East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside.
It started last Wednesday and crews have been out every day since, telling people they have to move and putting some of their belongings into garbage trucks.
“It’s a very challenging situation,” Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim acknowledged Tuesday.
“I don’t want to underplay the human aspect of it, But all in all, I think we’re happy with the progress that’s made. We’ve removed 60 tents on Day 1 and about 80 by Day 2. And we continue to go down there and tactically and very compassionately help people find housing solutions as we remove the encampment.”
After months of working along East Hastings to address fire, life and safety concerns identified by the July 25, 2022 fire chief’s order to immediately remove structures, city officials said they needed to bring the encampment to a close.
Sim said crews have been dealing with some of the encampment’s residents coming back to the same location and they did expect that.
“That’s why we have a very concerted effort to show up every single day with our city engineers, supported by our Vancouver Police Department, to remove any structures that do pop up again and again,” he said.
Sim added that city crews have been trying to find people housing for the last eight months and crews removed 600 tents before April 5 when the decampment began.
“The individuals that we were trying to help out, we had offered them housing solutions or housing alternatives for months leading up to the April 5 removal,” he stated. “At the end of the day, we’re not trying to solve homelessness here. Now, I do want to say that every person that has asked for housing since we remove the encampments has received it. So everyone, you know, everyone who wants it is getting it.”
He said as of Monday night, 18 people had received short-term housing, while the search for long-term housing continues.
However, Sim said this move was to enforce a fire bylaw as the encampment posed an extreme risk to fire safety for the residents and those living in the surrounding buildings.
Amid the displacement Friday on Day 3 of the City of Vancouver’s structure removal on East Hastings Street, Global News spoke to Jody, who declined to provide her last name, slumped on the sidewalk in front of the BC Housing building on Hastings Street at Gore Avenue.
“I feel like I’m dispensable,” she told Global News in an interview.
Jody, who said she lives on disability and uses illicit drugs to numb her chronic pain, said she feels ignored — despite the millions spent annually on the Downtown Eastside.
“I think homelessness is a big business here,” John Henry told Global News as he packed up his tent on Thursday.
Henry, who said he moved west from Alberta last June, has found it easy to live on the Downtown Eastside.
“The activists and everything or whomever, they’re handing out gourmet meals in tents.”
Sim said he knows there are no perfect solutions for what is happening on East Hastings Street.
“There aren’t a lot of great options out here,” Sim said, “but we had to go because on this very sombre anniversary of the hotel fire one year ago, those are the potential outcomes we’re looking at and they could have been horrendously worse.”
A proposed class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday is alleging that those chose charged with resident safety in the downtown Vancouver SRO did not do enough to prevent the fatal fire that burned it down in 2022.
The Winters Hotel went down in flames on April 11 last year, killing 68-year-old Mary Garlow and 53-year-old Dennis Guay. More than 70 people, a women’s shelter, and several businesses were displaced from the Gastown heritage building, which was torn down shortly afterward.
The proposed class action, filed in B.C. Supreme Court, claims the City of Vancouver, Winters Residence Ltd., Atira Property Management Inc., Atira Development Society and Atira Women’s Resource Society breached their duty of care to tenants.
“So this problem didn’t happen overnight and it’s not going to get solved overnight,” Sim said. “And yes, there will be some individuals, the individuals that do not seek the housing, the shelter, what have you that we’re providing. Yeah, they could move to different parts of the city.
“But I want to be very clear, the first step was to enforce this bylaw because the significant risk to public safety and life in the downtown or the Downtown Eastside and surrounding areas was incredibly high. And if we didn’t do something, it could have been a lot worse.”
— with files from Elizabeth McSheffrey