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.”

 

West End Renters Triumph Against Landlords

NEWS: West End renters triumph against landlords

Source: The Westender
By: Jackie Wong
01/21/2010 12:00 AM

After more than a year of tenant-landlord conflict, residents of the West End’s Seafield apartment building were relieved last week to learn that the rent increases applied for by their landlords were overturned by the B.C. Supreme Court. The January 12 judgement by Supreme Court Justice Linda Loo called the landlords’ application for 15- to 38-per-cent increases in the 78-year-old building “patently unreasonable.”

A B.C. Supreme Court judge declared it “unreasonable” that the landlords of the West End’s Seafield apartment building (pictured) applied to increase rents by up to 38 per cent. Credit: Jackie Wong

Madame Justice Loo ordered the landlords — a brother-in-law duo who own Gordon Nelson Investments, a property management firm that purchased the Seafield in summer 2008 — to refund tenants the difference of the increased rents they had paid since April 2009, the month in which a dispute-resolution officer at the B.C. Residential Tenancy Office (RTO) controversially approved Gordon Nelson’s application for the increases. The landlords argued the increases would bring the Seafield, a 14-unit building located at 1436 Pendrell Street, up to market value.

The Seafield’s close-knit community of long-term tenants banded together to bring the dispute before the Supreme Court in November 2009, in the hope of drawing attention to what they and other tenants’ rights advocates saw as unfair legislation.

Seafield tenants will likely start receiving refunds in the form of deductions on upcoming months’ rents, although this has not been confirmed. But the tenants aren’t sure when or if they’ll be back in court, in the event that their landlords appeal the judgement. Property manager Chris Nelson told WE in an e-mail that he and Gordon Nelson Investments partner Jason Gordon will make a decision within the 30-day time frame allowed for appeal.

A statement on Gordon Nelson’s website says the company is confident that the Seafield rent increases will be restored in a re-hearing or “quite possibly result in a larger market-supported rent increase, as rents in Vancouver and the West End have continued to increase in the face of tough economic times.”

A representative from the B.C. Ministry of Housing and Social Development, who asked not to be named in this article, told WE the ministry is currently reviewing the Supreme Court decision, and that a new hearing will be scheduled in the near future.

The rent-increase issue is the last in a long line of disagreements between Seafield tenants and Gordon Nelson Investments. In fall 2008, WE reported that Seafield tenants felt threatened by Gordon Nelson’s intimations that tenants would be evicted to make way for building renovations. “After only a month of living here, I was being told I was going to get kicked out of my own home,” recalls Seafield tenant Melissa Mewdell. “I had no idea what to do about it. If these guys weren’t around to help me,” she adds, gesturing to her neighbours, who have supported each other through the conflict, “I probably would have left.”

Even though the disputes have resulted in Seafield tenants becoming extremely well versed in residential tenancy procedure, the lack of transparency they’ve experienced at the RTO has been troubling, says Mark Moore, who lives at the Seafield with his family. “You can’t find out how many of these cases there are [at the RTO]. You can’t find out how they were decided. There are no transcripts kept of any hearing. If this is where things are going to be adjudicated… it would at least be nice to know what’s going on here. This is notwithstanding the fact that we never know how many people are evicted who never go to the RTO because they don’t complain.”

Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Herbert has been working with Seafield tenants and other local renters during their lengthy struggles with the province’s residential tenancy system. As part of efforts to resolve what he sees as gaps in B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Act that leave long-term renters vulnerable to unfair rent increases, Herbert brought forward a private member’s bill in November 2008. It has not yet been reviewed in the B.C. Legislature.

“I really hope that Housing Minister Rich Coleman will look at [the Seafield] decision and will look at the evidence, which is piling up, and decide that the Residential Tenancy Act needs to be reformed,” Herbert says. “B.C. renters owe a huge debt of thanks to the Seafielders for their perseverance, but think about the huge number of people out there who don’t have those resources, who don’t have that sense of community to support each other.”

Conference calls no way to settle tenant-landlord disputes

Easy to get that disconnected feeling:
Conference calls no way to settle tenant-landlord disputes

By Jon Ferry, The Province
December 16, 2009

It’s cold, it’s hard to get work and it’s tough to find an affordable place to rent these days, particularly in Metro Vancouver. Which is why the government must do all it can to ensure tenants aren’t being gouged.

When landlord-tenant disputes arise, B.C.’s housing ministry is supposed to resolve them through prompt and fair hearings, not leave either party on hold.

The trouble is, the vast majority of these hearings now are done by telephone conference call. And that, according to Vancouver-West End NDP MLA Spencer Herbert, is causing numerous problems — for seniors, the hard of hearing, those with limited English or those who simply get lost in the phone system.

“In some cases, they have called in at the appointed time, but have never been dialled through to the case, leading to their case being dismissed,” Herbert told me. “In many cases, the people I have spoken with have just given up or accepted rulings that might have been thrown out, had they had a fairer and more even process.”

Some landlords also find the conference calls frustrating. But it’s usually the tenants who come off worse, especially if they’re battling big property owners with seasoned staff.

Vancouver housing advocate Leslie Stern, who’s just been evicted from the False Creek townhome she has lived in for 25 years, says telephone hearings are impersonal and mechanical: “Everything seems biased towards a developer or a landlord who has staff and means.”

And Sharon Isaak, co-founder of the tenants’ rights group Renters at Risk, stresses they can be very confusing. “They say they’re making it streamlined, but it’s not,” she said, adding it’s nearly impossible for tenants who want a face-to-face hearing to get one.

Vernon mom June Ross, though, took on the system and won. Her 2007 application to recover money owed her by her landlord was initially dismissed by a dispute-resolution adjudicator on the grounds she’d failed to show up for the arranged telephone hearing.

That decision was upheld by a second adjudicator, but later dismissed by the B.C. Supreme Court.

The court found Ross had, in fact, followed instructions and had stayed on the line until it simply went dead. Indeed, Justice Joel Groves ordered the dispute to be reheard because the two adjudicators had “breached the rules of natural justice.”

Justice Groves said it was certainly not the first time in his experience that this type of problem had arisen, and he urged the Residential Tenancy Branch to provide a separate line for those experiencing call problems.

The B.C. housing ministry told me it appreciated both the court’s decision and its recommendation regarding hearing procedures. A spokesman said: “We do treat the process seriously.”

Well, if that’s the case, the ministry should make it seriously easier for folks to attend hearings in person — and not just at one Lower Mainland location.

Basic fairness is being compromised here. And tenants, as well as some landlords, are being left out in the cold.

© Copyright (c) The Province

NEWS: Reaching out to senior renters

NEWS: Reaching out to senior renters

Source: Westender 10/15/2009
By: Jackie Wong

Sharon Isaak, co-founders of tenants’ rights group Renters at Risk, says many seniors would sooner move out of their home than deal with the stress of fighting unfair eviction. Credit: Doug Shanks

Since the landmark mass eviction of tenants from the West End’s Bay Towers apartment building three years ago, the advocacy work of local organizations such as Renters at Risk and the West End Residents Association has resulted in stronger public awareness of the precarious housing situation facing renters, who make up 80 per cent of households in the West End. But awareness of the issue hasn’t stopped mass evictions and volatile landlord-tenant relationships from continuing in the neighbourhood.

The stress of finding and keeping affordable rental housing takes a particular toll on seniors, says Sharon Isaak, who co-founded Renters at Risk after taking her Bay Towers eviction notice (issued by the now notorious Hollyburn Properties) to B.C. Supreme Court, where she and other tenants fought for — and won — the right to continue living in their apartments during renovations Hollyburn claimed would necessitate eviction.

“One of the seniors that got thrown out of my building… had been living in the building for years. She was the first one to go,” Isaak recalls. “Watching her move out and move into her daughter’s place in Kamloops was heartbreaking.”

Since her Bay Towers experience in 2006, Isaak has counselled and educated numerous tenants on their rights under B.C.’s tenancy legislation. Seniors, she says, continue to be among the most vulnerable tenants she meets. Fixed incomes and limited resources can put a cap on their ability to advocate for themselves, which often results in their being displaced and moved around, especially when they face an eviction notice that other tenants choose to fight. “The first people to leave are the seniors, because of the stress of the situation,” Isaak says. “They quite often have no other option but to move in with family in another city, another province, and they have to leave everything behind.”

As part of efforts to raise awareness of tenant rights and to address the many affordable-housing concerns facing West End residents, Isaak has started holding weekly outreach sessions at Gordon Neighbourhood House under the title of Senior Housing Outreach Coordinator. The position is the product of a $25,000 United Way Seed grant that partners Gordon Neighbourhood House, the West End Residents Association, Women in Search of Housing Society (WISHS), and the West End Seniors Network. Isaak will be available to assist renters with their tenancy concerns on Thursdays from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

When WE interviewed Isaak on her first day of outreach work last week (October 8), she already had two appointments. “There has been a real increase in evictions over the last three years because of the tight [rental] market, and because other companies are recognizing the opportunity to make significant profits by evicting tenants to do renovations [and then] increase the rent,” she says. “We need to have a review of the [Residential Tenancy] Act on certain issues to stop and solve these problems.”

John Lucas, executive director of the Gordon Neighbourhood House, says he has seen many seniors come through the neighbourhood house in search of advice on disconcerting rumours they hear about the rental buildings in which they live. “A number of seniors are in the position of not knowing exactly what’s going to happen to them,” he says. “A lot of seniors become stressed because they hear rumours about their apartments, [such as that] they’re going to be sold and it’s going to be renovated.”

Moderate- and low-income renters over the age of 40 are a vulnerable population that Leslie Stern, of the Women In Search of Housing Society, has been working with for years. “If we don’t help people at 45 and above to start earning more money and saving money and doing personal planning, they’re going to go into their senior years with even less,” she says. “Landlords don’t want these people anymore, because they don’t have the ability to pay the high rents that they think the market can take. That’s where I think we’re at a crisis in housing.”

In addition to Isaak’s weekly work at Gordon Neighbourhood House, the project, called the West End Seniors Affordable Housing initiative, will host public forums this winter and next spring on tenant rights and affordable-housing concerns. The first forum, called “The Right to Rent: Aging in Place,” happens November 22 at 2 p.m. For more information, contact Sharon Isaak at isaaksharon@gmail.com

When does an RTO office become an “office”?

The new RTO. The March Arch hotel?

Back in October 2008,  during the  run up to the  West End  Provincial By-election,  BC’s Housing Minister Rich Coleman met with Renters At Risk, along with BC Liberal candidate Arthur Griffiths and several tenants about to be evicted for renovations.

In that meeting, a promise was made to improve access to the appeal system  by immediately opening  another RTO office in Downtown Vancouver.  This would mean that tenants in Vancouver would not have to head out to  Burnaby to one of only three  RTO office in the province.   (the Liberals closed all the other Residential Tenancy Offices in the province a few years ago, including one on Thurlow Street that was accessible for thousands of tenants in the  downtown core.  Approximately 85% of West End’s 40,000 citizens were renters at the time the Thurlow office got closed.)

Fast forward to May 2009.  Six months later, is the new Residential Tenancy Office open yet?   Well, yes and no.   Depends on your definition of open.  The news release  from the Government over a month ago says yes.   But  the listed address at 518 Richards Street  is actually the old Marble Arch Hotel, which is now under construction– with no RTO office in sight under the scaffolding.    However, now there is small BC Housing office on the side.  It is very hard to know this  because there is no signage indicating this location as  a BC Housing office.

The front door is unmarked and locked.   You must ring a buzzer and wait for someone to come to the door to let you in.

The RTO behind locked doors.

Up until about a month ago, there was no RTO office at this location.    However,  after a recent story by Jackie Wong in the Westender  (03/26/2009) highlighted the delays in the new RTO launch, there now is a representative from the RTO in the BC Housing office at 520 Richards  to answer rental questions.  It is not  a fully functioning office, as a tenant who went yesterday to file documents  found out the hard way.   This  RTO  “office”  cannot process financial transactions.   Yes, you heard that right, a so-called pro business government office that cannot take money.  The tenant was instructed to head out to Burnaby to file his notice to dispute an eviction. This  exercise  took  a full day off from work  for two people file paperwork about fighting an eviction.  The whole point of opening a downtown office is to provide better access,  not create an extra layer of bureaucracy to wade through.

So, the real question is, will this office become a fully functioning RTO where tenants can file paperwork and go for dispute resolutions,  or is it going to remain a shell office that the BC Liberals can hide behind, using it as a shining example of  “improved”  services for Vancouver renters?

You decide.

On May 12th.