Privately owned SROs have earned a bad rep
Safety issues abound at some low-rent hotels
When the City of Vancouver ordered the evacuation of the Balmoral Hotel last Friday, telling 150 residents they must vacate within 10 days due to “imminent danger” in the century-old building, it left many people wondering how things could have gotten so bad.
The Balmoral, the city said, was in such a state of disrepair that tenants needed to vacate to allow repairs to “ensure that the building does not collapse.”
The Balmoral is far from the only problematic single-room occupancy (SRO) building in Vancouver. But of Vancouver’s 156 low-rent hotels, it appears a disproportionate number of problems can be traced to a handful of buildings, most of which are privately owned and operated.
Many challenges plaguing Vancouver SROs were outlined in an April presentation to Vancouver’s city council. About 45 per cent of SROs are owned by government or non-profit organizations, the staff report said, and these buildings are generally affordable, “well-managed and operated, providing improved security and livability for tenants.”
But many problems lie in the 55 per cent of the city’s SROs that are privately owned, including the Balmoral and, across the street, the Regent, both of which are owned by the Sahota family. Of the 43 privately owned SROs with the cheapest rents, the staff report said, 12 had 10 or more health and safety violations, and five had 20 or more violations. April’s SRO Task Force presentation raised the idea of transitioning the worst privately owned SROs to management by non-profits.
In the last seven months at the Balmoral alone, the city issued seven orders to address 183 outstanding deficiencies — six of those orders are outstanding, representing 150 outstanding violations.
It raises the question of why people like the Sahotas — who, property records show, have owned the Balmoral since at least 1981 and own at least $130 million worth of real estate holdings in B.C. — should be allowed to continue collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent every month at their five SROs, while demonstrating such apparent disregard for the health and safety of some of the region’s most vulnerable people.
Advocates say the government can and should do more to deal with the worst of the private SROs.
Judy Graves, who retired four years ago as Vancouver’s advocate for the homeless, has seen problems at the worst SROs persist since at least the early 1990s. Graves said while some private SRO owners do a very good job managing their buildings, she would be happy to see management taken away from the worst private SRO landlords.
There are reports of landlords refusing to do necessary repairs, allowing mould and rats to proliferate. There are tales of violence and drug dealing in SROs. There are many blatant fire hazards.
“But we always used to say that the difference between the best SRO and the worst SRO was a new manager and two months,” Graves said. “Management could turn the worst SRO into the best within a few months, or turn the best into the worst ... It’s all about the management.”
On Monday, deputy city manager Paul Mochrie said if the Sahotas fail to complete emergency repair work to stabilize the Balmoral, the city is prepared to undertake that work and bill them. If those charges are not paid, they would be added to the Sahotas’ property tax bill, and if the property taxes were not paid, the property would go into a court-supervised forced sale, allowing the city to recover the money.
Asked if the city would want to see an eventual phase-out of all private ownership of SROs, Mochrie said: “It’s a great question. The systemic under-investment and mismanagement of private SROs is a problem, for sure ... but I don’t believe the solution is one the city can drive on its own.”
The city has forwarded 64 outstanding violations related to the Balmoral to the city prosecutor who is considering whether to lay charges which can result in fines, Mochrie said. If those fines go unpaid, it could lead to a court order, which, Mochrie said, “could end up in the city owning these assets at the end of the day.”
Longtime housing advocate Wendy Pedersen would like to see the end of private ownership of SROs, starting with the worst landlords.
“I think (the SROs) all should be purchased by government or leased by government,” said Pedersen, a tenant organizer with the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative.
“Unless they secure them and remove them from the market, either through leases or through purchase, we’re going to dump thousands more people on the street.”
Over the weekend, city staff and partners from the provincial government were at the Balmoral working with tenants to help them find housing. In a bulletin Monday, the city said it is “committed to finding permanent homes for every single tenant” of the Balmoral, a statement Pedersen said she found encouraging because of the commitment to “permanent” homes. A mat on a gym floor, she said, is not acceptable.