BC Civil Liberties Association challenges Vancouver’s daytime shelter ban

The BC Civil Liberties Association says it has filed a lawsuit against the City of Vancouver to challenge the municipality’s daytime ban on outdoor sheltering, calling it “cruel, dehumanizing and deadly.”

It says in a news release that the lawsuit was filed alongside three individual plaintiffs and claims the ban violates sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The association says it is challenging three city bylaws that “make it illegal for unhoused people to shelter outdoors during daytime hours” saying such a ban puts people’s health and safety at risk.

It says the city engages in daily sweeps to enforce the ban, destroying encampments and seizing their tents and other personal items, which it claims violates the Charter section that protects people against cruel treatment by the state.

The city says on its website people without housing are allowed to set up temporary shelters in parks from dusk to dawn, but they must be removed at sunrise “to make parks available to support the health and well-being of the whole community.”

In a statement, the city says it is unable to comment on matters before the courts, but confirmed staff will review the legal documentation once it is received.

The liberties association says it is “impossible” for those with physical or mental disabilities to set up and take down their shelter daily and then carry it throughout the day.

It says women and gender-diverse people also become more vulnerable to “dangers like gender-based violence” when subjected to the daytime sheltering ban, which it argues violates equality rights.

“When it comes to housing in this city, the government is failing all of us, but no one feels this failure more than people who are unhoused,” the association says in the release.