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Vancouver's CRAB Park residents left with few options as eviction looms
CBC
The seven remaining residents of Vancouver's CRAB Park encampment are set to be moved Thursday after more than three years of living there.
The residents have survived numerous city-issued eviction notices since setting up their tents in the waterfront park in 2021, with a B.C. Supreme Court judge voiding the orders and drawing attention to the lack of indoor shelter options.
But two weeks ago, Vancouver's park board said the final residents had been offered alternative living arrangements and that there was no longer a justification for the encampment to continue in its current form.
City officials said the park poses an "unsustainable" strain on the park board's resources to the tune of $21,000 per week.
Residents and advocates say that the closure will shatter a friendly and tight-knit community built up over the years, though, and leave precariously housed people with very few options.
"We're more than just drug addicts. We're more than just degenerates," resident Sasha Christiano told CBC News. "There's a lot of really, really intelligent, capable people that are just hard on their luck."
Christiano, 38, said he's been offered indoor shelter options, but will likely find himself sleeping rough instead, because many single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings can be dangerous.
"We have so many people at the precipice, just at the edge of a going over, because the city and and the system and everything else is pushing us that close," he said. "And then, just when we're at the edge, we could tip over."
Christiano said he expects park rangers to be more aggressive than they've been in the past with encampment residents as they enforce the closure order beginning at 8 a.m. PT on Thursday.
Overnight sheltering will still be permitted at CRAB Park, but shelters will have to be taken down by morning, the park board says.
The Vancouver Park Board did not provide an interview on Wednesday. However, in an Oct. 23 news conference, it said it would only proceed with clearing the camp once consultations had taken place with residents.
Officials said at the time that there was "no longer a fair and reasonable rationale" for the individuals at the camp to have priority and exclusive access to daytime public park space, with over 6,000 people living nearby who have little access to other green spaces.
But Fiona York, a longtime advocate for CRAB Park residents, said residents were not appropriately consulted with, and are now looking at much worse housing options than what they had in the encampment.
"We just want to be really clear — this is a forced eviction," she said. "There [were] no consultations. Any kind of consultation that happened was a sham."