Vancouver bid to end tent city stymied

VANCOUVER — A judge has denied the City of Vancouver an application for an injunction to remove a homeless encampment on a city-owned lot on Main Street that has been vacant for nearly 20 years.

In a ruling released Wednesday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Neena Sharma said that the city had not met the legal test for an injunction, including a requirement that it prove that it would suffer “irreparable harm” if the court order were not granted.

She noted that the occupants of the tent city at 950 Main St. had persuasively argued that their safety would be jeopardized if they were required to leave the site.

A lawyer for the city had told the judge that there was an urgent need for the estimated 50 homeless people to vacate the site because there was a risk that a social-housing project planned for the lot would lose funding. Iain Dixon said that significant funding would be jeopardized if the development, which would see 26 units of social housing built, did not go ahead.

But the judge said she did not see sufficient evidence of the urgency and noted that there was no indication that dates on a timeline for the project were inflexible. Sharma said that while everyone can agree that social housing is important, the occupants of the site had pointed out that the tent city was preferable to whatever might be planned for the site.

“They also say that if they have to leave the site, they will have nowhere else to go,” said the judge.

On April 28, a locked chainlink fence was breached at the unoccupied city lot on Main and a number of people entered the site to establish the tent city.

The lot was acquired by the city in June 1998 for the purpose of development of social housing.