Speedy evacuation questioned
Advocates ask how Balmoral residents were housed while many homeless languish
Advocates for B.C.’s homeless are wondering how B.C. Housing almost immediately found homes for residents being evacuated from a Vancouver SRO despite an escalating homeless crisis.
Friday, the City of Vancouver said it had worked with B.C. Housing to line up 131 units for the displaced residents of the Balmoral Hotel, who were given an evacuation notice a week before. Residents were told they would need to leave the building by Monday.
For decades, conditions at the Balmoral have deteriorated to the point where city inspectors ruled it was unlivable due to structural and fire concerns.
The city now pledges to take the Sahota family, which owns the Balmoral and several other single-room occupancy hotels, to court.
Mayor Gregor Robertson said city staff, B.C. Housing and non-profit organizations had “been going allout” to secure welfare-rate homes for those displaced residents.
But homeless advocates wonder how those 131 units became available in such a short time, given that across the province — and directly outside the Balmoral — people are sleeping on sidewalks, in alleyways and in tent cities, including many who are on B.C. Housing’s waiting list for rooms at the housing rate allowed for welfare recipients.
“It’s a little bit frustrating, when we’ve got so many people living outside, that these rooms were available and nobody was moved into them,” said Judy Graves, a longtime advocate for the homeless and recipient of Vancouver’s Freedom of the City award.
“We had that long, snowy season and that wasn’t enough of a crisis for B.C. Housing to step up.”
B.C. Housing had no one available to comment before deadline Saturday.
Graves also criticized the city for not adequately using its bylaws and inspectors to prevent the deterioration of SROs at the hands of some landlords.
“Homelessness is an unnatural disaster and it’s essentially created by municipal policy,” she said.
Randy Barnetson, pastor at the Vancouver Foursquare Church in the Downtown Eastside, said he believes government simply won’t respond to housing crises until there’s intense public scrutiny, as was the case with the conditions the Balmoral residents were living in.
“When there’s political will — people are looking bad or whatever — they can really do something,” Barnetson said. “They moved heaven and Earth.”
He said the number of visible homeless people is just the “tip of the iceberg” and finding housing for all homeless needs to immediately become a priority. According to the Metro Vancouver homeless count on March 8, there were 3,605 homeless people in the region, 2,138 of them in the city of Vancouver. Homelessness had risen 30 per cent since the previous count in 2014, the report said.
Meanwhile, homeless British Columbians have established tent cities in cities such as Abbotsford, Maple Ridge and Surrey and Victoria.
Last month, a B.C. Supreme Court judge denied the City of Vancouver’s application for an injunction to remove a tent city at 950 Main St., not far from the Balmoral.
One of the defendants against the injunction, Maria Wallstam, who is a member of the Alliance Against Displacement, said she’s pleased Balmoral residents have been offered welfare-rate units, but wonders why homeless tentcity residents wait on a B.C. Housing list for the same.
“It basically shows that the B.C. Housing wait-list is a joke,” Wallstam said. “It’s kind of extraordinary what they can pull out of their hat when they have to.”
Joyce Jackson, 38, a resident at the tent city since it was established April 28, said she’s been homeless for two years. Only one resident in the tent city has been offered a room by B.C. Housing, she said.
“It’s kind of frustrating,” she said. “Some of us have been homeless for a long time.”
Tent city resident Varouj Mouralian, 62, said he’s been trying for nine years to get a room through B.C. Housing and has grown sick and tired of waiting.
In the past, he’s been offered units in the Balmoral but declined them because of the appalling treatment of its residents, he said.
“Everybody here comes from a unique family,” he said of his tent city neighbours. “We’re not bad people. If the government gave us a little hand, that’s what we need.”
“We had that long, snowy season and that wasn’t enough of a crisis for B.C. Housing to step up.” — JUDY GRAVES