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Cheap Rooms Off the Block?
Rare deal could save Eastside SRO.
Affordable rooms safe, for now
Housing demonstrations in Vancouver's poverty- and drug-blighted Downtown Eastside rarely end in celebration. More than 500 affordable single room occupancy (SRO) hotel rooms have been lost in the last year and homelessness is projected to more than double by 2010.
But on March 19, on the sidewalks outside the Carl Rooms at 575 E. Hastings, a crowd of tenants, housing advocates and homeless people had cause for optimism.
The developer-owners of the Carl Rooms (numbered company #0773477 B.C. Ltd.) are negotiating a deal with Atira Property Management, a non-profit social enterprise that already manages three other social housing sites in the Downtown Eastside, according Dave Eby from the Pivot Legal Society.
The deal, Eby told the crowd, will, at least temporarily, renovate the Carl, refill the rooms emptied by earlier evictions and hold rents stable at the welfare housing allowance level of $375 per month.
Most tenants faced eviction
"We were contacted by a tenant at the Carl two weeks ago, and we immediately contacted the new owners," Eby told the Tyee. "We knew they had purchased the building two months ago from previous owners who had already evicted many of the building's 46 residents. It was our understanding that the majority of the remaining tenants had been served with eviction orders. We expressed our concerns about yet another block of affordable SROs going missing in this neighbourhood, and opened up discussions about the possibility of preserving this vital housing."
The owners' representative told Eby they were open to a solution that didn't involve emptying the Carl, and told Pivot on Friday, March 16 that their hope was to renovate and improve the building while keeping rents at affordable levels. The owners also expressed some frustration with the challenges posed by what they saw as problem tenants, Eby told The Tyee. So he recommended they explore the option of having the building managed by a non-profit with experience in running a Downtown Eastside hotel.
By Monday morning, when demonstrators gathered outside the Carl, Eby was able to announce an imminent deal to save the Rooms as affordable SRO housing.
"This is a small victory, and a model we hope other developers look at for investment properties," Eby told The Tyee. " But this can't be viewed as a long-term solution. The housing at the Carl Rooms may well be saved for a while, and that is a good thing. But these are still developers and will, in the end, make decisions based on the need to make a profit. The real solution is government-sponsored social housing to replace SROs."
Deal not sealed
Reached at the end of the day Monday, Ali Bakhtiari, who speaks for the numbered company that owns the Carl, told The Tyee that the company was in final discussions with Atira Property Management with a view toward engaging the non-profit to manage the Carl Rooms.
"We just have to confirm a few numbers," Bakhtiari told The Tyee," but we expect to have a contract with them soon. We'll have a final decision sometime this week."
Bakhtiari said the new owners had originally bought the Carl Rooms as an investment, but visits to the site had changed their attitude.
"Once we saw the situation down here, we thought maybe there was something we could do to help. We want to keep the rents at between $375 and $400 a month and try to improve the building. We see this as a long-term decision."
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maestro
5 years ago
Good:
Good:
Common sense and Pro-Active pragmatism saves the day. Sounds like the start of a solution.
PS Anyone got more info on Atira Property Management?
Yammer
5 years ago
Good part deux
I agree with Eby's comment. The profit motive is going to keep these properties in jeopardy. Social housing has a downside but the lack thereof is indecent in a civil society.
I also hope, if the city does get involved, that these afforable suites are spread around in a fair manner. I know that the city tends to look at "bang for buck" when purchasing or leasing property, but that also tends to stick the east side with the "problem tenants."
flattax
5 years ago
Profit Motive is ok
A logical proposal: There is lots of social housing already in the Lower Mainland. It is called Surrey. Land in vancouver is at a premium. It is not the land homeless people need, it is housing. So the city of vancouver should sell that $50,000,000 of land they want to put social housing on to the highest bidder. And then just buy and build where it is cheap, likely Surrey. Better for their health to get them out of the DTES.
These SROs are too sweet. Their own room, TV, privacy. I say build large buildings with bunk beds. Safe of course, but not luxurious. Give them the incentive to get out and make some money.
As an aside: The middle class can barely afford housing anymore. Yet their tax dollars are used to put others in social housing. Forcing developers to build socual housing into thier developments is just a tax on the buyers.
Imagine, the people at Dunbar and 16th, mortgaged to the hilt. And the government is going to put social housing in their backyard. The owners in Dunbar own million dollar houses and they get treated like crap by the city of Vancouvuer.
Yammer
5 years ago
The Projects
I'm not thrilled with the idea of making a social housing ghetto, flattax. (Or gulag, as in your idea.) I think it is a better idea to spread people out. Integration is the way to go. Promote bridges, not protect the turf.
Sure, it is a "tax" to have social housing.
To me, there's an easy business case to make for govt intervention when people are not making it independently.
Today's violent thug is yesterday's abused kid. Work backwards from that truth to figure out how to reduce tomorrow's tragedies today.
It's easy to think of what people need. They need safe housing, life skills, job education, critical thinking, self-respect, health.
Try to think of it as an investment, or as future debt reduction. It makes as much fiscal sense to lower costs as it does to make a profit, dunnit?
flattax
5 years ago
Ghetto
Quote:
I'm not thrilled with the idea of making a social housing ghetto, flattax. (Or gulag, as in your idea.) I think it is a better idea to spread people out. Integration is the way to go. Promote bridges, not protect the turf.
Respone:
Like atttacts like. People prefer to stick with people of their own background, socio economic status and ethnic background. This is a natural instinctive phenomena in a world of limited resources. Any attempt to fight it is just social engineering. ie by force of government.
Yammer
5 years ago
Code Phrase
"Social engineering" is a code phrase for excessive government meddling, the nanny state, the coddling interfering Big Brother.
But, in this case, what is wrong with some social engineering?
Engineering is the application of reason to a problem.
The alternative -- ignoring it to see if it fixes itself -- is not really doing the trick. The downtown east side is a freaking eyesore.
To digress into personal revelation, which is always dangerous ground to try to win an argument, I was a social worker -- I've seen all kinds of stuff that I'd rather unsee.
I know, firsthand, how some people get by in the ghetto. It may be their responsibility, sure. But it's not their kids' fault. For their (and my) sake, it would be a smart investment to develop decent accomodations, hand in hand with life skills training and addiction treatment, as required.
Or...are you just winding me up?
G West
5 years ago
yammer - more good stuff
Moreover, very nicely phrased, no insults, just quick facts and gentle reminders that 'kids' end up eating their parents problems long after all the food value’s gone and way too often in our culture.
Time to cut the string about the sins of the father once and for all. None of us needs that kind of millstone round our necks.
The folks who refuse to move on will stagnate in the past, memories should be fun - not obsessions
zalm
5 years ago
flattax
Amazing how someone so up on economic competitiveness can't recognize it when it bites someone in the ass.
The only reason the middle class can barely afford housing in Vancouver any more is because in the free market they have bid up the price of it beyond all reason, forcing both parents to work to do so.
This was going to happen sooner or later, and I first told my folks about it in the 1970s when they almost lost their first house. Pretty soon, the only people who will be able to afford to live in Vancouver in a house will be those who have extended families living with them, bringing in 6 or 8 incomes. I can hardly wait to hear the tone of THOSE screams.
We've made our bed - for the last thirty years. Let's not complain about having to lie in it.
LJ
5 years ago
SROs sweet?
How many SROs have you visited, flatax? For the princely sum of $400 most rooms are the size of a shoebox, you get the privilege of sharing a thoroughly nasty bathroom and maybe, just maybe, access to a hot plate. There are no windows in most of the rooms and you have to stay out every few weeks while they fumigate for roaches.
And this is in a "good" SRO where they keep the lid on rampant vandalism, screaming, violence and theft, which is not to say that none of these things happen just that the management tries to prevent it. A lot of them are much, much grimmer.
TV? Privacy? Sweet deal? Where?
For what you get (which costs more than you're given for housing, BTW, so you get to dig into your extremely small food and other needs allowance), this must be the most expensive housing in Vancouver. But then, just try to find decent accomodation if you are on income assistance. There is no way to just get an apartment without the owner knowing, since they have to fill out paperwork for your caseworker to approve. The only ones really eager to have someone on assistance are usually other slumlords.
Sweet indeed.
greengreen
5 years ago
Pride
Sounds good....could it be possible to have some of the tenants help with the renovations? Save the owner some $, perhaps get a temporary cut in rent, and feel good about their personal achievement. Win, win win...