Vancouver: New concerns over SRO accommodation

A long-standing housing recommend is questioning why another building, almost seven years after it was scheduled to be social housing, is still standing in the wake of the questionable demolition of Vancouver’s previous Dunsmuir Hotel. Since the City of Vancouver shut down the 1913-built Regent Hotel at 160 East Hastings Street at the end of June 2018, it has been decaying. The notorious Sahota family owned the former single-room occupancy ( SRO ) hotel, which was known for its deplorable living conditions, and the family has committed over 1, 000 health and safety violations while operating it. The town has owned the Regent since late 2020, when it reached a consent decree with the Sahotas to raze the house and the crumbling Balmoral Hotel, which has since been destroyed. The two buildings were intended to be used as cultural accommodation. Stephanie ‘ Pink ‘ Berrigan, a citizen of the Downtown Eastside, told Global News on Wednesday that” so many things have been promised to us down below that have never fulfilled.” Concerning the Unoccupied Buildings in Vancouver, Vancouver Housing Advocate Jean Swanson claimed the strategy was to rebuild the Regent to home occupants of the Downtown Eastside, the poor, and those who were staying in shelters. ” Nothing’s happened”, the former city council told Global News in an interview. ” It’s just sitting there getting more and more derelict”. Swanson said she wonders if there’s a double standard at play. ” Is the area doing with the Regent what it’s hungry at Holborn for doing to 500 Dunsmuir”? Swanson asked. Dunsmuir House was just ordered to be destroyed by the government, accusing its exclusive user of neglecting the historic structure for more than a decade. The Regent and the Balmoral lodge were expropriated, or effectively taken away from their personal owner, according to Sarah Kirby-Yung of ABC Vancouver. In an interview on Wednesday, Kirby-Yung said,” It takes some time in terms of ongoing discussions in terms of what that looks like. We do not desire to change the outdated SRO cover. We want to build respectable self-contained products Users of the Dunsmuir Hotel protest criticism by saying it has leased the Regent to BC Housing, which has begun to clean up the page and dispose of toxic substances, and plans to replace the SRO products with updated self-contained apartments. There are many elders present, many of whom claim to have spent a lot of time around, which is why I get really frustrated, according to Downtown Eastside native Lorretta Thomas. There is no set date for the Regent’s restoration work to begin, according to the Crown organization. The city announced last year that it was finalizing lease words with BC Housing to redevelop the site and opposite city-owned places into social housing after the destruction of the Balmoral estate at 159 East Hastings Street. With the essential association agreements with BC Housing and regulatory approvals, that labor is anticipated to start in 2027.