The necessity for the action was made clear by the aftermath.
Two days after police broke up a large homeless encampment last week at the direction of Vancouver officials, cleanup workers were on the scene. As The Columbian’s Amy Fischer reported: “Block after block, sidewalks and grassy planting strips were piled with discarded mattresses, chairs, coolers, shopping carts, blankets, clothing, tarps and wood scraps. A team of about 10 city workers pushed the trash into piles for the backhoe to crush, grab and place into four 40-yard drop boxes. Then the workers scraped the ground clean with shovels, revealing fresh earth.” Hazardous materials experts were on hand to clean up hypodermic needles and feces, while laying lime atop areas where people had urinated.
This was the scene in the aftermath of a camp near downtown that had grown over the past couple months. An estimated 150 homeless people had set up residence, constructing a tent city that provided them with some sense of community but also centralized problems with garbage, human waste, and criminal activity. Because of that, the need to break up the camp was evident. Local businesses were being hampered by the encampment; traffic through the area was often encumbered. Those facts did not lesson the human impact of the action, nor did they answer questions about where those homeless people would now go.
Among the issues the city of Vancouver is attempting to reconcile is the regulation of public camping. Last month, officials revised what had been a ban on camping to allow the practice between 9:29 p.m. and 6:31 a.m. (City parks remain off-limits because they are closed overnight.) The change followed an opinion from the U.S. Department of Justice that it is unconstitutional to criminalize sleeping in a public space when shelter accommodations are not available. The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty recently analyzed 187 cities, finding that more than half of them prohibit camping in an effort to force the homeless elsewhere.
In many jurisdictions, the response has been to try and drive the homeless from public view; out of sight, out of mind, apparently. But such a response reflects a moral failing on the part of those jurisdictions. Yes, it is true cities that work to accommodate homeless people find themselves attracting more homeless; but the alternative of pretending such people do not exist is a shameful choice.
