City workers hauled out a large amount of waste Thursday from a dead-end street in northeast Vancouver that is being used as a homeless camp.
Northeast 51st Street, behind a 7-Eleven, is a short cul-de-sac with no homes. People have been using the spot as a campsite for at least several months, if not longer.
On Thursday morning, dump trucks and other city vehicles arrived to clear the spot of accumulated garbage.
There have been numerous complaints from nearby residents, property managers and others about the growing solid waste issue at the site, said Tyler Chavers, lead officer in the Vancouver Police Department’s Homeless Assistance Response Team.
The trash was removed Thursday because it was posing a health and safety risk due to its sheer volume. There was about 120 square yards of material that needed to be removed, according to Chavers.
The majority of what’s abandoned on the street did not come from homeless people living nearby but by area residents using it as an illegal dump site.
“It was clear from the type of trash (old tires, empty paint buckets, a pallet of commercial carpet samples, old furniture requiring a vehicle to move) that most of the mess was from housed citizens using that area as a dump,” Chavers said.
The city plans to take measures to make it more difficult to enter the street and dump trash. The plan includes putting up more signs and placing additional barriers, according to the officer.
The homeless campers are not being asked to leave the street. Currently, police are not clearing camps as they have in the past, during which people are generally kicked out of a location, due to COVID-19.
Vancouver Department of Public Works, the city’s Code Compliance Team and officers would coordinate weekly cleanups. Officers are generally present for security.
Officers post notices in the area in advance so the campers are aware of what is going to happen. The notices include the date and time of an upcoming cleanup, lists information about the city’s camping ordinance, and includes camping “expectations,” such as anyone camping should be packed up and prepared to move by 6:30 a.m.
Simple cleanups are also not happening, or at least not as frequently as before the pandemic started. Chavers said it’s been a while since some locations have been cleaned, and some buildups are becoming quite large, so the city will likely begin to do more of them.
