“The Trailer Park Clearances: Police, Panic, and the State Production of Homelessness”

Jeff Shantz

Policing produces homelessness. An overlooked aspect of homelessness in Metro Vancouver has been the closure of trailer parks (manufactured home parks) and evictions of their residents in Surrey. In the last few years, at least 5 trailer parks have been evicted on King George Boulevard between Whalley and Newton alone—hundreds of people made homeless. Police and bylaw enforcement have propelled these closures and evictions—demonizing and criminalizing residents (for drug use, sex work, etc.), imposing fines to create the grounds for eviction.

Police and bylaw start by harassing people living in the parks, and also harassing some of the park owners. The issues used are staples of police stigmatization and criminalization—they say “well there’s drug trade happening in that park” or “there’s sex work happening in that park” or “sex workers are living in the park.” They use those excuses to ticket people who are then faced with eviction. Owners are pushed to close the parks. The result is gentrification as the former parks become development sites for higher end condos and town houses that the evicted cannot afford to move into.

Ahead of the eviction of the Town and Country RV Park on King George Boulevard Jas Rehal, manager of bylaw and licensing in Surrey, was open about the targeting of residents for activities like drug use and sex work. He stated: “The primary concern is … the hotbed of crime that’s happening in that trailer park, illegal activity and the complete refusal to work with us. Rehal named that so-called “criminal activity as a “combination of drugs and prostitution.” He also said the RV park repeatedly stands in violation of a number of bylaws and fire codes, and hosts “a lot of junk on the property they refuse to clean up.”

According to Cpl. Scotty Schuman of the RCMP, police have identified the property as a “high-risk location.”

In his view, “That’s somewhere where public safety is constantly an issue,” adding that drug-trafficking—allegedly involving methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana is a problem for the cops and that “several warrants” were executed at the property over the course of year. That simply confirms that the RCMP have repeatedly targeted the park

Adds Rehal: “We cannot support keeping this business operating—it’s causing too much of a negative situation in the neighbourhood. The owner is not doing what the owner needs to do to make it safe…we were left with no other option.” But closing the parks does not hurt the owners who sell the lands.

The people who really have no other option are the residents who have been evicted. This is policing created homelessness. It is another example of police serving the interests of businesses and developers, not the public safety of poor, working class people.

The police and bylaw work to evict people from lower cost housing that is then gentrified making huge profits for developers, landowners, and even the former park owners who make millions on the sales. And police and bylaw can use the “work” they have done against the parks to justify a need for increased budgets. The only ones who lose out are the residents. Even those who are “re-housed” lose their connection to home, community, friends, and lose their autonomy and independence.