Vancouver Park Board rejects motion to shut down community warming centres

The Vancouver Park Board has rejected a motion to suspend its warming centre operations in community centres.

The motion was defeated in a tie vote Thursday night at a special meeting held to address issues surrounding health and safety conditions in the centres.

The concerns follow an alleged incident at the Creekside Community Centre, where a child picked up a needle. 

The warming centre at Creekside closed shortly after that, although the city said the closure of the centre was unrelated to the incident.

NPA Park Board commissioner Sarah Kirby-Yung put forward the original motion, saying that community centre staff are not equipped to deal with situations that arise when the homeless use the facilities overnight.

"Our staff are rec specialists, they're not social workers … and really feeling scared, worried and not able to deal with some of the situations they encountered," she said.

Homeless advocates say they understand concerns around drug use and staff being overworked, but that shouldn't mean homeless people are left out in the cold.

"Shutting down the the shelters on the presumption that you cannot have a homeless person safely access a community centre … is making a decision based on prejudice and stereotyping," said DJ Larkin with Pivot Legal Society.

Other warming centres still open

The City of Vancouver first opened warming centres in mid-December during Vancouver's prolonged cold snap.

Since then, as many as 2,000 people have used the shelters on nights where temperatures plunged well below zero. 

The meeting also called for further resources from the city, should the decision be made again to turn community centres run by the Park Board into warming shelters.

There are currently three warming centres run by the City of Vancouver at the Quality Inn, Carnegie Community Centre and the Evelyne Saller Centre.

The warming centre at the Britannia Community Centre has remained open since it started, as its operations are run by its own board.

Warming centres supported by public, board chair says

Michael Wiebe, chair of the park board, voted against Kirby-Yung's motion, but said he appreciated the chance it gave residents to voice support for the warming centres.

"I had 350-plus emails sent to me [Thursday]," Wiebe said. "I would say 99 per cent were talking about how they want to support having our community centres used as warming centres."

Wiebe said the decision to reopen any warming centres would be an operational decision made by the general manager.

He said Vancouver's homelessness crisis means the park board is now involved in homelessness policy by necessity as many of the city's homeless take up residence in the city's parks.

"These are the people that we need to take care of," Weibe said. "People have seen the amount of tents in our parks ... and the needles being found at playgrounds. This is something that the park board needs to be involved in now."

With files from Kamil Karamali, Michelle Ghoussoub and CBC Radio One's The Early Edition.