Opinion: “It’s totally unhappy. However there’s an excellent aspect to it,” an ex-Strathcona Park resident stated in regards to the winding down of Canada’s largest homeless encampment.
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On the gravel April 30, in what was lately Canada’s largest homeless encampment, there was an environment of rigidity, reduction, a little bit disappointment, and, for some, elation.
Standing amid the largely empty tents, assorted detritus and former residents of the Strathcona Park tent metropolis, Kim Berg, 51, was all smiles — the earlier night time, she slept in her personal room with a locked door, for the primary time in 21 years.
“I slept like a dream,” she stated. “The mattress was like heaven.”
Earlier than transferring Thursday into social housing within the close by Downtown Eastside, Berg spent a lot of the previous yr sleeping in Strathcona Park. She received’t miss it.
The order issued earlier this month by Vancouver park board normal supervisor Donnie Rosa listed Friday at 10 a.m. because the deadline for all tents and constructions to be faraway from Strathcona. However not one of the individuals concerned anticipated something dramatic to occur at 10:01 a.m. No courtroom injunction is at present in place, however that could be a future risk if individuals refuse affords of housing and stay within the park.
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Because the deadline handed, a circle of drummers carried out within the park, flanked by a number of dozen observers, a bunch that appeared to incorporate extra media, authorities and non-profit staff than park residents.
“You realize, it’s, ‘The Day,’ ” Rosa stated, making air quotes, Friday on the park. “I couldn’t sleep final night time, and I sleep nicely on a regular basis. Everyone’s on hyper-alert. I feel for some of us, that is actually unhappy as a result of there’s a group right here. However for some of us, they’re going to get to lock their door tonight. It’s a combined bag.”
Brent Corkum was a type of with combined emotions.
He’s thrilled together with his comfy new house in a close-by social housing constructing, the place he moved final week, after sleeping in Strathcona because the camp first fashioned final June. Within the park, his nights have been punctuated by the noise of shouts, fights and occasional propane tank explosions. However one afternoon this week, whereas sitting in his new house, he heard youngsters laughing exterior his window as they walked residence from the neighbourhood elementary college. The sound, he stated, had a profoundly calming impact on him.
“It simply rushed me,” Corkum stated. “It was like, ‘I’m residence now.’ ”
However Corkum, who stated he labored in numerous roles to assist the Strathcona encampment, together with overseeing safety, can also be unhappy as a result of the camp’s dissolution represents the lack of a group that meant so much to him.
“The opposite day, I used to be sitting right here and watching this all being ripped down, and I simply broke down,” Corkum stated. “It’s very unhappy. However there’s an excellent aspect to it.”
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Corkum and some different park residents stated they believed the overwhelming majority of the tents nonetheless standing there have been not lived in full-time, left behind by individuals who have since moved indoors. He, and others within the park, estimated fewer than 20 individuals have been nonetheless dwelling within the park Friday, down from an estimated top of 300 residents within the fall.
Outreach staff have been in Strathcona for weeks, making an attempt to attach park residents with appropriate housing. Town issued an announcement Friday saying that, together with B.C. Housing, that they had moved 184 individuals from the park into housing within the final three weeks.
However Strathcona’s current homeless encampment is much from Vancouver’s first or B.C.’s just one.
And it’s unlikely to be the final, acknowledged B.C. Legal professional-Normal David Eby, the minister chargeable for housing. However he hopes the current growth of social housing will make an actual influence on avenue homelessness.
“I feel we’re going to see encampments present up nonetheless in Vancouver and Victoria,” Eby stated this week. “However what’s totally different this time is, we now have sufficient area coming on-line in each cities that we’re going to have the ability to say to of us: ‘You’ll be able to come inside, we now have a dignified, applicable inside area for you, with helps and meals. Or you may depart the park, however you may’t keep within the park, and you may’t create a brand new encampment right here.’ ”
New shelter areas are opening subsequent month, Eby stated, and longer-term, one other 1,500 social housing models are being constructed within the subsequent two years in Vancouver alone.
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“Individuals are nonetheless going to see of us exterior, from time-to-time, they’re nonetheless going to see homelessness. However my expectation is that, post-COVID and with all these models and all of our different companies working at 100 per cent, once more, that there’s going to be a very dramatic enchancment by way of seen avenue poverty and in our main centres like Victoria and Vancouver.”
The encampment contributed to a lot rigidity over the previous yr between Strathcona’s unhoused residents and space householders.
Though Vancouver police neighbourhood statistics confirmed most classes of crime decreased between 2019 and ’20 in Strathcona, there have been horrifying tales — the vice-president of the Strathcona Residents Affiliation reported being attacked by a stranger exterior her residence in October, hit within the head with a metallic pipe. A couple of months earlier, Vancouver metropolis Coun. Pete Fry, who has lived in and round Strathcona for about 30 years, was strolling his canine close to the park when a person threatened to stab him, an altercation caught on movie.
On Friday, Fry stated that current weeks have introduced an much more “heightened rigidity” for the group dwelling close to Strathcona Park, with the end-of-the-month deadline looming and the uncertainty of what may occur.
However after Friday afternoon rolled spherical with no main incidents, Fry stated: “I feel it’s going — contact wooden — to be higher than most have anticipated … Individuals are feeling fairly hopeful.”
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Park board chairman Camil Dumont echoed that sentiment, saying: “We haven’t seen an funding like this in supportive housing in my lifetime that I can recall in Vancouver … I’m hopeful, which actually, I haven’t been in a position to say that I used to be hopeful a lot, during the last 18 months.”
Corkum stated he plans to start out a front-desk job quickly on the Patricia Lodge, one among a number of former motels bought in the course of the pandemic by all three ranges of presidency for conversion into low-income housing.
Atira, the non-profit working the Patricia, has employed 15 current Strathcona Park residents since CEO Janice Abbott put out a name on-line this week. Atira has lengthy employed from inside the DTES, Abbott stated, “however what’s new for us right here is that we’re hiring them straight out of the park.”
The response has been encouraging, Abbott stated, and she or he hopes the work will present not solely earnings and advantages, but in addition “a way of goal.”
Corkum’s pal, Doug Ehret, who has additionally been working on the Patricia, advised the story of a girl within the lodge one night time this week, who began crying.
“I requested her what was the issue,” Ehret stated. “She couldn’t bear in mind the final time she had a f—ing sheet on her mattress. A easy f—ing sheet.”
dfumano@postmedia.com
