Maurice Bridge
Sun
VANCOUVER – Nearly three dozen single occupancy rooms are soon expected to come back on the market in the Downtown Eastside following a tentative deal reached over the weekend between a group of developers and a non-profit property management company.
The units are vacant and awaiting renovations in the 46-unit Carl Rooms building at 575 East Hastings. Only 11 people remain in the building.
David Eby of Pivot Legal Society, an advocacy group which assists residents of the area and brokered the deal between the owners and Atira Property Management, said the model is a good one. He said Monday it could be applied to similar single room occupancy buildings to help preserve the shrinking supply of housing for those at the lower end of the economic scale.
“I think there’s a lot of potential for other people who have bought these [kinds of] buildings and want to hold them for investment purposes, but want to keep them running and recognize the responsibility to keep the people in the building, ” Eby said in an interview Monday. “They’re very difficult buildings to run, theses SROs.” He said the issue came to a head recently when Pivot began representing one of the remaining tenants, who had been given an eviction notice. Pivot decided to take the matter to arbitration and soon received a call from the building’s owners, 0773477 B.C. Ltd.
Wendy Pedersen of the Carnegie Community Action Project called the tentative deal “a small victory” in the city’s larger battle against homelessness.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007