Work crews spent Friday removing debris from Victoria’s former tent city even as one camper refused to leave the courthouse grounds.

All the residents had vacated the property early in the morning, prompting the provincial government to announce that the camp was closed.

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But officials later allowed two women to return to pack up their possessions. One of the women, Chrissy Brett, then told reporters that she would refuse to leave as a form of protest against government policies dealing with homelessness and poverty.

“At this time, I don’t foresee any other way to try and force the government to live up to its own words and its own promises,” she said.

Brett, who lived at the camp part-time for the past eight months and served as a spokesperson for residents, acknowledged that she has a home. “But there’s still people that are dying on the street,” she said.

Brett later decided to end her protest in “a peaceful and respectful manner” and left the site.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson ordered the camp vacated by last Monday, but the provincial government gave residents a few extra days to depart in order avoid confrontation. Many of them moved into new government housing in a former care home on Johnson Street.

“It took a couple of days longer than I hoped,” Housing Minister Rich Coleman said Friday. “But it was important to take the time to do it right and I wanted obviously to do it peacefully without confrontation.”

Coleman said the government will now focus on remediating the site.

“There will be equipment moved in there,” he said. “We will make sure that we don’t have any soil contamination.”

The government has said that the clean-up could cost up to $350,000.

Coleman said a bulldozer is set to arrive Monday to begin re-landscaping the property. “We’re going to look at what we can do with this to make sure that the site becomes a credit to the neighbourhood that has had to put up with this situation.”

Don Allen, who manages an apartment building across the street, said he hopes the government considers putting a children’s playground on the property. “There’s one reason you can’t set up tents,” he said.

Allen said the tent city was a “living hell.” Six of his tenants left because of noise and negative interactions with tent city residents.

“They were always scared, because they got harassed every day,” he said of the tenants.

Allen said there has been a dramatic improvement since campers began to vacate in recent weeks.

“This last two or three weeks we’ve had no clean-ups, no syringes around the building, no feces, nothing to clean up. It makes a big difference right off the bat.”

Coleman said more than 300 people have been housed since the tent city emerged last fall. The government purchased Central Care Home for $13.5 million on Johnson Street, Mount Edwards Court Care Home on Vancouver Street for $3.9 million and Super 8 hotel on Douglas Street for $6.5 million. It also set up shelters at the former Boys and Girls Club on Yates Street and the former youth custody centre in View Royal at a cost of more than $1.3 million.

lkines@timescolonist.com