Confusion reigned in Goldstream Provincial Park Thursday with the provincial government ultimately deciding to allow homeless campers to stay until it has assessed the situation and examined its options.
“There is currently no deadline,” said a statement by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. “Outreach staff continue to assess the campers’ needs.”
About 30 tenters who were ordered to leave Saanich’s Regina Park, and a green space at Ravine Way, made their way to the provincial park on Tuesday night with the help of supporters, who drove rented trucks to move possessions.
On Wednesday evening, the Environment Ministry closed the park and told the group and everyone else camping in the park they had to leave by 11 a.m. Thursday. West Shore RCMP set up a command centre and B.C. Parks rangers closed the gates. Registered campers packed up their sites and drove away. Police and parks staff met with the homeless campers.
Then at about 11 a.m., B.C. Parks issued a statement saying the campers were being granted a 24-hour extension. The situation changed again in the early afternoon, when a spokesman for the Environment Ministry said a staff member misspoke and there was no deadline or 24-hour eviction notice for campers.
The reprieve is a hopeful sign of an understanding by the government that a co-ordinated approach by involved agencies is needed, said John Heaney, a lawyer representing the campers. “By being able to stay, there’s an understanding they need to be together and an understanding that the agencies after this will be better co-ordinated.”
Dispersing the campers from the park with nowhere for them to go but back onto the streets is not an answer, he said.
The uncertainty took its toll on Lynne Hibak, a disabled homeless woman who lived in Regina Park and Ravine Way.
“All this running around, bouncing from place to place. I feel like a friggin’ yo-yo. This has got to stop. How would you feel if this was your son, your daughter, your niece, your nephew, your cousins, your aunt, any one of you?” said an emotional Hibak.
“I’m tired of all the people who are angry at us, who are saying we are a bunch of drug users. … Come down here and see for yourselves what it’s like to be on the streets, where there’s no food, no shelter, no clothing. No access to anything like that. See what you’re putting people with disabilities through.”
Ashley Mollison, spokeswoman for the Alliance Against Displacement, said police departments chasing people from park to street to campground has escalated anti-homeless hatred. “You can see behind us angry mobs of neighbours who are threatening to tear down the camp. This is not OK. This is not an adequate response to homelessness.”
Tensions soared as Langford residents got into a heated exchange with supporters of the homeless tenters. RCMP officers were forced to step in and calm the situation.
Camp organizer Chrissy Brett said the homeless people were relieved they could stay put.
“We all feel as though a two-week reprieve will help us figure out our next step. This was never a permanent move.”
Brett took exception to remarks by Langford Mayor Stew Young, who said he had received hundreds of complaints from residents concerned about drug abuse and break-ins.
The homeless campers steal and use illegal drugs and leave needles everywhere, Young said Wednesday in an interview.
“For a mayor who’s talking about being tough on crime, he hasn’t sicced the RCMP on any of the bike gangs who have houses here. But he sics a bunch of cops on disabled people who are defenceless and calls them the criminals,” Brett said.
“He should look in his own backyard.”
Young should come down, have dinner with homeless campers and talk, she suggested.
Young said the municipality has put out a press release telling residents it’s not safe to go into the park.
“With all the stuff that’s going on in there, we can’t guarantee everyone’s safety.
“They’re in the washrooms shooting up on two different occasions and they’re stealing stuff from other campers. I’m very disappointed that the government thinks it’s OK to go into a public park. They’re going to get a bill from me for the policing.”
Building housing units and providing health and addiction services should have been a government priority, he said.
Brett should leave the camp, take herself out of the picture and get a professional who knows how to deal with mental health and addiction problems and help these people, Young said.
“If she was going to help people truly, then you would only let people in who are seriously in need of housing and have the ability to have respect for the law and respect for other people around them. And that’s not happening.
“You don’t put kids in camps alongside drug users and people who have no regard for the law,” Young said. “She’s actually doing a disservice by saying: ‘Here. Come to this camp. It’s really great.’ No, it’s not.”
The provincial government needs to put serious money toward the situation, he said.
West Shore RCMP Const. Matt Baker said police had received complaints of drug use and suspicious behaviour and vandalism to property.
“We recovered a stolen vehicle in the area as well and arrested an individual with a warrant,” said Baker.
Langford resident Brian Clouter maintains the campers are in the park solely to make a statement about homelessness.
Kelowna’s Matthew Cote left the park with his partner one day into a planned three-day stay to find other accommodations.
He said the campsite occupied by the homeless people was clean and that he was not disturbed by having to move.
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Earlier story
A police command centre has set up at Goldstream Provincial Park in Langford as homeless campers forced from Regina Park and Ravine Way greenspace in Saanich fear they are once again being pushed out.
Organizer Chrissy Brett said the Environment Ministry arrived after 5 p.m. Wednesday night and closed the park to all but registered campers. She said the park will be closed at 11 a.m. today to everyone, just two days after the campers arrived. Police have yet to confirm this.
Langford Mayor Stew Young signalled immediately that his community would not put out the welcome mat for homeless campers who moved to Goldstream park on Tuesday evening.
A frustrated Young said he received hundreds of complaints by Wednesday from residents who are concerned about break-ins and drug use.
“The public is absolutely fed up. They know these are not just campers looking for a home. They’re in there stealing. They’re doing drugs. They leave needles everywhere,” said Young. “I can tell you, parents are already telling me their kids will never go in there again because you’ll never find all the needles, all the drugs and all the opioids.”
Young said he was “very disappointed” he didn’t get a call from the provincial government to let him know the campers were moving to the provincial park on the edge of his municipality.
“Housing Minister Selena Robinson was on the news talking about it. But no courtesy call to me saying ‘Guess what? We’re actually paying for them to go to a provincial park.’ If that’s their solution for homelessness, we have a really big problem, a bigger problem than I thought,” said Young.
The government provides free camping at B.C. Parks to people who receive disability assistance through the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. The campers said they are planning to spend the next two weeks in the park to regroup and recuperate.
The government should have been better prepared after a homeless camp on the Victoria courthouse lawn cost taxpayers $3 million in legal fees and site cleanup, said Young. It’s estimated the tent city at Regina Park will cost Saanich taxpayers $1 million.
“The province should have been out in front of this in the first place,” said Young. “They’re not being responsible. Before they started moving people to a provincial park, there should have been some dialogue with police, council, my staff and myself. We got caught.”
Young has met with West Shore RCMP and senior staff to consider what to do to keep the community safe.
“Whoever thought of this is an absolute idiot,” he fumed.
A statement from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said B.C. Parks staff will monitor the situation at Goldstream Park. “While we understand this is not an ideal location, it is a safer location than the highway right of way where the campers were living previously.”
The goal is to get people into shelters and long-term housing.
“Solving this will require partnerships with regional and local government leaders to build appropriate and affordable housing. Unfortunately, while we already have 2,000 new modular homes in development across B.C., only one site for 21 units was identified in Victoria, and no other local governments within the CRD have identified land where we could build these homes.”
Young said staff from four ministries — Municipal Affairs and Housing, Mental Health and Addiction, the Attorney General, and Social Development and Poverty Reduction — should form a provincial action assessment team that goes out every day to help marginalized people.
“There’s so much money out there. Get out of your office and go work for these people. I don’t need a thousand people working in an office when the problem is out here, or in Saanich or in Victoria. Help them. Make sure they get the help they need. Find out where their families are,” said Young, who called the situation a crisis.
Putting 100 modular units in the middle of a neighbourhood for five years is stupid, said Young. “They’re not going to solve the problem long-term. Build proper housing and build it faster and do it all over the province.”
The RCMP will do their job and uphold the law, said Young. “They will arrest people if they are doing drugs. If anything is going on, they will uphold the law.”
Dean Fortin, executive director of Pacifica Housing, said outreach workers did more than 100 vulnerability assessments when the campers lived in Regina Park. “These aren’t a bunch of advocates with social privilege trying to raise a point. The vast majority of individuals who made up the camp were suffering from mental health and addictions. They are already classified by the ministry as people with disabilities. They have many challenges.”
More than 10 people from Regina Park have been placed in supportive housing, said Fortin.
Outreach staff will go to Goldstream, meet with the campers, understand their needs and see if they can help move them into permanent housing.
“It’s not a bad thing to have gone to Goldstream because they’re not under the constant threat of being displaced and made to move on. … The ability to just have two weeks of peace, and for us, as a service provider, that’s two weeks of us working to find a more permanent solution,” said Fortin.
At Goldstream Park on Wednesday morning, sunlight streamed through the massive trees. The campers were enjoying their peaceful surroundings. “It was so quiet last night, I heard an owl hoot,” said Lynne Hibak.
“I heard other people snoring,” said Lance Larsen. “I never heard that at the other camp because there was too much noise and it was drowned out by all the activity. If you have really good hearing, in the dead of night, you can hear the water trickling and the hiss of the waterfall.”
“No window warriors yelling at us,” said Don, who didn’t want his last name in the newspaper.
The campers said they were driven to the park by supporters.
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Earlier story
Homeless campers, forced out of a Ravine Way green space in Saanich, have moved to the campground in Goldstream Provincial Park.
On Tuesday morning, about 80 police officers from Victoria, Oak Bay and Saanich surrounded the Ravine Way encampment en masse to enforce a trespass notice issued by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
Citing safety concerns, the province asked police to remove people from the camp immediately.
Yellow police tape encircled the camp on the green space between Highway 17, Carey Road, Ravine Way and Vernon Avenue. Police cars with flashing lights parked on the surrounding roads.
By early afternoon, 28 tents had come down and more than 40 homeless people had packed their belongings into green garbage bags and storage bins.
Most of the campers are former residents of a tent city that began five months ago in Regina Park. That camp was shut down Thursday when Saanich police enforced a B.C. Supreme Court injunction, forcing more than 100 people to disperse.
Ashley Mollison, spokeswoman for Alliance Against Displacement, rented two U-Haul trucks to help people move to another location.
About 12:30 p.m., Mollison and tent city residents drove to Rudd Park, but Saanich police were waiting for them and refused to let them take their belongings out of the U-Haul.
A Saanich bylaw permits camping in 102 designated municipal parks from 7 p.m. to 9 a.m.
Campers were told that during the day they could bring only what they could carry into the park. The exchange became heated and the campers returned to Ravine Way.
But by this time, a fence had been placed around the property to prevent campers from returning.
“Everyone has been driven out of the site and now we have everybody’s stuff in moving trucks and we have nowhere to go,” said Mollison.
“As we’ve been saying all along, people who have been living at the site have nowhere else to go. It’s as simple as that. … But today, we saw the forceful displacement of 45 to 60 individuals from the park behind me.”
The campers are devastated and have vowed to bind together and continue to camp together, she said.
“We know people are safer when they are together. We know they can look after their belongings, look after each other, when they are together. They can fight off anti-homeless people together and essentially keep themselves safe,” Mollison said.
B.C. has an affordable housing crisis that affects many more than you see in tent cities, Mollison said. Seniors are losing their homes. More people are becoming homeless every day. Others are barely surviving in their apartment buildings, she said.
“We aren’t allowed in the parks. We’re not allowed on the streets. We’re not allowed in tent cities. Where are homeless people allowed to go in this district?” she asked.
Mollison said her question was for the B.C. government, explaining that the campers chose to relocate to Ravine Way because housing is a provincial issue.
By late afternoon Tuesday, tent city residents had moved to Goldstream.
Last week, on Friday, tent city residents went to Rudd Park after being displaced from Regina Park.
Neighbours quickly complained that the sports field and playground used by many community associations was not an appropriate place for the campers. Washrooms were not open and campers used a nearby convenience store and gas station. The campers said they were harassed during the night by residents.
A statement from the Housing Ministry said outreach workers, including B.C. Housing staff, staff from the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, and staff from Pacifica Housing, were at the Ravine Way camp Tuesday speaking with campers and assessing their housing and support needs. B.C. Housing and community partners will continue to provide support and resources as required, it said.
