City aims to enforce overnight parking ban
Tent city campers say they feel targeted as many RVs and vans use spots alongside Strathcona Park
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 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.
Some vehicles had semi-permanent structures, such as tarps, attached to them.
Two of the matriarchs 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 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?”
“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.
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.
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.
“People don't have a place to go,” she said, adding the city, province and federal governments have to work together to battle homelessness.