Kitsilano resident questions if bias involved in recent removal of homeless camp – BC | 24CA News
Days after East Vancouver residents questioned why tents in a west aspect park had been addressed so shortly, a Kitsilano resident is elevating comparable issues about whether or not an income-related bias exists by way of how encampments in public parks are handled.
Growing up on the west aspect, Alex Trottier stated his financially steady household helped get him the care he wanted to struggle substance abuse and psychological well being points.
Now sober and in restoration, Trottier wonders why two tents in Vanier Park close to his dwelling on the Arbutus Greenway, had been met with swift motion from the town following an area resident’s current criticism.
“I generally think if it wasn’t for my parents, I would be living in one of those encampments right now,” Trottier informed Global News in an interview Friday.
In a March 21 e-mail despatched to the town, mayor Ken Sim and the Vancouver Police Department, Trottier said he was “extremely appalled” by the fast response to disband the Vanier Park tent encampment “simply because it exists in a part of the city that is inhabited by those of us who are materially wealthier than the rest of the citizens of Vancouver.”
Earlier that day, and 6 days after Elvira Lount shared issues on social media about tents in Vanier Park, the Vancouver Park Board started taking motion to clear the small camp.
“When the lives of people who are more affluent are impacted, the city is more willing to actually acknowledge there are issues with tent encampments,” Trottier informed Global News.
A tent metropolis in Strathcona Park lasted 10 months between June 2020 and April 2021, whereas an earlier entrenched encampment at Oppenheimer Park lingered for 18 months earlier than the province lastly moved in to clear the tents and provide folks housing choices.
More not too long ago, the western fringe of CRAB Park’s waterfront has been dwelling to dozens of tents for nearly two years.
Trottier’s notice to metropolis officers requested why different neighbourhoods are “allowed to be subject to crime, violence, and risk being randomly stabbed by walking out of their house?”
He additionally requested why the CRAB Park encampment remains to be there, and why tent encampments have been allowed to develop all through the Downtown Eastside, “but the moment a hint of an encampment starts in a wealthier neighbourhood it gets shut down?”
Read extra:
‘Ducks swimming with propane’: Resident involved with encampment at Vancouver’s Vanier Park
Trottier believes the response exhibits an entire lack of a complete plan for coping with tent encampments, homelessness and substance abuse points, and a common division of who has entry to what sources throughout the town.
One of the folks at the moment dwelling in certainly one of two tents at Vanier Park can be puzzled.
“I think it’s segregation,” stated a person who recognized himself to Global News as Zak Smith, and stated he’d been tenting within the wooded space for eight months.
“I think that’s maybe them thinking that we’re lower class,” stated Smith.
Read extra:
Vancouver’s final 2 homeless camps value the town $6M, the price of 2 extra has but to be calculated
Everyone in Vancouver, Trottier wrote, “deserves a safe neighbourhood to live in regardless of their income.”
“It kind of pains me almost to see people that are in desperate need of help, and people that are impacted by their decisions,” Trottier stated.
“The city is essentially giving them the middle finger and saying as long as you’re not financially well off, your needs don’t matter.”
Vancouver mayor Ken Sim was not accessible to answer Trottier’s e-mail Friday, however his ABC Vancouver majority council insisted the town doesn’t reply to encampments primarily based on the revenue ranges of the neighbourhoods they’re in.
The Vancouver Park Board stated it has been conscious of individuals dwelling in Vanier Park since October, and when propane tanks had been reported, residents had been requested to take away their belongings so the positioning could possibly be cleared attributable to security issues.
Park board Chair Scott Jensen has additionally stated the earlier encampments in Oppenheimer and Strathcona parks, and the continued one in CRAB Park predated the present board’s time period in workplace.
The new municipal authorities is working in the direction of “ensuring that those situations do not occur anywhere else within our city,” he stated.
Going ahead, in a single day sheltering bylaws might be enforced wherever everlasting tents pop up, Jensen stated.
ABC Vancouver Coun. Rebecca Bligh stated not too long ago that the park board and metropolis employees additionally shortly addressed a difficult and comparable state of affairs involving folks sheltering in an east aspect park and ravine.
Bligh stated she understands Trottier’s issues primarily based on how previous encampments on the east aspect had been handled however assureed the general public historical past is not going to be used as a barometer for the town’s response to encampments sooner or later.
However, Bligh stated that when encampments turn into entrenched as they’ve on East Hastings Street and in CRAB Park, they turn into far more troublesome to handle.
“We’re continuously working with the province particularly around the East Hastings encampment,” Bligh informed Global News in an interview Friday.
“They’re not as simple as one or two structures or even three structures that are in an isolated area in a park that can be responded to very differently … and also CRAB Park is under a legal process right now.”
A January 2022 BC Supreme Court choice dominated folks can’t be evicted from CRAB Park if appropriate housing options are usually not accessible, complicating the Park Board’s means to take away tents.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
