Pivot Legal Society lawyer opposes ticketing homeless

Remember Darrell Mickasko? He was the homeless man who died of burn injuries days after his clothing caught fire as he used a stove to keep himself warm one cold evening last winter. He was sleeping behind a Dumpster near a Vancouver homeless shelter that was full.

Writing in his blog on February 4, Pivot Legal Society lawyer David Eby recalled that he had seen Mickasko the week before, and that the 47-year-old Edmonton native had asked if he knew of a place he could rent. Eby didn't, and the next thing he knew, the man he considered a friend was dead.

"If people have to live outside, we're going to have more tragic deaths like Darrell Mickasko," Eby told the Georgia Straight as he raised concerns about thousands of incidents of "turnaways" from emergency shelters across the Lower Mainland.

Citing figures compiled by B.C. Housing using data from service providers, Eby said that there were more than 40,000 occasions in the Lower Mainland between April 2007 and January 2008 when people were denied access to shelters.

As the Straight went to press, the Vancouver police board was scheduled on June 18 to take up a request by Eby to place a moratorium on the ticketing by police of homeless people sleeping on sidewalks or putting up makeshift shelters on city-owned property.

In his letter to Mayor Sam Sullivan, chair of the police board, Eby stated that Vancouver accounted for the highest number of turnaways, representing at least 67 percent of recorded denials to shelter in the region.

Sullivan wasn't available for comment. The mayor's spokesperson, David Hurford, told the Straight in a phone interview that the province may have already ameliorated the situation by having a number of shelters operate 24 hours a day starting on April 1 of this year.

Supt. Warren Lemcke of the Vancouver police was scheduled to address Eby's request at the police-board meeting. Lemcke declined to be interviewed without clearance from the VPD public-affairs section. According to a subsequent message from the department, he would only be available for media comment after the board meeting.

Lemcke was appointed by the VPD in its 2008 business plan as the department's "champion" who would take charge of its objective of improving Vancouver's "liveability by reducing street disorder".

"Members will receive training to use existing legislation to specifically combat behaviour and activities that contribute to urban decay, including aggressive panhandling, squeegeeing, graffiti, public fighting, open-air drug markets, unlicensed street vending, the scavenger economy, and sleeping/camping in City parks and other public spaces," the plan states.

The plan seeks to increase the number of charges under the Safe Streets Act and the Trespass Act by 20 percent in 2008 compared with 2007. It also aims for a decline of street-disorder statistics "captured" by the city's business-improvement associations. All of these goals are in support of Sullivan's Project Civil City, which council has also endorsed.

"We would ask that Trespass Act tickets only be issued where individual landowners have made a complaint, and an individual returns to the property after being asked to leave," Eby stated in his letter.

Eby also suggested that the moratorium on ticketing homeless people remain in place "until the City has confirmed that individuals have safe, legal shelter available to them, but choose not to access that shelter".

In a separate letter to B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman, the Pivot lawyer requested an investigation "into the question of whether our shelter system is overwhelmed with the current demands placed on it".

"You may be aware that the recently completed Metro Vancouver homelessness count suggests that there are now over 2,500 homeless people in Metro Vancouver," Eby told Coleman. "We currently have only 1,028 emergency shelter beds serving that population."

A Vancouver resident is also expressing concerns about the way homeless people are being treated in the Downtown Eastside. Margaret Prevost, who has lived in the neighbourhood, related that city signs have been put up all along Hastings Street warning people that they can't put up tents or sleep on sidewalks.

Prevost also cited an account by an unnamed friend that on the morning of June 13, city workers seized the personal belongings, including grocery carts, of homeless people along Hastings Street, and dumped them into a city garbage truck.

"What do you think is coming in 2010?" Prevost asked rhetorically when asked for an explanation of what was happening in the Downtown Eastside. "They're cleaning out our neighbourhood. They're pushing people out. People live here, even though they only live in a grocery cart."

According to Eby, a container van with signs indicating that it belongs to the city's engineering office has recently been parked at the corner of Carrall and East Hastings streets. He related that it is being used by the police to store belongings confiscated from street people, who are also given tickets when they are found selling whatever usable things they have scavenged from Dumpsters.

"It's totally ludicrous. They are homeless; they can't pay for the tickets, and they're [the police are] seizing all their stuff and putting it in this locker," Eby said.