B.C. homeless win court fight over tent cities

VANCOUVER — Homeless people have the right to set up temporary camps in public parks if the community cannot provide enough shelter beds, a B.C. court has ruled.

The B.C. Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling that said banning so-called tent cities from city parks violated a homeless person's constitutional right to security if there is not enough shelter space available.

The ruling comes just as Environment Canada is predicting snow by Friday. The weatherman said Wednesday there is a 40-per-cent chance of snow Friday morning at Vancouver International Airport, with the odds increasing at higher terrain and farther from the ocean.

While Friday's snowfall is expected to be only a trace, a system moving into the Lower Mainland late Saturday afternoon is expected to leave between 15 and 20 centimetres of snow by the end of Sunday.

And it will continue to be cold. Thursday's high is predicted to be 0 C, before the mercury falls to -5 C on Friday.

Saturday and Sunday overnight lows are forecast to hover around zero and highs to struggle to get up to between 2 C and 4 C.

Monday is expected to be cold and dry, but Tuesday could be snowy again as the lows fall back to -5 C and the highs barely creep over zero.

Normal temperatures for Vancouver for this time of year are a high around 6 C and a low of 1 C.

Poverty activists sued the city of Victoria after it shut down a tent city that housed about 70 people in 2005. The activists said sleeping in tents in parks was safer than having to use city sidewalks.

The city's homeless population then was significantly larger than the available shelter space. The city said the ban was to protect the parks.

The appeal court noted Wednesday the homeless did not have an unrestricted right to set up tent cities. It suggested Victoria could resolve the issue by increasing the number of shelter spaces.

aivens@theprovince.com

— with a file from Reuters