Citing safety, city plans to use heavy machinery to clear CRAB Park camp

The City of Vancouver is moving ahead with plans to bring heavy machinery into a three-year-old camp in CRAB Park in order to clean up the area.

The city says the camp has become rife with non-compliant structures, combustible materials, piles of debris and unhygienic waste such as spent needles and feces, and a rat infestation.

City staff presented a draft plan on Tuesday providing a timeline and details about how the roughly 30 remaining permanent residents and others who come and go from the camp will be accommodated before, during and after the cleanup.

The idea is to move residents to another part of the park for about a week starting Monday, March 25, then allow them to move back into the designated area once cleanup is completed.

Warning notices will be posted Monday about the city's request for those in the camp to move to another part of CRAB Park.

However, deputy city manager Sandra Singh said during Tuesday's briefing that the ultimate goal is to have everyone housed indoors as soon as possible and to clear the camp for good, hopefully before next winter.

Some residents and advocates are pushing back against the disruption and displacement, saying the cleanup should be delayed until after a human rights complaint about how the city has dealt with camp residents has been heard.

“That complaint must be resolved before engaging in any other so-called consultation, eviction and move of the three-year old tent city,” said CRAB Park advocate Fiona York in a statement Tuesday.

The city established the designated area on the northwest peninsula of CRAB Park with a bylaw in spring 2022.

It stipulates that no permanent structures, wood or wooden pallets, motorized vehicles or combustibles such as propane tanks can be in the camp. In late December, crews started a manual cleanup as a first phase, but it was suspended because of staff safety issues stemming from unstable structures and unhygienic conditions.

York said city staff destroyed three inhabited tents during that work. “Residents are concerned that any (further) park board cleanup will result in homes and belongings being lost and destroyed.”

While residents and advocates have urged that the work be done in stages and with their help, the city decided there was too much debris and that the non-compliant structures were too big and unstable to be removed without mobile equipment. The tight space in the park's peninsula also factored into the decision.

Last month, park rangers and others began discussing with residents their initial plans for cleanup.

That led to feedback such as requests for a food tent and donation tent, while a request for a warming tent was deferred with the onset of milder spring weather.

However, Singh said if not everyone has found alternative shelter by fall, it would discuss plans for a warming tent supervised by B.C. Housing heading into next winter.

Residents will have access to bins for their belongings, which can be stored at the Aboriginal Front Door centre nearby or in a downtown space offered by the city.

York said “there's indignity and anxiety in having belongings taken into storage,” and that residents don't trust that the items will be properly stored and returned to their owners.

Another long-standing complaint has been the presence of Vancouver police during many interactions with park rangers and city staff, and York said residents are asking for “non-coercive communication” about plans for cleaning up the space.