Rock and a hard place
BC Housing evicts clients to tear down their house, then build them new ones
A downtown Kelowna apartment complex is nearly empty as the site awaits redevelopment from its new owners, BC Housing.
Most tenants of the Gibraltar Apartments have left, but Helmut Henfling remains, uncertain where he will go.
The Gibraltar, an aging but well-kept building with 26 suites, has been his home for more than 30 years. And Henfling, who is losing his sight as a result of a degenerative disease, says he’s having trouble finding a new place to live.
“I’m not bitter or anything, but I don’t really want to move,” Henfling, a retired millwright, said Wednesday.
“I’m getting a bit invalided and turning blind. I just wanted to finish my days here.”
BC Housing has bought the three-storey apartment building in the 1400 block of Bertram Street, just north of Bernard Avenue, and an adjacent lot for $6 million, $2 million above the properties’ assessed value.
In a letter to Gibraltar residents, BC Housing said the Gibraltar was purchased “with the intention of redeveloping the buildings and land to accommodate a larger number of affordable rentals than what exists today.”
However, the letter indicates the redevelopment may be five years away, which has Henfling questioning the immediate need to vacate the Gibraltar.
“What’s the rush, I wonder,” he says. “Seeing as they’re a public housing corporation, I can’t see them throwing people out on the street and just leaving it empty for years.”
The NDP government is in the process of providing, through BC Housing, more than 2,000 modular housing units across B.C. for homeless people. A 55-unit modular housing complex for the homeless on Enterprise Way has already been announced for Kelowna, sparking some concerns from nearby businesses.
A city-maintained compound is a terrible eyesore that needs cleaning up, some West Kelowna residents say.
The unkempt property on Shannon Lake Road often has piles of garbage, broken concrete, old vehicles, twisted metal, lumber and unrecognizable debris strewn about it, city council heard Tuesday.
“We don’t even know what this is, but it looks like it’s been there an awfully long time,” nearby resident Don Evers said, referring to an unrecognizable object in one of several photos of the compound he showed to council.
“The compound could best be described as an unorganized mess and an eyesore, and a nuisance to everybody,” Evers said.
People who own property near the compound raised concerns about its unsightliness as far back as 2006, Evers said. But not only was nothing done to clean it up, he says, piles of trash and debris have expanded since then. An old Zamboni has even been parked there, Evers said.
The compound is maintained by the city on a piece of Crown land leased from the provincial government. City councillors agreed the operation is unsightly and in need of a tidy-up.
“What we saw today is embarrassing,” Coun. Rick de Jong said.
“If that was a private property, we would be initiating a bylaw action to clean it up,” said Mayor Doug Findlater.
Council told staff to report back on what could be done to improve the look of the site.
The compound has been as a parks service yard and operations field for more than 20 years, council heard.
Some material could be moved to a cityowned property on Bartley Road further north in West Kelowna, but that site is also identified as a future city works yard.
“We’re land poor,” city manager Jim Zaffino said, suggesting the city has few places where it can store unsightly materials before they are either recycled or trucked to the Glenmore dump.