Oppenheimer Park residents in limbo as city mulls next move
Credit to Author: Zak Vescera| Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2019 02:41:23 +0000
Occupants of a homeless tent city in Oppenheimer Park have no clue what the future holds.
Residents were ordered to take down tents and clear out by Wednesday evening under a city bylaw, but more than 75 tents remain in the park Thursday, despite efforts from B.C. Housing and city staff to relocate people to roughly 140 housing units that have been accumulated in recent months.
The park board said it’s “assessing the situation in the park and considering whether further legal action may be required to enforce the order.”
Until then, Pivot Legal Society staff lawyer Caitlin Shane says residents are left in limbo.
“It creates an air of confusion and fear,” said Shane in Oppenheimer Park on Thursday. “People feel like they are under threat of losing all their belongings and their homes.”
While 93 park residents had accepted offers of housing as of Thursday, according to a news bulletin from the city there were more than 75 tents in the park as of Thursday afternoon. The city estimates it has moved out two-thirds of camp residents since the order was issued Monday morning, but the camp’s population fluctuates as new residents arrive, return after a hiatus or leave permanently.
Residents who decline to move say they don’t trust single-room-occupancy lodging offered by social-housing providers. Marco Tynakou, a longtime park resident, says he finds tenancy rules like restrictions on visitors in those buildings to be similar to “prisons.”
B.C. Housing has stressed its units are safe, clean and come with a range of supports. But Gary Humchitt says he has stayed in SROs where bedbugs and vermin are abundant, and never intends to return to one.
“I can’t stay in a place like that — it brings out the evil in you,” said Humchitt on Wednesday.
He’s been staying outdoors whenever possible since 2014, when he was part of another Oppenheimer encampment. That tent city was broken up after under an injunction following the overdose death of a resident.
Vancouver city Coun. Pete Fry, who lives in Strathcona, says the eviction notice is a natural culmination of increasing safety concerns in the park. Vancouver police said they received 138 calls for service in the park last month, compared with 92 in June.
“I think there are things that could have been done better, and maybe the timing could have been different, but I think at the end of the day, it was the kind of thing that had to happen soon or later,” he said. “Waiting until somebody got really seriously hurt or killed was not an option.”
To clear the park as was done in 2014 — something Mayor Kennedy Stewart told Global News he wouldn’t do in June — Shane says the city would have to demonstrate the harm of the camp remaining outweighs the harm caused by displacing its residents.
City council is on break, and Fry said they haven’t discussed or been briefed on any future measures. He says the city should reopen a debate on “sanctioned” tent-city sites with allotted spaces, similar to those in cities like Portland, Ore., and Seattle.
He acknowledges the idea is unpopular among many city staff and may not be suitable for all Downtown Eastside residents, who may require substance-use or mental health supports. Deputy city manager Paul Mochrie said Monday that staff didn’t consider a sanctioned tent city a viable option.
It’s not an ideal solution, but Fry says providing adequate housing for Vancouver’s homeless is beyond the city’s resources and called on senior levels of government to “step up to the plate.”
“I’d love to see proper homes, but I just don’t see them happening fast enough,” he said. “We recognize this is a manifested symptom of disease, and that disease is poverty and homelessness.”
Gary tosses his old tent onto a pile of rubbish at Oppenheimer park.
— With files from Dan Fumano