Advocates Denounce Bylaw Sweeps at Victoria City Hall

Thirty advocates rallied on very short notice tonight at Centennial Square in reaction to recent sweeps on homeless encampments across the city.

The crowd was scrambled together by Niki Ottosen of the Backpack Project, while Kim of LLEOHN rushed in with PA equipment and assumed the role of emcee. Multiple rallies in support of the unhoused community of Victoria have been improvised in this fashion lately, such as one last month which disrupted a city council meeting.

The event was prompted by a decampment operation this morning on Pandora Avenue, right by Our Place’s community centre, perpetrated by the city’s bylaw services, which was covered by CHEK News, the Times Colonist, and Capital Daily (like last year on Princess Avenue), suggesting an informant at city hall is tipping the media on upcoming bylaw raids. Participants were also still reeling from a bylaw raid on Irving Park last week which took advantage of residents attending a nearby soup kitchen.

I was ushered before the mic tonight—my turn has to come from time to time—to discuss what I had witnessed as an independent legal observer this morning when I rushed over there following a tip myself. While I missed the sweep on the green, I arrived in time to document a tent being taken away right by Our Place’s front gate. The owner had just been gone a few minutes and would gladly have moved their belongings had the area not been cordoned during their short absence. It took some haggling under threat of arrest—and of course the watchful eye of a legal observer—to even recover a mobility aid. In my own words, this is bullying and predation, plain and simple.

Others took the microphone to air their grievances. One of them, a prominent LGBTQ advocate, passionately swore she would not sit with Victoria city officials for the upcoming Pride Month unless unhoused people were invited at the table to engage in honest dialogue.

We decided on a whim to walk into City Hall to disrupt the council meeting, but the council wasn’t in session tonight. We did not expect to be allowed in anyway even if the council had been in session.

Victoria isn’t the only city to complain about bylaw sweeps of encampments. Just last week, a delegation of homeless people and advocates from CRAB Park in Vancouver came over to the BC Legislature to take their grievances to their elected representatives. The residents have recently made a human rights complaint against the city of Vancouver, only to be met by a draconian cleanup with heavy machinery in reprisal.