Kelowna or Hastings, decampments are a death sentence

Police Oversight with Evidence and Research (P.O.W.E.R.) and Stop the Sweeps condemn Kelowna OS4 decampment

P.O.W.E.R

Apr 04, 2025

On Apr. 5, 2023, Vancouver Police Department (VPD) officers and City of Vancouver staff de-housed and displaced every person in the Hastings Street tent city in an act of extraordinary state violence that destroyed a community. According to Vancouver Coastal Health internal emails, the event left over 40 people missing, while emergency room visits increased.

We watch in horror as the same tactics are used against people at Kelowna’s ‘Outdoor Sheltering 4’ (OS4) designated sheltering site this week, which has been home to between 60 and 150 people depending on the season.

*Bylaw and police officers surround a resident of OS4 in Kelowna, BC*

P.O.W.E.R. and Stop the Sweeps condemn, in the strongest terms, the coordinated, cruel and life depriving violence that the City of Kelowna and Royal Mounted Canadian Police are using against people in Kelowna.

From Vancouver and Nanaimo to Prince George to Kelowna, displacement has become routine. While housing and homelessness crises persist and worsen across the province, we all enable violence against those most impacted when we allow armed agents of the settler-state to enact it.

The raid on Kelowna OS4 operated at full force between Mar. 26 through April. 2, while continued displacement activities by bylaw and police, including in areas people were displaced to, are ongoing. During the raid, bylaw and police officers created an exclusion zone that barred anyone from entering. Media was denied access, and members of the community who regularly distribute food, clothing, survival gear to the tent city were barred. As shown in witness videos, members of the Knowledging All Nations Developing Unity (KANDU) were denied the ability to enter to provide cultural support for Indigenous Peoples within the tent city as they endured the violence of displacement. The community grieving site was destroyed.

Alarmingly, during the Kelowna raid, people living in OS4 were stamped by bylaw officers (with stamps that featured happy faces and teddy bears), and subsequently only allowed re-entry and access to their homes, survival gear, and belongings if they (still) had a visible stamp.

*Picture #1 of the “happy face” stamps imposed on OS4 residents*

*Picture #2 of the “happy face” stamps imposed on OS4 residents*

Residents were given a “Good Neighbour Agreement” and “OS4 Occupant Rules & Code of Conduct” that assigned spots to significantly fewer people than there were residing at OS4, a transparent tactic that recently led directly to the destruction of Vancouver’s CRAB Park tent city in 2024. The contract disregarded many basic principles to survival while sheltering outdoors, such as strict limitations on survival gear, and restrictions on movement between tents without approval. (Can you imagine if you needed to contact the state and police to visit your neighbour? This clause alone puts people at risk of toxic drug death and other harms.)

Some residents signed these contracts under coercion, prior to receiving access to legal counsel in the middle of a violent de-housement. Others dispersed into the margins – leaving with the risk of disconnection from care and support, and ultimately premature death, just as we have witnessed during and after displacements in Vancouver.

Supporters of the tent city report difficulties in locating approximately 30 people.

We cannot stress enough, people will die in isolation without harm reduction supplies in the middle of a nine-year-long toxic drug crisis. People will die sheltering alone and excluded from community support during the months that still feature extreme weather.

As we approach the two-year anniversary of the Hastings Street decampment, we know these things to be true.

In Vancouver in April 2023, after the nonprofit industry and health authority management colluded with the VPD to displace the Hastings Street tent city, they then abandoned the people who were left without belongings or shelter, and community members had to step in with shoestring budgets to run warming tents and distribute food in attempts to keep people alive. An Extreme Weather Warning had been issued leading up to the date – and the warning was accurate.

After the Apr. 5, 2023 Hasting Street decampment, we lost friends and community members, who were displaced into the margins to keep distance from city workers and VPD officers. Reports came in over the weeks and years, that those friends died alone, without the support and care previously provided by their community. Some survivors still bear injury or trauma from that week of decampment.

Kelowna is condemning the city’s most marginalized residents to this outcome, and must immediately:

Stop the decampment operation immediately, including de-militarizing the sheltering zone and removing the fences that cage people in. Allow all residents to return to OS4 for daytime and nighttime sheltering.
Revoke the cruel and unusual “Good Neighbour Agreement” and “OS4 Occupant Rules & Code of Conduct.”
Adhere to upcoming requests from those living in or recently displaced from encampment about what they need to survive. Nothing about us without us.

We cannot treat the past decade and longer of mass decampments in the Downtown Eastside and across British Columbia as separate from the violent events in Kelowna. These are interconnected cycles of violence – they reflect the accepted, dehumanizing, and normalized politics of this moment – and they will not stop if we do not stop them.

Follow our friends at Unhoused Solidarity Collective Okanagan for calls to action and critical updates.

RESEARCH & REPORTS ON DISPLACEMENT