Here comes the summer, with more encampments, and of course more street sweeps. Expect more tears and tragedy, no matter how nicely they're conducted.
Victoria bylaw officers have increased their presence on Pandora Avenue following a predictable surge in tents on the greens and sidewalks.
There are multiple factors explaining the Pandora encampment’s sudden swelling. Of course summer plays a role, as the homeless are notoriously apprehensive of shelters and may decide that camping outside is a safer option. Then the recent Princess Avenue decampment merely concentrates campers at other locations, where there’s safety in numbers and exposure.
I walked down Pandora Avenue two days ago, and counted over twenty tents, so I was expecting imminent sweeps, and indeed for two straight mornings bylaw officers dropped by first thing on their shift. In contrast with the Princess Avenue encampment, however, the city is taking a smoother approach. The Pandora encampment is just too big to take down in one fell swoop, after all, so the officers seem to focus on voluntary compliance and taking down abandoned shelters. Which is an improvement over last November’s indiscriminate decampment right before a snowstorm, just four days after Marianne Alto became mayor, which has earned her administration the opprobrium of the press.
In fact, since the #StopTheSweeps rally, the sweep team looks like it’s putting on white gloves and making a tone-deaf attempt at charming the unhoused community, in an attempt to make the interaction more comfortable, to the extent a procedure slightly less invasive than a body cavity search can be; I have to give them points for the effort though. I even saw VicPD giving the unhoused cigarettes in an apparent gesture of good will (something I am apprehensive about; it’s like they’re distributing lung cancer).
While recent protests, including the Backpack Project press conference, may be credited for putting the officers on their best behaviour (at least in front of the press), sweeps still occur in our streets and parks, whittling down the unhoused’s options. Between Princess Avenue’s bust and the upcoming Stadacona Park playground, this leaves Pandora Avenue as the next Hastings Street in DTES Vancouver, where a similarly disastrous development may unfold, and more spaces in shelters can only embolden the city in ratcheting up its enforcement of sheltering bylaws. Let’s hope that City Hall realises that if the unhoused can no longer camp in parks and on sidewalks anywhere near harm reduction resources, without being offered proper alternatives, we protesters may resume occupying a certain intersection right beneath its windows. And no amount of sweet talking will change that.
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