Renters, politicians cry foul over outreach offices

Renters, politicians cry foul over outreach offices

Posted By: Jackie Wong

03/26/2009 12:00 AM

Christine Ackermann & Sharon Isaak of Renters at Risk, photo: Doug Shanks

For the second time in five months, the provincial government announced the opening of two new Residential Tenancy Branch outreach offices in Vancouver’s downtown, one at 518 Richards Street and another at 390 Main Street. Openings of the same offices were first announced days before the October 29 provincial by-election last year. According to a March 18 media release issued by the B.C. Ministry of Housing and Social Development, the Richards Street office – located in a single-room-occupancy hotel, where it shares office space with BC Housing – will be open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.; the Main Street office, which occupies free space provided by the City of Vancouver, will be open weekday afternoons. The only other Residential Tenancy Branch in the Lower Mainland is located in Burnaby, at 5021 Kingsway Street.

In addition to their unusually limited business hours, the actual functionality of the new Residential Tenancy Offices (RTOs) remains a mystery to those who have tried to access its services, including Sharon Isaak, co-founder of West End-based tenant advocacy group Renters at Risk. “The one on Richards really has no signage, and doesn’t appear to be a functioning government office,” she says, having attempted to visit the office in the past week to inquire about an eviction. “It looks like there should be somebody there, but nobody ever answers [the door].”

Christine Ackermann, who fought an eviction from her West End apartment building last May and has since been an active volunteer with Renters at Risk, encountered similar problems with the new offices. “There’s no activity, there’s no office, there’s no signs, nobody there can tell us anything about it,” she says. “This announcement does nothing to protect B.C. renters, and it’s not even a promise that’s been fulfilled. I invite [B.C. Housing Minister] Rich Coleman to meet us down at that office and show us what [we clearly] must be in error about, if he [has made] an announcement that it’s open.”

Renters demand changes to BC’s Residential Tenancy Act

HOUSING / ‘Our landlords are the new Hollyburn’: Seafield resident
Source: XTra West
Shauna Lewis / Vancouver / Thursday, March 26, 2009

Residents of the Seafield Apartment Building, Photo: Shauna Lewis

West End renters living under the shadow of threatened evictions are calling for revisions to BC’s Residential Tenancy Act (RTA).

“They’re basically destroying community if they continue to do this,” says longtime tenant Andrew Simmons, pointing to the companies behind many of the eviction notices.

“If companies like Hollyburn Properties and Gordon Nelson Investments continue to purchase more and more buildings then they are forcing out those people that are on the margins – they are forcing out young gay people.

“It’s only going to be changed through legislation,” Simmons says.

The RTA currently allows property owners to raise rents above the 3.7 percent allowable annual hike if they can demonstrate that the increase will put the units on par with the area’s market value.

The Act also allows property owners to kick tenants out if they can prove that major renovations are needed on the units.

Both sections of the Act need to be changed, renters say.

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.”

Breaking news: Seafield hearing complete & Golden Gate eviction avoided

Brian Broster at the Seafield Apartments, photo-Dan Toulgoet

March 11, RTB Tenant Updates:

The Seafield Apartments tenants group had their hearing at the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) today. Their landlord/owners, Gordon Nelson Investments, applied to the RTB for a geographic market rent increase up to 73% for all 14 tenants in the building.

Brian Broster reports from the tenants group that the 2 1/2 hour hearing went well. The tenants now must wait up to 30 days for the written Decision to be released by the RTB.

Stay strong Seafielders!

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Stephanie Hunter also reported to Renters At Risk today about her RTB hearing to quash her eviction notice. You’ll remember Stephanie’s case at the Golden Gate Apartments on Comox Street where the elevator service was discontinued for 3 months. After a tenant won damages against the landlord for this lack of service, Stephanie Hunter and her roomate decided to apply to the RTB for compensation. But the landlord disputed that Stephanie was not on the original lease agreement and therefore evicted her. Today the Dispute Resolution Officer set aside the eviction notice and ordered the landlord to name Stephanie on the lease, in accordance with RTA sec. 13(f)(iv).

The second part of Stephanie’s hearing, the tenants claim for compensation due to the lack of elevator service, was adjourned to a later date.

Well done & congratulations Stephanie! You can rest easy tonight knowing your home is still your home.

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