For Immediate Release
August 18 2020

BREAKING: HOMELESS ACTIVISTS OCCUPY SURREY MODULAR HOUSING BEING DEMOLISHED FOR CONDOS

UNCEDED KWANTLEN, KATZIE, KWIKWETLEM, QAYQAYT TERRITORY (SURREY): Homeless activists and their supporters have occupied Nickerson Place modular housing, known as the “TD mods” to the local street community. They are protesting its closure and redevelopment as luxury condos and demanding that permanent, low-income housing be built to end the homelessness crisis. They are dubbing their action the “TD Takeover.”

The TD mods are closing this week, with remaining residents and those who are currently homeless demanding permanent housing for themselves and all 1,000 unhoused people on the streets of Surrey.

TD mods resident and activist Kristina Freberg said, “The closure of the TD mods is another round of displacement. They’re uprooting us and shoving us around. We need permanent housing, for the people who were living on the 135a Strip who never got housing, the people in the mods who haven’t got housing, and everyone else.”

Facing the double crises of COVID-19 and homelessness, residents, supporters, and fellow street community members of Whalley refuse to quietly watch the City, BC Housing, Lookout Society (the housing operator of the modular units), and Bosa Properties work together to decrease the available low-income housing stock and displace homeless people back into the streets – or just as dangerous, the unaffordable, insecure private housing market.

The occupiers of the TD Takeover have barricaded themselves inside the modular housing building and are refusing to leave until their demands are met.The destruction of low-income housing, the development of luxury condos, and the impending lifting of the Province’s selective moratorium on evictions will only worsen a homeless crisis that COVID-19 exacerbates. The TD Takeover declaration demands:

  1. Protect all low-income housing! Stop the closure of the TD mods and all temporary modular housing, no demolitions, zero losses of low income housing while our people are stuck out on the street.
  2. Stop all evictions! Cancel all backlogged COVID-evictions and all modular housing evictions now.
  3. Abolish “supportive” housing! BC’s supportive housing system treats all Indigenous and working class people who can’t pay market rents as patients or criminals, rather than tenants.
  4. Abolish the police! Stop all street sweeps and hands off tent cities.