Vancouver Park Board going ahead with CRAB Park ‘cleanup’ despite First Nations condemnation
Posted March 18, 2024 11:14 am.
Last Updated March 18, 2024 3:01 pm.
The Vancouver Park Board says it’s going ahead with a “cleanup” of CRAB Park starting next week.
The VPB is asking people to start moving out of the area in the next few days.
The park board says there are significant amounts of “non-compliant” structures, debris, garbage, needles, feces, and propane tanks in the park and says the situation is unsafe.
People sleeping in that area have to move to a nearby temporary sheltering area within the park by Sunday evening.
The cleanup is expected to take a week, and after that, only people who were already living there will be allowed to move back in.
The First Nations Leadership Council is condemning the plan, calling it the “demolition of a community.”
The FNLC says the structures in the park are vital to keep unhoused people safe and warm, and is “none other than a forced eviction.”
“[It] is a blatant disregard of human rights exposing a distinct lack of empathy and compassion for the dehoused. Without readily available housing alternatives, confiscating the structures that have been put together by park residents is totally unacceptable,” the FNLC wrote in a statement Monday.
The group is calling on the park board and the City of Vancouver to “halt” the decampment and adhere to the January 2022 Supreme Court decision which previously denied the park board to prevent people from sheltering at CRAB Park during the day.
“This park is evidently more than a temporary shelter for its residents. Forcing them to live in tents with no provision of essential services like sanitation, potable water, electricity, garbage removal, etc. is quite inhumane and limits resident’s rights to communal gathering,” the FNLC continued.
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