TENT CITY FIGHT Port Metro Vancouver in battle over injunction to close waterfront camp
Port of Vancouver seeks injunction to have tents cleared away from property near CRAB Park
If they want to take his tent away, they’re going to have to go through him, Mark Cedar says.
Cedar, a 51-year-old in failing health, is one of about 100 people living in tents on a vacant parking lot on Port of Vancouver property next to CRAB Park near Gastown.
The 82-tent city sprang up on May 8 after Vancouver shut down a homeless camp in the Downtown Eastside’s Oppenheimer Park.
The port has sought an injunction, which will be heard in B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday morning, to have the tents cleared away.
“I’m here in a tent city and I’m not going anywhere,” Cedar said. “Come on down and try to take my tent. (The tents) are all we have.”
Fiona York, co-ordinator with the Carnegie Community Action Project, said the tent city is safe, that donated food and supplies are delivered every day, and that people are there because shelters are full, have reduced capacity, and people can no longer crash on a friend’s couch because of COVID-19 and social distancing.
“There are more homeless people than ever,” York said at a news conference held at the parking lot on Wednesday.
“They’ve found community here, safety, they are social distancing.”
The tents are neatly spaced apart. If the injunction goes ahead and police move in to remove the tents, they will either pop up in another park or be forced onto city sidewalks, she said. The residents often have to pack up and move constantly, face having their belongings stolen, and lose important items such as court documents or identification.
“I was too afraid to go to Oppenheimer Park when that existed,” CRAB Park tent-city resident Doug Ehret said. “I was camping on Main Street until a week ago when I came here and was welcomed.
“This is home for me. If this is taken away, I’ll wind up back on Main Street in Chinatown in a tent on the sidewalk.”
Don Larson, president of CRAB-Water for Life Society, has lobbied the park board and the city to pressure the port to add an existing asphalt parking lot to the adjacent CRAB Park. He believes the port wants to stack containers at the site, which he says could destroy the fragile bird marsh right next to it through contaminants leaking.
Larson was instrumental in getting CRAB (Create a Real Available Beach) Park built at all when he organized campers in 60 tents to occupy the land in 1984 for 75 days.
The 3.31-hectare green space opened in 1987.
The port did not make anyone available to comment, but sent a statement: “While we respect the right to peacefully protest, we informed this group that they are trespassing on Port Authority property and needed to vacate,” it read in part.
James Lowe, originally from Alert Bay, said he had nowhere to go and no one to care for him until he discovered the CRAB Park tent city.
“I feel safe here. My stuff doesn’t get stolen every day,” he said. “I was not comfortable anywhere else.”
A residential school survivor and heroin user attempting to wean himself off the drug with methadone, Lowe said he has been homeless for 23 years.
“And in those 23 years,” he said, “this is the only place I’ve felt safe.”
B.C. Housing did not return a phone call for comment on why not all the residents moved out of Oppenheimer Park received temporary housing in an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus in the Downtown Eastside.