In 2020, Current COPE Board Park Commissioner Gwen Giesbrecht voted in favour of a bylaw stating that people have the right to temporarily shelter overnight in parks. Running for re-election this October, Giesbrecht is joined on the ballot by COPE candidates Chris Livingstone and Maira Hassan. Along with Giesbrecht, Hassan and Livingstone are committed to upholding this bylaw. “With a COPE Park Board, the city’s most vulnerable residents have not been and will not be displaced from parks, simply for needing a place to shelter,” stresses Giesbrecht. 

For candidate Chris Livingstone, the question of evicting people from parks is more than just a hypothetical topic. Livingstone is previously unhoused and has lived in a number of different tent city encampments. Livingstone also has experience organizing people with lived experience with homelessness and working in Vancouver’s homeless encampments.

An outreach worker for Vancouver Aboriginal Community Policing Centre, and a volunteer for a number of organizations, including Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society, Livingstone stresses that tent cities and encampments are intended to create safety, noting that unhoused people who live alone are more vulnerable. 

“If you’re homeless and you’re by yourself, you can be subject to sexual abuse, assault, overdose,” says Livingstone. 

While tent cities can reduce the risk of unhoused people experiencing violence, there’s also the concern of not having adequate housing for people.

“When the topic of eviction comes up, it begs the question, evict folks to where?” asks Hassan. 

Livingstone echoes that sentiment saying, “I worry, as an outreach worker, how do we actually get people into housing if there’s nowhere to go. Using court action to close a camp or bylaws to limit people who are homeless does not solve the problem of a lack of housing and supports for vulnerable people.”

Commissioner Giesbrecht says that the Park Board needs to keep putting pressure on different sectors of the government to build more housing options. 

And, in the meantime, COPE has proposed short- and medium-term actions to reduce homelessness in Vancouver.

“The bottom line is people in Vancouver need a place to live,” says Giesbrecht. “Ejection by force from public spaces for people seeking shelter is not the solution. Housing is.”

Hear Chris Livingstone speak more about his perspective here.

Contact

E: [email protected]