During heat wave, Vancouver park rangers confiscate coolers from legal encampment

Vancouver park rangers confiscated food and drink coolers out of a harbourside encampment for unhoused people, as residents baked under a heatwave.

The incident occurred on July 9, as temperatures across British Columbia soared. Nearly 40 communities posted new daily temperature records, and Environment and Climate Change Canada issued heat warnings across the province. Vancouver temperatures were in the low 30s, but felt like high 30s with humidity.

Videos posted on social media Tuesday show a group of park rangers reaching into a tent at CRAB Park, grabbing coolers, and walking away while being questioned by an individual off-camera.

“Do you guys want to leave the cooler during a heat wave?,” asks one unidentified witness in the video, who is ignored by the park rangers.

“Can you put the cooler in the donation tent so maybe somebody can claim it later because of the heat wave? Can I take it and give it to somebody because it’s a heat wave?,” the individual asks in a separate video.

Confiscating coolers from unhoused people during a heat wave appears to contradict recommendations provided to the British Columbia government by the Coroners Service following the 2021 heat dome that killed 691 people. Protecting vulnerable people, including the elderly and unhoused, was one of the top recommendations, with experts suggesting that governments provide at-risk communities with ways to cool down.

“Universal safety measures and warnings are required for all British Columbians when an extreme heat event is occurring, but vulnerable populations will require additional interventions, support and assistance,” reads the report to the Chief Coroner of British Columbia, published in June 2022.

According to the Union Gospel Mission, which operates in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, there are several compounding factors that impose steep health costs on people living in the neighbourhood when heatwaves hit. The Downtown Eastside has the lowest tree canopy coverage in the city making temperatures hotter than they would be in the shade. Many residents in the area also have underlying health issues, including mental health and substance use, which increases those individuals' vulnerability to extreme heat.

Home to dozens of unhoused people, CRAB Park sits on Vancouver’s harbour, near the Downtown Eastside and Gastown neighbourhoods. An advocate for the encampment with the group Stop the Sweeps said in a statement to Canada’s National Observer that since April, the Vancouver Parks Board “has been systematically intensifying enforcement of the bylaws and guidelines that govern the CRAB Park encampment.”

The new bylaws give park rangers the ability to remove tents that aren’t consistently occupied, and also ban insulation, fencing, plywood and pallets.

In the past few months, “park rangers began more intense daily enforcement of the parks bylaw, which had recently been updated to include stricter regulations about what an unhoused person’s shelter can look like, and where and when it can be set up, investigated, opened, damaged, confiscated, or destroyed,” Stop the Sweeps said. “Many possessions have been stolen by park rangers during the enforcement of these bylaws, without any reasoning why these items were not allowed.”

According to advocates, confiscations in the encampment are a near-daily occurrence. Despite humidity making it feel like the temperature was in the high 30s, July 9 was one of those days.

“Rangers approached a tent and opened the fly, revealing the resident’s belongings stored underneath it, including the two coolers. The resident was not home,” according to Stop the Sweeps. “Rangers immediately began confiscating the items, giving only a verbal explanation that the belongings were ‘outside of the 10x10 area.’

“Numerous other personal items, including clothes, baskets, a bike, and bags of unidentified belongings were also taken.”

The Vancouver Park Board did not return a request for comment before publication.