On Thursday morning, people camping on Pandora and outreach workers at nearby Our Place Society were surprised by a bylaw officer “sweep” that removed nearly all tents and items from the area. 

According to Grant McKenzie, communications director for Our Place—which operates where people were camping—between 30 and 50 tents were removed this morning, with three still standing on the street as of dinner time last night (McKenzie couldn’t confirm whether those tents were there before the sweep occurred).

McKenzie told Capital Daily he saw bylaw officers gather tents and personal items and put them into a truck. He said he assumed the items were impounded as per usual. 

Mayor Marianne Alto said the removal of tents on Pandora was not out of the ordinary and that it seemed larger because bylaw officers weren’t able to attend to the street during the week. 

However, McKenzie said this sweep was different. 

“It seemed like a much deeper sweep than normal,” McKenzie said. “Normally, bylaw does come down once or twice a week and does clean up around the area, because it definitely gets messy. But this one—moving all the tents and stuff out of Pandora definitely caught us by surprise.”

Our Place and those camping on Pandora weren’t given a heads-up about the sweep—according to McKenzie, many campers weren’t there when their items were removed. He said Wednesday was “welfare cheque day” and many people use the money to get a room for a night to shower, rest, and get a break from the streets.

Nikki Ottosen with Backpack Project Victoria said people on Pandora were devastated.

“I heard from people on the ground that there were people crying, people saying that their backpack was just out of arm's reach and they wanted to get it and bylaw refused,” she said. “I'm hearing stories about people's medications gone. All their tents that they just bought because it was payday yesterday, gone.”

Last week, Our Place released the results of a survey conducted with people living on Pandora. Of the 77 people surveyed, 95% of them said they were dealing with mental or physical health issues and 100% of them said they wanted to get off the street for good. Our Place announced with the release of the survey that they planned to get every person living on the 900-block of Pandora off the street for good, creating a personalized plan for everyone to make that happen. 

But McKenzie said Thursday’s sweep will make that goal more difficult to achieve. People displaced by the sweep he said, have nowhere to go.

“One thing about when you do a big sweep like this and you move people away—a lot of times it makes the work that we're doing harder because all of those people have been displaced,”  McKenzie said. “And so we have to find them again, to do those follow-ups.

He says many people living on Pandora are “in survival mode” and aren’t sure who they can trust. When sweeps like this occur, they don’t know who is at fault and may avoid outreach workers whom they see as authority figures. 

“We have to repair that [trust] in order to continue the work,” said McKenzie. “So I think the timing was very unfortunate.”

Pandora is a safe place for people on the streets

With resources like Our Place, SOLID, and Island Health’s safe consumption site nearby, the stretch of Pandora, particularly between Vancouver and Quadra, often draws people with nowhere to go, according to McKenzie, because they know there will be support and community available.

Multiple experts have pointed to the importance of community and supervised consumption sites as a way to reduce overdoses amidst the ongoing toxic drug crisis.

The majority of the people displaced from Pandora on Thursday will have nowhere to go—McKenzie said all shelters are currently full. Without tents, he says, people will move to doorways and stairwells—anywhere that will provide some shelter from the elements now that they no longer have their tents. 

He expects many of the people displaced today will be back on Pandora by tomorrow

Irving Park and Vic West Park hit with sweeps

Earlier this week, a similar sweep hit Irving Park—one of five parks in Greater Victoria where sheltering is currently allowed overnight. 

Many of those affected were at Rainbow Kitchen getting food and weren’t around when their tents and items were removed. They too, were given no notice of an upcoming sweep.

Last week, Vic West Park, another park allowing sheltering, was swept, with tents and personal items removed. The city has said the bylaw officers don’t remove items essential for life, but Ottenson—who works to provide unhoused people with tents, sleeping bags, clothes, and other essential items—says that continues to be proven untrue.

She told Capital Daily that the majority of tents taken in this week’s sweeps were provided by Backpack Project Victoria and other community outreach groups.

She said this constant displacement leads to a cycle of people bouncing back and forth in the areas from which they’ve been removed.

“What's happening is that people, when they get swept from the parks, they go to Pandora,” she said. “Then they get swept from Pandora, and they go back to the parks. So now you're gonna see an influx of people at the parks.”

Capital Daily reached out to the City of Victoria for comment about these sweeps and why so many items were removed this week but did not receive a response to questions asked in time for publication.

Sweeps an ongoing problem

Sweeps—a term used when the city removes personal belongings and tents from unhoused people camping in parks or on streets—have become a point of contention for many outreach workers who say that people in tents have nowhere else to go. 

In 2009, a BC Court of Appeal reaffirmed a previous BC Supreme Court ruling that found it to be unconstitutional to stop someone from erecting tents or temporary shelters when there are no shelter beds available.

Last month a protest calling for an end to bylaw sweeps took place in front of Victoria City Hall, with outreach workers—including Ottosen—addressing the council. Ottosen told Capital Daily that she has not heard from any council members or city staff since and that all emails sent by her and other outreach workers have gone unanswered.

In the weeks after the protest, Victoria council moved to ban overnight camping in two more parks—Irving and Vic West—by Aug. 1. This will leave three parks—Gonzales, Oaklands, and Pemberton—as areas for people to shelter overnight. 

Last week, representatives from the Crab Park encampment in Vancouver protested sweeps happening in their city on the legislature lawn, saying the province needed to step in. 

A protest in response to the morning sweep was scheduled to take place Thursday night in Centennial Square.