Eviction deadline issued for tent city
Oppenheimer Park campers will have until Wednesday evening to leave
Candice Bryar has no idea where she will sleep next week.
Bryar has been homeless for a month, staying in Oppenheimer Park’s tent city, where she and more than 100 residents were served with an eviction notice on Monday.
The Vancouver park board’s notice told park residents they were in breach of city bylaws and ordering them to remove all tents by Wednesday evening.
Outreach workers were in the park Monday offering residents lodging in one of more than 100 vacant social housing units identified by B.C. Housing.
City officials expressed hope those vacancies would be enough to house everyone in the park who has been looking for a home.
For some residents, eager to move out of a tent, this was welcome news.
But others, including Bryar, still hadn’t been offered housing on Monday. Bryar, who needs crutches to walk after developing an infection in her leg, said she’s not optimistic she’ll be able to find suitable, accessible social housing soon.
“If something actually goes my way here, I will be shocked,” Bryar said as she sat in the park.
“The 30 seconds in the morning where you wake up and forget about all this is the best part of the day. And that sucks.”
Many worry the spaces identified by B.C. Housing won’t house every resident of the tent city, which has grown considerably in recent months.
Other residents, saying they find the tent city cleaner and safer than some single-room occupancy housing, say they plan to stay.
Monday’s order was issued because of safety risks, the city said, citing 17 fires in the park since February. Vancouver police spokesman Const. Steve Addison said Monday there have been 21 violent incidents in and around the park in the past week.
Hector Bravo, who has lived in the park for three months with his girlfriend, said Monday he was excited to move to social housing this week. He was recently assaulted in the park, he said, and robbed at gunpoint.
In recent days, there has been “a surge of new people camping at the park,” B.C. Housing’s director of operations, Brenda Prosken, said Monday.
In the first two hours after outreach staff arrived in the park Monday morning, more than a dozen campers had accepted placements in social housing, Vancouver’s deputy city manager Paul Mochrie said. “Many of those people are really anxious to get into housing.”
But the homelessness crisis “isn’t limited to Oppenheimer, by any means,” Mochrie said.
Before Monday’s notice, outreach staff from the city, non-profit housing providers, and B.C. Housing had already been “actively assessing the housing needs of people camping at Oppenheimer Park and have been offering supportive housing units for months now,” B.C. Housing spokeswoman Laura Mathews said in an emailed statement Friday.
B.C. Housing and the city had expedited renovations on vacant units in need of repair, she said.
It remained unclear, however, what will happen to any Oppenheimer residents who refuse to take down their tents and leave.
When asked, Mochrie said he was “not able to comment on what actions might be taken” beyond Wednesday’s deadline.
In 2014, the last time Oppenheimer Park held a tent city approaching this size, the city obtained an injunction to clear the park.
Asked Monday if the city might consider seeking a court injunction after Wednesday’s deadline passes, Mayor Kennedy Stewart did not answer that question directly.