For Immediate Release
November 4, 2011
“THE REAL ESTATE MARKET IS AN UNSAFE SPACE FOR LOW-INCOME HOUSING”
Foreclosure delayed against Wolsey’s Wonder and Palace SRO hotels, residents call for urgent City protections for low-income housing
Contact: Ivan Drury, DTES Neighbourhood Council, 604-781-7346
VANCOUVER, UNCEDED COAST SALISH TERRITORY: On Thursday October 27th Vancouver news outlets reported that the beleaguered tenants of the Wonder Rooms and Palace Hotel, who have been facing off since June against their abusive landlord George Wolsey, could be facing a new threat of mass eviction due to the imminent foreclosure of their homes. The foreclosure hearing happened yesterday, November 3rd and Kimberly Robertson, counsel for the foreclosing company IMOR Capital, reported that they made a deal that morning with Wolsey’s lawyers granting a nine-month redemption period: The $2.5M loan must be repaid in full by August 3rd 2012 or a yet unappointed receiver may take possession of the building.
Council for IMOR financial also reported that maintenance of the Wonder and Palace Hotels within City standards was a primary condition of the mortgage that Wolsey took out, ostensibly for renovations. City Hall’s injunction effort brought Wolsey’s violation of this mortgage condition, to the tune of 241 violations of the city’s Standards of Maintenance bylaw, to the attention of IMOR financial, and they began foreclosure proceedings in June 2011. It was under this pressure, as well as the independent actions of his tenants and city injunction, that Wolsey commissioned the non-profit Community Builders’ Benevolence Association to take over management and renovation of his two buildings.
At a meeting of Wonder and Palace hotel residents held after the foreclosure hearing long-time Palace Hotel tenant 68 year-old Jim French explained that the foreclosure delay does not relieve his anxiety about his housing. “The landlord George has always tried to kick tenants out when they weren’t bringing enough money in. He tried to kick me out because I wasn’t on methadone. If he thinks he can make more selling the Palace hotel then he’ll sell it,” French said. “But if I lose this place I have got nowhere to go. Where does the city want seniors like me to live? The street?”
And Michael Gradwell, a younger resident of the Palace who was also part of the recent Residential Tenancy complaint against George Wolsey for harassment and intimidation and loss of property, said, “Look at the buildings going up around my place. It’s all condos and yuppie restaurants. If someone buys the Palace Hotel it sure won’t be to house me and the other residents here now. The Acme Cafe, the Paris condos… this block is being gentrified. We have to keep a hold on our neighbourhood so we can have a place to live and be where we’re comfortable and that we can afford.”
With this stay in foreclosure proceedings the tenants of the Wonder and Palace hotels can look forward to one of two bleak futures: If the buildings stay in Wolsey’s hands then he could reclaim management of his buildings from Community Builders after they have finished the renos, and tenants could find themselves back under the authority of a landlord who has been charged with numerous illegal evictions, accused of punishing tenants by cutting off their methadone, and other abuses. If the buildings are foreclosed and put on the market by a receiver, an investor may start clearing low-income people out to make way for an upscaling of the rooms for students and young workers.
DTES Neighbourhood Council organizer Ivan Drury worked with Palace and Wonder tenants throughout the city’s earlier injunction effort and a parallel tenant-rights campaign. Drury was at the foreclosure hearing and after hearing the news he said, “Unless the city steps in and buys these buildings to remove them from the pressures of the housing market the stay in foreclosure proceedings may be just a reprieve in an inevitable death sentence for this low-income housing.”
The DTES Neighbourhood Council general meeting on Saturday October 29th passed a resolution calling on city council to buy the Wonder Rooms, the Palace Hotel, and another rooming house that is in grave danger of conversion, and to take legislative steps to protect low-income housing by amending the SRA bylaw. Although the Wonder and Palace are no longer in danger of immediate foreclosure and purchase by a real estate speculator, they are still in danger of being lost at any time and their status as low-income housing is dependent on the whims of a landlord who is more than $2.5million in debt.
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WHICH MUNICIPAL PARTY WILL ACT NOW TO SAVE LOW-INCOME HOUSING? DTES Neighbourhood Council statement, October 29, 2011.
The Downtown Eastside low-income community is losing housing through holes in city bylaws and the Residential Tenancy Act. SRO Hotel rooms that have historically rented to low-income people are being rented for way more than welfare rates to students and young workers who can
no longer afford 1-bedroom apartments. The real estate market is an unsafe space for low-income housing.
Today the York Rooms, Wonder Rooms, and Palace Hotel are in danger of being lost to this real estate monster and being upscaled to student and young worker housing. The DTES Neighbourhood Council is sending a message to any prospective investor buyers of the Palace and Wonder and to the new owner of the York Rooms: If you buy these buildings you will not empty them quietly. We will not allow one single illegal eviction from these buildings.
We call on the city to step in and SAVE THIS LOW-INCOME HOUSING:
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Buy the York, Palace, and Wonder hotels to remove them from the real estate market
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Commit to buying 10 sites in the DTES dedicated for social housing a year for five years
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Reform the SRA bylaw to define ‘conversion’ as raising rents above welfare / pension rate
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Work for effective rent controls that stop evictions for rent increases and protect the low- income housing stock with an immediate rent freeze.
