‘What’s going down here is cruel’: Advocates, residents decry CRAB Park tent removal
Posted April 16, 2024 3:40 pm.
Last Updated April 16, 2024 3:47 pm.
Vancouver Park Board rangers moved in to enforce the removal of several tents from CRAB Park Tuesday morning, in a process advocates are calling “unnecessary and cruel.”
Crews began the process at about 7:30 a.m., asking residents in a section of the park to dismantle their tents and leave the area.
The park board says rangers were enforcing a bylaw that requires people camping in parks outside of designated areas to pack up their belongings as of 7 a.m., with camping allowed only between dusk and dawn.
The CRAB Park encampment was shut down last month after the city cited health and safety concerns. A designated area was created with gravel and clearly marked camping sites during a “clean up” of the park, which wrapped up on April 8.
Advocates claim residents’ belongings are either thrown out or put into storage, and that accessing those items after they’ve been taken has proven difficult.
“The kinds of things we are seeing in these tents are life-saving materials. There’s Narcan, syringes, things that are actually keeping people alive,” said Alexandra Flynn, who came to the park as an observer and works as an associate professor at the UBC Allard School of Law.
“There’s belongings like bedding, their tents, their clothing, teddy bears. Indigenous cultural items like drums. So these are things that really matter to people and when they are gone it’s devastating.”
The designated camping area at CRAB Park, which is Vancouver’s only legal encampment, holds 14 tents.
It originally had 16 spaces when the clean-up effort finished but the Vancouver Park Board says two residents have since accepted housing, adding those spaces will not be replaced.
“As always, the shared goal of the Park Board and the City is to support those sheltering outdoors to come inside. Since last week, the Designated Area has been reduced from 16 to 14 sheltering spaces as two more intended users moved indoors,” reads a statement from the Board.
“As people sheltering in the Designated Area move inside, the Park Board will continue to incrementally reduce the Designated Area until the whole area can be returned to regular park use.”
However, the whole process has raised the concerns of many.
Sacha Christiano has been living in CRAB Park for about three years. Until Tuesday, he was camping outside of the designated area.
“I definitely had one of the bigger camps here. I was cooperating 100 per cent and they just kept coming by saying one thing was okay and the other thing wasn’t. Changing their mind on time (to clean up),” he told CityNews.
“I can’t go to work today, which sucks because I just started working again after being sick. I have to stay here. It just puts me in a bind. It’s like ostracizing someone when they are already down. Kicking them when they are already down.”
Margo Young, a UBC Law professor and another observer, is among those criticizing the park board’s actions.
“The process can be captured very simply: what’s going on down here is cruel. I think it’s very important that people are aware that this is how their park board is treating some of the most marginalized and beleaguered individuals in our city,” Young said.
“The housing crisis we know is wide in scope. It affects many groups. We can also observe that it has made the parks part of the housing network. The solution is not to displace people so they move on to some other piece of public land, it doesn’t solve the problem. It just constitutes one more harm and one more instance of cruel treatment for people who have had many already.”
CRAB Park advocate Fiona York says only a small number of residents were able to move into the designated area in the park, adding there’s no way to appeal it.
“A bunch of people have lived here for a long time and are not being given a chance to prove that, and that’s really unfair,” said York.
She notes over 30 residents were moved from the peninsula area in March, and were initially told by the board they would be able to move back after the clean up.
“Of these residents, only four people have been housed and 14 people have been permitted to move back into the designated area, while dozens more long-term residents of CRAB Park who qualify as ‘regular residents,’ according to the park board’s own definition, have been unable to move back,” said York.
The Vancouver Park Board says the city’s Homelessness Services Outreach team “continues to connect with people sheltering outdoors across the city, supporting them to access income, support services and housing and shelter spaces as they become available.”
