Robert Wilson makes $10m profit on sales in less than two years
Susan Lazaruk
Province
Premier Gordon Campbell (centre), along with the minister responsible for housing, Rich Coleman, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan (right) and Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu (left), announce yesterday that B.C. is buying six single-occupancy hotels to reduce homelessness in the Downtown Eastside. Photograph by : Jon Murray, The Province
Five of six downtown Vancouver hotels bought by the B.C. government for low-rental housing were bought from one man, developer Robert Wilson, who made a profit of $10 million on the sales in less than two years.
The sixth earned B.C. Housing $1.4 million when it flipped the property after six weeks.
Wilson, who owns Archer Realty and Georgia Laine Developments, bought the five hotels over 10 months beginning in May 2006 for a total of about $11 million. He sold them for more than $21 million.
His biggest profit was on the Arco Hotel at 81 Pender St. He bought the 63-unit, single-room-occupancy hotel in March 2007 for $2.8 million and sold it to the government for $6.9 million. It was assessed this year at $2.6 million.
The Marr Hotel was bought on Jan. 3, 2008, for $900,000 by the Provincial Rental Housing Corp., a land holding company administered by B.C. Housing. It has now sold the Marr, shut down in 2004 after an undercover sting targeting stolen goods, for $2.3 million.
The Marr was bought from an unidentified buyer who purchased it in 2005 for $300,000.
“I can’t imagine what the purpose of such a sale structure would be,” said NDP Opposition housing critic David Chudnovsky. “This looks pretty fishy to me.”
The purchase of the six hotels means the total 330 units will remain as single-room-occupancy hotels for the homeless and hard-to-house. Chudnovsky praised the purchases because they protect single-room-occupancy units, which range from 120 to 250 square feet and typically rent for $325 a month.
But he said the government’s mandate is to help in a cost-effective way. “This doesn’t look very cost-effective to me,” he said.
He said the government is failing to implement a policy that protects affordable housing. “It’s no strategy for dealing with homelessness,” said Chudnovsky.
Housing advocate Wendy Pedersen called the purchases “the best news.”
“I’m going to run and tell my friends right now they’re not being evicted,” said Pedersen, who sits on the board of the Carnegie Centre and knows two people who live in the Shaldon Hotel on East Hastings near Main, which was among those sold. “But . . . I hope there are more. There are 4,000 people still living in completely horrible conditions in the privately owned SROs.”
The rental units will be run by non-profit organizations, including the Union Gospel Mission, which is converting a hotel bought by the province last year in a similar sale of 10 hotels into a drug- and alcohol-free building at Princess and Hastings. “Some [tenants] are living on the victory side of addiction and they want to get out of that environment,” said mission spokesman Maurice McElrea.
Coast Mental Health is renovating the St. Helen’s Hotel, bought by the government last year, to include a lounge, light meals and laundry facilities for tenants.