‘It’s gone from living to existing’
Growth of tent city has become potent symbol of province’s worsening housing inequality and opioid crisis
On a recent December afternoon, Tamara Ashley, four months pregnant, took advantage of the dry weather to clean out her tent, one of dozens hemmed in on one side of a two-block corridor known as “The Strip” in Surrey.
As she re-arranged blankets and pillows, the 31-year-old, whose partner had briefly stepped away to hit up a nearby methadone clinic, complained about her inability to get a space inside a shelter.
“It’s a lot of work being down here. You can’t keep warm, which is the sh---iest thing,” she said.
Just outside the city centre, this semi-industrial neighbourhood — home to strip malls, a bottle recycling depot and a branch of the Royal Canadian Legion — has long had a homeless presence. But over the past year, the camp along 135A Street has more than doubled in size to about 90 tents and 130 occupants, according to police. Two 40-bed shelters on the street are at capacity.
Like Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, The Strip has become a potent symbol of the province’s growing housing inequality, opioid addiction crisis and lack of mental health resources.
Joe McNeely, an audio-visual technician who lives nearby, was so unnerved by what he was seeing that he decided to post a video of the tent city last month on Facebook.
“It’s brutal. Look at this shit. This is what we do to people that can’t afford shelter — we just stick them in f---ing tents on the side of the road,” he says in the video.
“Why isn’t this in the news every f---ing day?”
McNeely’s video has since been viewed more than 375,000 times, and spurred an outpouring of blankets, gloves and other supplies for tent city occupants.
The city and province say they are working as quickly as they can to finalize plans for 150 modular housing units to ease pressure on The Strip. They had hoped to complete construction by winter, but now the target date is March.
So far the city hasn’t said where these transitional housing units are going to be built. Nor will it say what the process will be for determining who gets housed first. But Terry Waterhouse, the city’s director of public safety strategies, said the units will be complemented by on-site health and social service support.
“It is much more complicated than just a roof over an individual’s head,” he said. “What has happened in the past is housing efforts were simply that. If the supports weren’t there, the individual would return to the street.”
Until the housing units are built, the task of keeping watch over and providing support to tent city’s occupants falls to a jumble of police, bylaw enforcement, health and social service agencies.
Staff at the Lookout Emergency Aid Society, one of tent city’s main supports, say they do their best each day to feed everyone who lives in the area, though there are times when they have to turn people away.
The society also has health clinics and counselling services. But it can be a challenge to get people through the door, said Ken Falconer, manager of special projects. Many have given up hope or have disappeared into the “oblivion of addiction.”
“It’s gone from living to existing,” he said.
So far this year, police have recorded more than 600 overdoses along The Strip, seven of them fatal. But just about everyone agrees the numbers would be even worse if not for the installation in June of a supervised consumption site, called SafePoint, located in a portable just off The Strip.
“This (site) has been a godsend,” said Linda Fox, a Lookout program manager. “It’s more controlled usage. People aren’t rushing to jam things in (like they are when) they’re on the street.”
About a year ago, as the fentanyl crisis worsened and violence on The Strip ramped up (often related to drug debts), the city decided to create an outreach team, consisting of RCMP, bylaw enforcement and community workers.
Every morning, they meet in a portable to review shelter spaces and discuss problems that have popped up. Then they go by every tent to make sure occupants are doing OK and to discuss their needs. The goal, said Sgt. Trevor Dinwoodie, is less about enforcement and more about finding ways to help.
“We spent a lot of years trying to arrest addiction and homelessness. That does not work,” he said.
Some of the tent dwellers say they appreciate the effort.
“It got the staff out … on the street and talking to people, getting to know us on a one-to-one (basis), understanding our situation individually,” said Lucinda Kirby, 53.
At the same time, Kirby and others complain, bylaw enforcers sometimes go too far, taking away people’s tarps and heating devices. The tent occupants — some of whom squirrel away everything from bicycle frames to mannequin parts — also complain about being forced to move all their belongings off the street every week during warmer months to allow pressure washers to come through. (Dinwoodie said cleaning guards against rat infestations, and officers strive to replace confiscated items with safer fire-resistant tarps and wool blankets.)
Friction has also intensified between the tent occupants and area businesses, who say the number of walk-in customers has plummeted. Dave Arnold, co-owner of Heads Unlimited, an engine repair shop, said staff frequently find discarded needles on the driveway.
Co-owner Alf Benoit said he feels compassion for the tent occupants, but said some of them try to sell him shoes or clothes that Good Samaritans have dropped off for them.
“They want the money so they can get drugs,” he said.
He can’t help wondering if social service agencies and community volunteers are “making it too easy” for them to live on the street.
Xavier Wolfe, 51, who has been living on The Strip for two years, said he is not clamouring for other housing options.
“In reality, I choose to do this,” he said as he attached a new seat to his bicycle. Wolfe, who sports Buddha and Foo Dog tattoos on his neck for “protection” and has been a drug user most of his life, said he enjoys working on “random art” projects — “something to keep my brain going” — and counselling younger folks who move to the tent city.
Even if the city succeeds in relocating most of the tent occupants in the new year, Wolfe suspects other homeless people will quickly fill the void. “When we go, another one will come in,” he said. “It’ll stay like this — always.”