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Tent city eviction protest erupts into physical altercation

Tenants of Sugar Mountain tent city protested eviction Friday

A news conference organized by Alliance Against Displacement devolved into a shouting match and physical altercation between a cyclist and an opponent to the eviction of a homeless camp in the Downtown Eastside on Friday.

The incident happened during statements by activists who do not want to see the residents at Sugar Mountain tent city evicted from the site at Franklin Street and Glen Drive, the future location of a temporary modular housing project. As Troy Tyrell was riding past the throng of reporters and activists, he shouted out that reporters should ask about the camp’s collection of bikes, which Tyrell alleged were stolen. At that point, the activists replied with profanities and motioned for Tyrell to come back if he had more to add. He did, and a shouting match between him and the protesters ensued, ending in him being grabbed and shoved by Herb Varley, a member of the Alliance Against Displacement.

On Dec. 12, the city issued the residents of the homeless camp a trespass notice and gave them until noon Friday to leave the site to accommodate 39 temporary modular housing units for the homeless. The Portland Hotel Society will manage the daily operations of the housing development. However, some camp residents and members of Alliance Against Displacement — a homelessness activist organization — say the society’s tenancy rules are too strict. They also argue any housing the municipal and provincial governments want to build to address homelessness should be tenant-run because they distrust those institutions and the agencies they hire.

Carlos Lopez, a construction worker from Mexico and camp resident, said in a rich city like Vancouver, homeless camps should not exist in the first place, but that the camp functioned well under the management of the residents. He said all they were looking for was government help to hire security in case more serious problems arose.

“Everybody was happy here. There were no problems. If someone did something stupid, they kicked them out,” Lopez said. “In a shelter, you have bed bugs for sure, you have cockroaches, you have a bunch of people with a mental illness, drug people. Here, when you are inside your tent, nobody bothers you.”

Ward Ferguson, who has been a resident of the camp since it opened in August, said that he prefers the freedom and autonomy of a camp more than government and agency-run spaces, though he admits the modular housing units planned for the site “seem OK.” He said he has used PHS services in the past and found them too constricting.

“What’s that going to be? No guests after a certain time,” Ferguson said about the society’s management of homelessness services. “Every building that I know they had running, [was] like being in jail. They want to control everything.”

The activists and camp residents say they would like to see the province immediately open 10,000 units of modular housing in Vancouver, and at the same time start building 10,000 units of permanent social housing. They also want the province to keep building 10,000 units of social housing a year until homelessness in the city is eradicated.

JJ Riach, organizer with Alliance Against Displacement, admits the 600 modular housing units being built by the municipal government will get people out of the cold, but they do not meet the demand. He and some camp residents want homelessness programs and addiction to be “peer run.”

“There needs to be more. They don’t need to be staffed by social workers. They don’t need to be policed, there doesn’t need to be cameras,” Riach said.

He said the altercation at the news conference was “aggression that was met with aggression,” addling that it was “emblematic of capitalist and colonial violence that people are increasingly becoming less docile about.”

A request for response by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing was not met by the Courier’s deadline.

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