HOUSE OF HORRORS
Mayor Robertson calls conditions at Balmoral Hotel ‘disgusting’ — vows to do something about them
Hours after Vancouver’s mayor slammed the owners of a “disgusting” Downtown Eastside hotel and threatened legal action, its tenants stormed city hall and staged a sit-in outside council chambers.
In recent years, the Balmoral Hotel at 159 East Hastings has been the subject of complaints about the building’s condition lodged by tenants and housing advocates, including legal battles against its owners, the Sahota family.
The Sahotas also own the nearby Regent, Astoria and Cobalt single-room occupancy hotels. Their real estate holding company, Triville Enterprises, is worth more than $130 million, according to B.C. Assessment.
In a statement Thursday, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson criticized the Sahotas for letting the Balmoral fall into squalor and disrepair.
“The living conditions in the Balmoral Hotel are disgusting. No resident of Vancouver should have to live in housing like that,” Robertson said.
“The repeated building and safety violations are putting some of our most vulnerable residents at risk and are a massive strain on city resources.”
Three hours later, about a dozen Balmoral tenants and housing advocates sat on the floor outside council chambers where they read a list of demands and gave impassioned speeches describing the wretched conditions in which they lived.
The protesters asked the city to provide copies of all Balmoral engineering reports and promise to pay for emergency repairs while not displacing tenants during any renovations.
The mayor was not made available to them and they left around 5 p.m.
Jay Slaunwhite, a Balmoral tenant for three years, said he doesn’t believe there is imminent danger at the building that would lead to displacement. He believes the city can do repairs in phases.
But he’s concerned the city hasn’t adequately communicated with tenants, who have spread rumours that community centres are preparing to lay down mats for them if they are booted during repairs.
“That’s not a good plan,” he said. “None of this would have happened if the city had actually enforced — all those times they were in the Balmoral — for those infractions.”
Nicole Kroeker, a Balmoral tenant for just over a year, said she came to city hall to stand up for her neighbours and any future occupants of the hotel.
“Whatever may happen, my hope is that they fix the building and they keep it low-income housing,” she said. “The housing crisis in this province — it’s just deplorable in a lot of ways.”
Last year, housing activist Wendy Pedersen connected tenants with a lawyer who filed a class-action lawsuit in the name of a Regent Hotel tenant against the Sahotas, as well as a civil claim against the city seeking compensation and enforcement of repair orders.
“The tenants are being left in the dark about what’s happening,” Pedersen said Thursday. “We understand that there’s an imminent closure at the Balmoral hotel because the landlord has been allowed to drive the Balmoral into the ground.”
Pedersen and the tenants are demanding the city pressure the Sahotas into doing repairs by enforcing a bylaw provision which states that the failure of a building to comply with maintenance standards within 60 days of a council order “will result in the work being carried out by the City at the expense of the owner.”
The city has demanded the Sahotas make more than $1 million in structural repairs to the building’s ground-level bar and envelope, and hire professional engineers to conduct a full assessment of the Balmoral, Robertson said.
An inspection last week revealed internal structural issues due to water damage, according to city spokesman Jag Sandhu. Last Friday, tenants lost access to their bathtubs to reduce weight on deteriorated floors. On Monday, contractors and city staff visited the building and raised “significant safety concerns.”
City spokeswoman Sara Couper said staff would provide an update on the Balmoral sometime Thursday morning.
In response to Robertson’s statement, Non-Partisan Association councillor George Affleck said the “only thing disgusting” about the situation is the mayor and Vision Vancouver’s failure to address problems at Downtown Eastside hotels over the past decade.
“For him to just realize this just now is shocking, to be honest,” he said.
The Sahotas did not reply to a request for comment before deadline.