As city crews continue to disassemble shelters along East Hastings in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), residents living in shelters express anger as they watch their community torn apart.
Marie Jameson, who has been living in a tent with four people and a dog, wants to know where people are supposed to go if not the DTES.
“These are our neighbours,” Jameson said, gesturing at other tents as city crews approached. “They’re our families. If someone gets sick, we look after them.”
“I think it’s unbelievable,” she said, watching the city trucks.
Her tent is one of many along East Hastings, where a narrow path makes its way down the sidewalk between rows of tents. While the DTES has long been the home to many unhoused residents of the city, this year things have changed, according to the City of Vancouver.
"What we saw at the beginning of July was a significant increase very quickly in the number of tents and structures on Hastings," city manager Paul Mochrie said during an Aug. 24 press conference. "That's not something that we've seen before in Vancouver."
The press conference was held to provide an update on the city's activities (along with the fire department and BC Housing) in the DTES two weeks after crews, acting on an order from Fire Chief Karen Fry, started clearing East Hastings of tents and structures.
City crews are still actively removing temporary shelters and other materials from the area, though many shelters remain. Around 2,000 kg of material is removed areas daily, much of it combustible, according to Mochrie.
Tean McLean, an acquaintance of Jameson, said she’s seen a lot of belongings go in the garbage. She wonders why the city can’t house people in parkades when they’re not in use.
“At least we could have a spot and not be in the way of the public,” she says.
What about a city-managed encampment?
When asked by media about alternative locations for people to camp, Mochrie said the city had explored the idea.
"With respect to identifying alternate locations, there's a number of issues there, practical to start," he said. "We have, as of our last homeless count in 2020, about 500 people unsheltered in Vancouver. There's simply not sufficient spaces to accommodate that number of people; space or spaces."
"And certainly not in the DTES."
The 2020 Metro Vancouver homeless count shows 547 people in the region were living on the street, with another 1,548 people living with no fixed address (in emergency shelters, safe houses, hospitals or similar situations).
About 200 people are involved in the East Hastings encampment on any given day, according to BC Housing; during the press conference, officials announced spaces had been secured for about 40 people to move into housing of different sorts, including SROs.
Mochrie noted that if space was found for an encampment away from the DTES, it would move people away from the services offered in the area, which include food sources, mental health services, and addiction support.
"We don't see that as an immediate solution," he said. "Really the solution here are indoor options and pending those, supporting the people on the street as best we can."
Dale McMann, from BC Housing, says the crown corporation operates 1,400 housing spaces in Vancouver right now with 700 more coming soon. That doesn't include housing options operated by not-for-profit organizations.
On East Hastings, they're trying to identify those willing to move and find them housing.
"Everyone in the DTES who is homeless and seeking to move will be eligible for units as they become available in the next few days weeks and months including those on East Hastings, those who've been displaced by [recent local] fires and those who are in CRAB park," he said.
Shelter removal needed due to fire risk: fire chief
While the question about where people should go remains unclear, crews have continued to remove shelters; during the city's press conference trucks arrived on East Hastings to continue the operation.
The impetus for this is an order issued July 21 by Fire Chief Karen Fry; she cited fire risk as a serious concern with a chance for loss of life.
"It's not a matter of if a fire is going to happen, it's a matter of when," she said during the press conference.
Since 2018 the department has seen a 110 per cent increase in fires in the DTES, Vancouver Fire Rescue Services (VFRS) tells Vancouver Is Awesome in an email, with over 1,000 fires causing damage already recorded this year.
Fry notes that several significant fires in the DTES started outside buildings and went on to severely damage the structures and residences inside.
"When fires start on the outside, the sprinklers are going to almost always going to be ineffective," she said, noting that older buildings are often at higher risk.
As part of the city's clearing operations, 10 high-risk buildings were identified as needing at least their entrances and exits cleared; Fry says seven of those have been cleared.
Even though the order is to remove the shelters people live in, Fry said it's not about removing people.
"This order is not...on evacuating individuals," she said. "It's removing the structures and tents and combustible materials from against any of the building."
What role do SROs in housing homeless population?
McMann noted that single-room occupancy hotels (SROs) are the predominant form of housing on the DTES and are mostly privately owned.
"We recognize that SRO hotels are less than an ideal housing situation," he said when asked about how some on the DTES would rather live in a tent on the street than in an SRO.
"SRO hotels are by and large buildings 80, 90, 100 or more years old," he explained. "They were not built for the kind of climate conditions we're seeing emerge today."
Fry noted there are 181 in the city. Among those, the fire department has found 72 violations this year alone.
Additionally, there have been 4,910 VFRS responses to those 181 properties this year, or about 10 per cent of the fire department's call volume.
Police absent despite gun increase claims
While city crews and fire department staff were busy in the encampment Wednesday, police were nowhere to be seen as tents were taken apart despite claiming on Aug. 22 a “proliferation of guns in the encampment increases the risk to everyone.”
Mochrie noted in the press conference, in which the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) did not participate, that the police were not part of the ongoing clearing activities.
"In terms of the work that's going on right now on hastings, VPD members are not directly involved with that," he said, noting there was some early involvement. When the clearing process began on Aug. 9, many police were in the area which ended after a clash between advocates for those in the encampment and police.
Glacier Media asked the VPD for statistics on an increase in firearms or reports of gun problems in the area in the past month but has received no response.
The claim came as police said our men were facing multiple charges after Vancouver Police seized guns from inside the Hastings Street encampment Sunday morning, Aug, 21.
Investigators believe the weapons were being used for protection and to intimidate other people in the encampment, a news release said.
Officers arrested four men and seized two guns, including a loaded shotgun that was found inside a tent. No names were released.
What will happen next on the DTES?
The city says that along with removing encampments, they're looking at ways to support the community living on East Hastings, including increased washroom facilities. Storage options are also being brought in for those who carry their belongings with them.
Mochrie noted that how many shelters and structures need to be removed is difficult to say, as things change daily.
Both Mayor Stuart Kennedy and McMann noted the city is lagging when it comes to housing the city's vulnerable populations. Kennedy noted it's a longer-term issue, pointing to European cities like Vienna, Austria, where governments own 20 or 25 per cent of a city's housing stock in some places. Vancouver, he noted, owns about five per cent.
