With just three tents left in the Olympic Tent City on Thursday afternoon, and more than 60 homeless people from the village now housed, the occupation of the Concord Pacific lot on West Hastings has been a resounding success.

Organized by a number of community groups, the tent city began on February 15th as a way to raise awareness about homelessness during the Olympics. Roughly 100 people lived in the village during the Games. The site, slated to become a condominium project, has been the source of a prolonged battle between Downtown Eastside activists and the developer.

After tent city organizers briefly occupied BC Housing offices and, coincidentally, right at the end of the Games, BC managed to find housing in provincially-owned SROs for about 40 homeless people from the village. Having gotten housing for its residents (and presumably because the Games were now over) organizers decided to disband the village.

The activists say the sudden availability of housing showed that the tent city's public pressure worked by forcing the government to act. However, BC Housing insists that the tent city had no impact and suggests that had each homeless person simply applied for housing individually, they still would have been housed.

Not likely.

Look no further to what happened after the activist groups went home. The organizers might have left, but the homeless stayed on. Without security, food or a bathroom, homeless campers kept up the call for housing.

After the city ordered Concord to remove the squatters, activists stepped in again and managed to find social housing for about 30 of the new campers. They're scrambling to find housing for the last remaining residents.

How is that hundreds of people across Vancouver are concentrated in shelters every night, but don't have BC Housing swooping in and handing out housing, but when the homeless squat on private property in public view, homes suddenly become available almost over night?

As Carnegie Community Action Project organizer Wendy Pederson told 24 Hours, “Tent villages work”.

She's right.

The activists brilliantly pushed the provincial government into a corner. Evicting a group of homeless people occupying the site of a future condominium project in the heart of the Downtown Eastside would have made for some bad optics. Likewsie, not evicting the squatters would continue to bring more attention to this city's housing crisis.

Pederson has promised further tent cities when the HEAT shelter shut down at the end of April, pushing about 500 people from the shelters onto the streets. Embarrassing the provincial government with tent cities seems to be the only way to get it to act.

(Photo by Jay Black)