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A front-line support worker helping people with addictions on the Downtown Eastside has herself been evicted from her Coquitlam home after the landlord feared she would contaminate him with COVID-19.
That’s according to the tenant, Katherine G., who spoke with The Tri-City News on condition that her last name be withheld.
The dispute started ramping up in late March, when Katherine says her landlord — allegedly a former paramedic himself — began to tape off sections of their shared residence, including the washer and dryer.
“At work, people are overdosing on the floor,” she said. “I need to kneel on the ground and work on somebody. I’m exposed to blood, faeces, urine, insects — things and live on people. All of a sudden, I can no longer do laundry.”
And while Katherine and her fellow support workers are encouraged to put on hazmat suits, especially since the outbreak of COVID-19, that’s not always practical. So she usually cycles through a few pairs of cargo pants — clothing that allows her to store the pens and packs of cigarettes she uses to diffuse tense or awkward situations with a client. On top of that goes a removable med-kit containing a full complement of Narcan.
“If you have someone who is not breathing anymore, what’s your first reaction? Would you go put on a gown? If they are dying, I’m going to do my job,” Katherine said.
Before the outbreak of COVID-19, Katherine worked between two safe consumption sites — one in Surrey and the DTES’s Powell Street Getaway — where people go to use drugs safely, see a nurse, get some food, or even just use the bathroom.
Besides making sure people have access points to things like housing, Katherine’s job means talking to people about getting clean, de-escalating violent situations, and stabilizing or reversing overdoses before paramedics arrive.
On Tuesday, B.C. marked its fourth anniversary since it first declared a public health emergency around the opioid epidemic.
“We’re not letting this crisis overtake the response for the overdose crisis here,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry at a press conference April 14.
But since COVID-19 hit B.C., past assumptions about how to operate and help people struggling with opioid addiction have changed.
“I can understand people’s fear. We’ve had people taken away in ambulance with signs of COVID,” she said.
But at the same time, support workers on the DTES are used to working with people who have tuberculosis, HIV and other respiratory or blood-borne pathogens.
Considering all the precautions in place, Katherine said, “It’s not a factual fear.”
Like your neighbourhood grocery store, measures have been rolled out to minimize the transmission of the virus: only a few drug users are let into safe consumption sites at a time, they are spaced out inside, and are prevented from lingering.
“If someone’s not breathing, we can’t provide breaths to them anymore,” said Katherine. “We just call 911 and keep stabbing them with Narcan.”
All of those precautions were not enough to alleviate the worries of her landlord, alleged the support worker.
“He said that he was going to spontaneously reconsider my living [there] if I didn’t disclose COVID symptoms,” Katherine said, adding that while she never exhibited symptoms, over the next few days the situation escalated.
When she returned home on April 10, she found the owner had broken into her room and was packing up her belongings with the help of two neighbours, said Katherine.
That’s when she called the Coquitlam RCMP.
“They came in and arrested him for breaking into my room and removing things,” she said.
On March 25, as B.C.’s economy spiralled into unemployment, the province had introduced a temporary rental supplement, halted evictions and froze rents, among other actions. But those measures only apply to tenants whose living situation falls under the Residential Tenancy Act.
In an email to The Tri-City News, a spokesperson for the office of Minister Selina Robinson, who's responsible for municipal affairs and housing, said they were aware of Katherine’s case, but have their hands tied.
“The Residential Tenancy Act does not cover renters who share a washroom and/or kitchen with their landlord, and the Residential Tenancy Branch does not have the ability to intervene in these cases,” wrote a spokesperson for the ministry. “Renters in that situation can seek resolution through the B.C. Civil Resolution Tribunal.”
So when Coquitlam RCMP officers called in a supervisor to sort out what was legal and what was not, the landlord was found to be acting within his rights and the officers escorted Katherine off the property.
“Police have been awesome, very supportive, but they have to follow the law,” she said.
Katherine said she walked out of the building with a backpack filled with some clothes, her laptop, Narcan kit and a picture of her daughter.
Without a place to live, she checked in at a hotel in Burnaby, taking an extra few days off to study for upcoming exams at the B.C. Justice Institute where she’s a student.
In that time, Katherine has been in touch with the offices of three local MLAs, including Minister Robinson, Coquitlam-Burke Mountain MLA Joan Issacs, and Minister of Public Safety and the Solicitor General’s Office Mike Farnworth.
Following their advice, as well as that of the BC Government and Service Employees’ Union, Katherine launched an expedited complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
“I’ve asked for policy changes in the Human Rights Tribunal. I’ve pushed for mediation. A public apology,” she said.
“The government needs to change its policy and legislation to protect everybody — especially those who are still working right now.”
But by Tuesday, she said she had spent the last of her paycheque on the hotel, and Wednesday morning, April 15, she found herself homeless the same day she started her exams and went back to work.
Some acquaintances have offered her a place to stay, including a room in Langley and a couch in New Westminster. But neither option was feasible: Langley is too far without a car and self-isolation is impossible without your own room.
"My clients are bringing me chocolate [but] it’s kind of depressing when the person helping you goes back to the street,” Katherine said.
The worst part, said Katherine, is telling people who can’t yet understand the intricacies of legislation.
“I haven’t been able to tell my eight-year-old daughter. I want her to believe people are good people.”
Read more of our COVID-19 coverage here.
