What rights for property owners?

By Phil Melnychuk - Maple Ridge News Published: June 02, 2009 2:00 PM

Nancy Cunningham didn’t know what to do when a homeless person started to use her property for a camp site. And while the man has since vacated the premises, she’s still not sure of where her rights end and another’s begins, even when it comes to protecting one’s private property. The man showed up in the middle of last week, set up a tarp and brought in a pile of old clothes, bikes and bicycle parts and made himself at home on at the edge of her one-acre property near Fern Crescent. So she called the RCMP, who came and talked to the man. He promised he’d be gone the next day, but he never left, Cunningham said. She called police the next day who told her they couldn’t send an officer unless the man actually was on the property. She didn’t want to venture over to the campsite to see if it still was occupied. An officer eventually did attend, found the man wasn’t home and told her to call the District of Maple Ridge bylaws department.

It was there she was told, the municipality can’t remove people from private property, only from municipal property. “If he’s on municipal private property, the city can remove him. This is what is so shocking.” So Cunningham came up with another strategy. When the camper was absent on Saturday, Cunningham had a friend come by and clear up the man’s possessions. She told the bylaws department where they were relocated, so the man could retrieve his possessions. “I basically had to take things into my own hands. I didn’t throw the man’s stuff away, I relocated it.”

But property owners do have rights, explained Brock McDonald, bylaws director with the District of Maple Ridge. What they have to do is talk directly to the trespasser and ask him or to leave. That’s usually done with a police officer present, he said. “The request has to come from the property owner.” He said while district bylaw officers can remove people from public property, they can’t evict people trespassing on private property. Nor can police. The request must come from the landowner. “It’s clearly trespassing when that person has not been invited on to the property by you.” McDonald said police usually negotiate with the person to give him or her time to clear off. Ridge Meadows RCMP concur with that method. According to an RCMP spokesman, the owner must tell the trespasser to leave the property in the presence of an officer. “That way the owner has made it very clear the officer is assisting him in having the unwanted person removed from privately owned property.”Police confirmed, anyone who resists an attempt by a homeowner to remove a trespasser is considered to have committed assault by trespass.

According to the Criminal Code, Sec. 41.(1) “Every one who is in peaceable possession of a dwelling-house or real property, and everyone lawfully assisting him or acting under his authority, is justified in using force to prevent any person from trespassing on the dwelling-house or real property, or to remove a trespasser therefrom, if he uses no more force than is necessary.”