VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - It's very likely everyone living at a tent city near West Hastings and Abbott will be sleeping inside tonight, but the fight for affordable housing is far from over. The organizers behind the makeshift campground say you can expect new tent cities to crop up until the issue is dealt with.
About 40 or so tenters living in the area will probably get shelter tonight thanks to the Portland Hotel Society. Concord Pacific, the land owner, has been given until the 26th to clear all people and structures from the vacant lot. But these people are hoping to pack up today.
Wendy Pedersen with the Carnegie Community Action Project is somewhat satisfied with the solution for the tenters, but she says more homeless will take to sleeping on the street when Vancouver's temporary heat shelters close at the end of April. "This is the wave of the future - tents everywhere - and now it's legal to sleep on city land."
On February 15th, members of the Carnegie Community Action Project set up camp at the vacant lot at 59 West Hastings. One man we spoke with says he wants to stay. "From this spot you want me to move? It's a continuous process. Canada, lets look after our own people." He wants Concord Pacific to donate it for social housing.
Another man claims the tents offer protection, "I don't like going to shelters, people are fighting, they are being
ignorant with each other. The homeless are hateful against each other.
For me to go there..no.. this is safer for me right here." Last week, the City of Vancouver sent a letter to Concord ordering it to have all "structures and materials" removed.
Pedersen says that only a permanent social housing solution will help
solve Vancouver's homelessness problem.