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The city should use its own by-laws to force slum landlords to clean up their acts instead of closing down problem hotels, says a Downtown Eastside lawyer.

"The reason the buildings are so bad is the failure of the City of Vancouver to go in and enforce existing standards in these buildings," Pivot Legal Society lawyer David Eby said yesterday, after his group released a report warning Vancouver's homeless numbers could triple by the 2010 Olympics.

The city should be stepping in to fix up the hotels so they can remain open, passing on the cost to hotel landlords, Eby said. It can do so, he insists, by using the city's standards of maintenance by-law.

Download the report:
Cracks in the Foundation .pdf

While the city's supply of SRO housing - low-income rooms for single people - is declining primarily because landlords are converting their rooms into more profitable tourist hotels, another factor in SRO loss is the city itself.

Between 1991 and 2005, the city closed down 171 SRO units because of maintenance, health and fire by-law violations. That's about 10 per cent of the 1,846 units closed over that time period.

And it doesn't include at least 60 units that were lost within the last year, a result of the city closing down the Pender Hotel and Burns Block.

Veronica Crow Eagle lived at Burns Block for years before the city shut it down in March - a fire code violation. She was forced to hit the street after she was given only a few hours to pack up and go.

"It was terrible," said the 61-year-old. "It's scary. You don't know what's going to happen to you at night wandering out there."

1991: 7,925 SRO units
2005: 6,079 SRO units

At the time, Eby accused the city of acting as a free eviction service for slum landlords looking to sell off their properties in the pre-Olympic property market. Burns Block owner Nik Bahrami, for example, is asking $2.5 million for his suddenly valuable property. That's at least quadruple what he paid for it three years ago.

Bahrami declined to talk when contacted yesterday. In a previous interview, Bahrami said he was "99 per cent" close to finalizing a sale. He claimed the city had demanded his buyer commit to building a few units of social housing as part of the deal; the buyer refused and backed out.

In any case, deputy chief licence inspector Barb Windsor says the city standards of maintenace by-laws are meant for simple general maintenace - keeping things in repair - not for making substantial repairs to aging buildings.

"It's difficult to apply, especially to SRO buildings, some of which are very old and in need of major repairs," said Windsor. "It's beyond the scope of what we can do."

But would it be a valuable tool to have that power?

"That will be a discussion we will probably have with council," Windsor said. "But what may prohibit us is the cost of doing repairs to some of these buildings. If [landlords] were to endure these costs, would the buildings simply close? Would we be achieving the opposite of what we're wanting to do?"

Housing and licensing staff are working on a report on the matter. It could be before council in October.

Tags: vancouver, homeless, downtown eastside