The long-running homeless encampment in Vancouver’s CRAB Park cost the City of Vancouver $3 million.
Those costs went to cover sanitation, engineering, maintenance and repairs, park rangers, police, firefighters and homeless outreach between 2021 and 2024, when the encampment was finally shut down.
“It’s an extraordinary amount of money and it really shows why these urban encampments are not appropriate places for people to be sheltering,” ABC Vancouver City Councillor Peter Meiszner told Global News.
The $3 million figure does not include the costs of rehabilitating the park after the city ended the encampment in November.
Between 2018 and 2021 similar homeless encampments at Vancouver’s Oppenheimer and Strathcona parks cost taxpayers more than $6 million,
Councillors agree the money could have been better spent addressing homelessness.
“This a cost that’s borne by the province, it’s a cost borne by the city, it’s a cost borne by the park board and surely we could put that money to better use and address the needs of folks,” Green City Councillor Pete Fry said.
One option Fry wants the city to look at is tiny shelters. At around $15,000 each, $3 million would have funded 200 of them.
Vancouver’s previous city council approved a pilot project for the 100-square-foot units in February 2022.
Each is meant to come equipped with heat and air conditioning, power, space for two people and a lock on the door.
Former mayor Kennedy Stewart did not respond to an interview request from Global News while neither deputy city manager Sandra Singh nor Vancouver Park Board general manager Steve Jackson were available for interviews Wednesday about the CRAB Park encampment.
While fencing around the former encampment site was recently knocked down, the overnight sheltering area remains off limits three months after it was closed to protect the newly seeded soil from wet weather and cold temperatures.
The city says it hopes to reopen the space this spring.