Vancouver’s East Hastings Street, the day after the removal of tent encampments

A day after police descended on Hastings Street for the removal of dozens of tents and structures in a Downtown Eastside encampment, they were back Thursday morning.

In a downpour, police set up a barricade between Main and Gore streets, as city staff moved in again to remove more unhoused residents. Sanitation workers power-washed the cleared sidewalks.

By midday, five makeshift structures had returned to the 100-block of Hastings that was cleared Wednesday. Some residents were searching for their possessions.

By 1:30 p.m. Thursday, police had blocked off East Hastings Street between Carrall and Columbia Streets, and sanitation workers brought in four garbage trucks and seven moving vans to clear the few remaining belongings that sat under tarps on the sidewalks.

Scattered on side streets, people huddled under awnings to protect themselves from the rain, many of them alongside the black plastic bins that sanitation workers had filled with their belongings the day before. Others had already set up tents in the area’s alleys.