CRAB PARK EVICTIONS
Legal experts raise concerns
Vancouver's park board says it's within its legal rights to clear campers from CRAB Park despite a previous B.C. Supreme Court ruling that allowed campers to stay put due to the city's lack of adequate housing.
“We are still abiding by the ruling,” said park board commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky, who serves as chair. “The city's court injunction (which sought to evict daytime campers) was based on the group camping there two years ago.”
Tuesday morning, park rangers backed by Vancouver police loaded the belongings of about 20 homeless residents of the park's hillside onto garbage trucks to enforce a municipal bylaw that dictates temporary shelters in city parks must be taken down each morning. Only 14 residents are approved to live in a smaller designated camp.
The municipal action has come under fire from legal advocates.
“I don't think the park board can come back from this,” said Alexandra Flynn, an associate professor with the University of B.C.'s Peter A. Allard School of Law.
Flynn said the enforcement action doesn't meet the legal standard set by a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that previously denied the park board the legal authority to evict people from sheltering during the day, which was based on a finding that there wasn't enough space for residents at indoor shelters.
“Simply assuming that those sheltering in CRAB Park can find `another place to go' fails to accord the necessary priority to their rights and ensure minimal impairment of those rights,” Justice Matthew Kirchner wrote in the January 2022 decision.
The park board has said it will incrementally reduce the designated camping area until the entire area can be returned to regular park use.
Flynn, who was at the park Tuesday morning, said she witnessed park rangers disposing of belongings including Indigenous drums and teddy bears of the campers who were not allowed to relocate to the new designated camp area.
“In his decision, Kirchner said that park users' Charter-protected rights ... ought to be weighed more by the city than the rights of park users like dog walkers.”
But park board commissioners Bastyovanszky and Tom Digby disagree.
“We are still abiding by the ruling,” said Bastyovanszky. “The city's court injunction was based on the group camping there two years ago.”
Bastyovanszky said 10 designated residents left once park rangers informed them about their intended cleanup in March.
“They have not returned any phone calls or our attempts at contacting them,” he said.
For the 20 or so residents in the temporary area, the park board has created an appeals process.
“The park board is not meant to solve the city's housing problems. There are 10,000 other people who have that park as their local green space and access,” Bastyovanszky said.
Fiona York, a local housing advocate, says the park board's offers of appeals come too late.
“The appeal process was only made available after they were forcefully evicted and long gone,” York said, adding people may be difficult to find with no address, phone or email. “How does the park board plan for them to participate in a multi-step appeal process?”
Digby says he believes the current bylaws strike a good balance.
“The unsheltered have a right to be there, but constitutional rights aren't the only rights that matter, there is human dignity and human health that we wanted to help residents monitor,” Digby said, mentioning the more than 90,000 kilograms of debris and material, 20 propane tanks and six generators city crews removed during their cleanup.
“We're like the landlords — they are tenants in our park, so we had to ask questions: Are there too many needles and too much human excrement lying around here to be safe?”