19 Emerald Terrace Tenants Win 4th Dispute Against Landlord at Residential Tenancy Branch

JANUARY 23, 2010

VANCOUVER – Tenants asserting persecution and intimidation by their landlord, Hollyburn Properties Limited, have been vindicated with their most recent win at the Residential Tenancy Branch.

Emerald Terrace Residents Speak Out At Press Conference Today

Emerald Terrace is the rental building where Hollyburn has employed numerous tactics in order to circumvent a BC Supreme Court ruling preventing them from evicting tenants for cosmetic renovations. Tactics include providing misinformation to tenants through “Resident Opinion Polls” in an effort to scare them out of the building and bogus letters stating their tenancies would end. Hollyburn also tried to evict 83-year old Lynn Stevens, a 40 year tenant battling cancer, because they claimed they needed her suite for a resident manager. Hollyburn’s attempt to evict 10 pet owners in 2009 was also thwarted when those tenants filed for dispute resolution at the RTB and had the evictions set aside.

Excerpts from Dispute Resolution Officer K. Millar’s decision:

“I find that the landlord deliberately misinformed the tenants regarding the impact of the plumbing re-pipe.”

I find that the misinformation above had that effect on the tenants and that as a result they were deprived of the right to live in an environment free from intimidation.”

“While to a non-resident the Opinion Poll can be taken to show the landlord’s commitment to upgrade the building which presumably would benefit the tenants, I accept that for the residents of the building it assumed a more sinister air.”

“Emerald Terrace is the tip of the iceberg” explains resident Cynthia Holmes. “These tactics have been exposed only because the tenants in this building had the wherewithal to fight. There is something wrong with the system and the legislation when landlord accountability is entirely dependent on tenant action.”

“Although the amount awarded really does not adequately compensate us for our troubles, I am happy that the decision is in our favour” says 82-year old tenant Les McBride. “My wife Olwen passed away and I believe the stress and anxiety caused by Hollyburn had a significant impact on her health during her final days.”

 

It’s happening in your community!

Hollyburn vs gay man, round two

Hollyburn vs gay man, round two: After winning last year, Simmons gets new eviction notice

By Shauna Lewis / X-Tra West/ Vancouver / Monday, May 10, 2010

A gay man and an elderly woman with ovarian cancer are the latest targets in a wave of evictions still affecting Vancouver’s West End.

The tenants have filed for arbitration against Hollyburn Properties but say they’re concerned about the area’s diversity and history if these evictions continue.

“Young gay people gravitate toward the West End because they see it as their community,” says recently evicted Emerald Terrace resident Andrew Simmons.

Simmons, who is gay and has lived at 2045 Nelson St for eight years, says he has been given notice to vacate his apartment because the landlords want to rent it to an on-site manager.

Simmons alleges there are at least seven other vacant suites that can be used for that purpose.

This is the second time Simmons has been targeted for eviction. Last year, Hollyburn attempted to turf him and several other tenants in the building for owning pets. The tenants sought arbitration and won.

Simmons is not surprised he is being targeted again.

“I’m being targeted because I was the ringleader fighting the pet eviction last time,” he alleges.

Simmons says he and his neighbours recently received word that Hollyburn was planning to renovate their building.

When he sought more information, he says Hollyburn was not forthcoming. So he filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau on April 29.

He received his eviction notice later that day.

“It looks like retaliation,” Simmons says.

“This is ruining our lives,” says 82-year-old Lynn Stevens. “I just got the eviction notice and I’ve just been in shock.”

Stevens was told she must leave her home of 41 years because Hollyburn plans to rent her apartment to a building manager as well.

That’s just an excuse, she alleges. “Really [the eviction] is because I’m paying the lowest rent.”

Stevens says she was presented with a notice to evict April 27 and now has until the end of June to leave her home.

“It makes absolutely no sense to evict someone for the use of their suite when there are suites available,” says Christine Ackerman of the West End Renters Association. “It’s a pure and simple money grab.”

Hollyburn’s website is currently advertising one-bedroom suites for $1,200 and two bedrooms for $2,200.

Xtra‘s calls to Hollyburn were not returned prior to pres time.

But Hollyburn’s general manager, Allan Wasel, told the Vancouver Sun it was “purely a business decision.”

“It made the most sense to put our new resident manager and resident managers in training in the suites that rent for the lowest price,” he said.

According to the Sun, Wasel also said the tenants had requested “on-site management support” and that other units were unavailable because they’re being upgraded.

NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert says the latest evictions solidify the need for Liberal legislative reform.

“This [newest fight] ensures that we continue the fight for change in the Residential Tenancy Act,” says Chandra Herbert, who represents Vancouver-West End.

He says he plans to look at legislation to see if there are private members’ bills that could counteract evicting a tenant from a specific suite when there are other available suites in the building.

The West End is in jeopardy if the laws remain unbalanced, he adds.

“It’s the people that make it [the West End] so great, and it’s the history – specifically a queer history – which continues to make it such a fabulous place for the GLBT community to live,” he says. “So we want to keep it that way.”

The Residential Tenancy Branch has scheduled an arbitration hearing for the Emerald Terrace tenants on June 23.

The fight for apartment life

Current tenants of the West End apartment buildings Emerald Terrace, Seafield, and the Berkeley: Despite a volatile climate in the rental market, they’re staying put — for now. Photo: Doug Shanks

NEWS: The fight for apartment life

by Jackie Wong

03/19/2009

Vancouver apartment dwellers may have come to the conclusion that fighting an eviction at the region’s Residential Tenancy Office (RTO) is more or less a rite of passage for renters nowadays, given the increasing number of tenancy disputes across the city. Many of them have been attributed to low vacancy rates, rising rents, and landlords who try to exploit an already fragile market.

But the task of banding together with neighbours and bringing a dispute to the RTO is a time-consuming and mentally exhausting process. As a result, many tenants, such as Daryn Didyk, become frustrated and move out rather than deal with the stress of putting up a fight.

“We can’t put our lives on hold for this,” Didyk says. “It seems that the longer [our landlords]… just leave us hanging here, we’re forced to move out, because the psychological trauma of not knowing if you’re going to get an eviction notice reaches a breaking point.”

Didyk, a 27-year-old health-care administrator, has been renting a one-bedroom apartment at the Berkeley, a three-storey walk-up at 990 Bute Street, for five years. The 36-suite building, near Nelson Park in the West End, was built in 1926. Dr. Satnam Singh Gandham, a Richmond-based physician, took ownership of the building in June 2008. Since then, tenants have learned of his plans to convert one-bedroom suites into two-bedroom suites, and bachelor suites into one-bedrooms. Gandham was on vacation as WE went to press, but Berkeley tenants say eviction notices seem inevitable. Didyk is among the tenants of eight separate suites who are moving out by the end of March; his neighbours have started moving out at a steady pace over the last month. By April, only 16 of the 36 suites will be occupied.

“Your housing is your stability. Look what happens when people don’t have housing – you [have] the Downtown Eastside,” says Didyk. “According to the World Health Organization, defining determinants of health include stable housing. If I go on any longer trying to fight this, it affects my mental health, my physical health.”

Residents given reprieve from rental cat-nundrum

By STEFANIA SECCIA, 24 HOURS

Sharon Isaak - Co-founder Renters At Risk

A west-end group of residents and their cats can breath a sigh of relief after B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Branch blocked the evictions that would have forced them – and their furry friends – out.

The group of cat-owners had verbal permission to keep pets, but last December Hollyburn Properties tried to evict them because of it, said Spencer Herbert, NDP MLA, yesterday.

“This should’ve never happened,” said Herbert outside the west-end apartment building Emerald Terrace.

Mary Milligan, a resident for three years and owner of one cat, said, “You can’t believe the relief I feel.”

Sharon Isaak from the Renters at Risk Campaign (RRC) said Hollyburn was aware of these pets a year ago when it bought the building, but used the excuse now to get long-term residents out in an effort to increase the rent.

“[Hollyburn needs] to be accountable for this,” she said. “Enough is enough.”

But Allan Wesley, Hollyburn general manager, said RRC is putting a spin on it.

“We will continue to consider our residents’ well-being in all policies, including our policy requiring that all residents must have written authorization to have a pet in their unit,” he wrote in a statement.

Source:24 Hours Vancouver