City aims to enforce overnight parking ban
Strathcona Park spots include many RVS, and vans; campers say they feel targeted
The City of Vancouver is warning street campers that it intends to start enforcing its overnight parking ban across the city, and residents of the Strathcona Park tent city say they are feeling unfairly targeted.
The city's engineering department intends to implement a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. parking ban on the three blocks of Raymur Avenue that run alongside Strathcona Park, it said in a letter to residents posted to Twitter by the Tyee.
“Many people were camping overnight for many consecutive days” on the 900 to 1200 blocks of Raymur, preventing park users from parking on the street, the letter said.
The city confirmed the email “advising of parking enforcement measures as part of a citywide initiative to enforce the bylaw regarding overnight parking of large vehicles,” spokeswoman Ellie Lambert said in an email.
“We have heard some concerns regarding implications for people staying in vehicles around Strathcona Park,” she said.
She added that the city is “working to ensure that people who need housing support are connected with those resources.”
She said the city will be “proceeding slowly” and enforcement would be done “over the next coming days.” She didn't answer questions about how many street campers there are in the city, where the city would enforce the overnight parking bans or whether all campers would be offered housing.
Strathcona Park has for months been the site of a tent city that has grown to 500 shelters. On Raymur Avenue on Friday, there were at least 40 vehicles, including RVS, vans, minivans and SUVS, parked in most of the parking spots on the three blocks.
One was a 60-footer with its windows closed and blocked and the generator running. There were also about 10 RVS parked on nearby Malkin Avenue.
Some vehicles on Raymur had semi-permanent structures, such as erected tarps, attached to them. One of the parking spots had a trailer bed parked in it, in the middle of another sat an upholstered armchair. Two of the matriarchs and firekeepers of the sacred flame at the tent city questioned why the city was enforcing the overnight parking ban next to Strathcona Park but not where other street campers congregate or isolate throughout Vancouver.
“Why is Raymur Street at the beginning” of enforcement efforts, said Chrissy Brett.
“Shaughnessy doesn't have a lot of Indians in their park,” said an elder who said she went only by the name Veronica. “But (city officials) come here and create a scene.”
Veronica said the city's offer of housing doesn't change her opposition to the parking ban.
“Who is going to rent to an Indian anyway?” she said. “And then what do they do with their RVS?” “And their pets?” asked Brett. “Where is everybody to go?” said Veronica, who notes 78 per cent of Indigenous people live off reserve, and housing on reserve is limited and crowded with multi-generational families.
Veronica offered to arrange an interview with an RV dweller on Raymur. The doors of the RV, which had Washington plates, were closed and the windows blocked.
A sign in the front window warned “Security cameras in use” and Veronica's knocks on the door set off at least two barking dogs. There was no answer.
Veronica said she didn't buy the argument the city needed an overnight ban on parking to free up spots, of which there were at least a dozen on Friday midday, because “I see parking spots, so I don't see the problem. They (park users) can park on Prior.”
The Strathcona Residents Association didn't want to comment on the parking enforcement because “there are mixed opinions right now,” said association vice-president Katie Lewis.
“We don't really want to wade into this yet,” she said. “We don't want to comment on how it will affect the neighbourhood.”
But she said, “We are becoming increasingly concerned about the increasing number of RVS (on Raymur) and the structures attached to them.”
Lewis agreed Raymur is not the only place RVS are parking and that she has seen more of them in front
of her house near Mclean Park blocks away.
“People don't have a place to go,” she said, adding the city, province and federal governments have to
work together to battle homelessness.
Brett said she would like to see the city set up urban reserves.