Victoria bylaw officers with the support of police began clearing the encampment in the 900 block of Pandora on Thursday morning.
Campers were told to move along, unattended belongings were impounded, and other debris was loaded into trucks and bins.
Grant McKenzie with the Our Place Society, which serves vulnerable people on the streets, says the operation took them by surprise, "especially because there were so many trucks that pulled up and it was a fairly major sweep. So, it realty kind of caught us off guard and it caught everybody who's currently living on Pandora off guard."
"Bylaw does come by usually several times a week to help clear up the excess garbage… the stuff that's just been kind of abandoned. But this morning it was a much more concentrated effort," says McKenzie.
He says shelters are currently full and the people being displaced don't have anywhere else to go, "everyone who was tenting on Pandora was told they had to move. They weren't told where to go or what to do. Anybody who wasn't around their belongings... those belongings were just seized and taken."
McKenzie suspects the displaced people could end up in parks and business doorways for the time being, before making their way back to Pandora.