Emergency Actions to
SAVE WONDER & PALACE HOTELS
SAVE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE LOW-INCOME HOUSING
The court ordered sale of the Wonder & Palace could end Wednesday June 13 with a sale to the DTES’s most notorious hotel upscaler. More than 300 hotel rooms have already been lost from the low-income housing stock because of Stephen Lippman’s investments. Join two emergency actions to demand that Lippman not buy the Wonder and Palace Hotels and that the city or province buy them and stop the loss off 72 more units of low-income peoples’ housing.
WEST VANCOUVER PICKET AT THE INVESTOR’S HOUSE
MONDAY JUNE 11
6PM IN WEST VAN
(439 Eastcot Road, near Taylor Way and Upper Levels Hwy – see directions below)
5PM MEET AT CARNEGIE FOR DINNER AND TO GO TOGETHER
Come embarrass Lippman on his own turf and call for him to cancel his plans to buy the Wonder and Palace hotels with a family friendly picket line in front of his swanky West Van home. Tell him that these hotels are 72 peoples homes, not investment properties! Then…
EMERGENCY ACTION FOR SOCIAL HOUSING NOT HOMELESSNESS
TUESDAY JUNE 12
MEET 12:30PM IN FRONT OF THE CARNEGIE CENTRE
The court ordered sale of the Wonder and Palace hotels to notorious hotel gentrifier Stephen Lippman is scheduled to be confirmed in BC Supreme Court on Wednesday June 13. A march will begin at Carnegie on Tuesday, at the 11nth hour, to call on the city or province to step in and stop this sale but buying the buildings and protecting them as low-income housing.
These two buildings are specifically important because they were the first hotels to be served with a new city-injunction mechanism to force negligent owners to clean up their buildings. If the outcome of that injunction effort is the loss of the buildings from the low-income housing stock through rent increases then the city might be even slower to take action against landlords. Low-income hotel residents need better conditions, but they also need their housing. We need hotel upgrades, but we need to put a stop to the upscaling renovations of speculators and investors like Lippman.
For more information
Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Council
http://dnchome.wordpress.com | dtescouncil@gmail.com
604-781-7346
* Directions to the picket at Lippman’s house
TRANSIT: There are no buses that go to Lippman’s neighbourhood, the closest just gets 2.5km away. So if you’re going by transit take the seabus to the North Van side and call 604-781-7346. We’ll have someone pick you up.
DRIVING: Hwy 1 Westbound (from Vancouver). Taylor Way exit, towards Hwy 99. Keep right at the fork, follow signs for “Hadden Drive” and merge right onto Hadden Drive. Slight right onto Eastcot Road. Stop at 439 Eastcot Road.
**All tenants of the Wonder and Palace hotels should call our 24 hour tenant emergency line if you are threatened by an owner or manager physically, or with loss of tenancy, or if you are harassed. Lawyers from Pivot Legal are on call. 24 hour tenant emergency line: 604-781-7346
OUR DEMANDS:
- LIPPMAN: Do not buy the Wonder and Palace hotels. Get out of the DTES.
- CITY: Buy the Wonder Rooms and Palace hotels immediately
- CITY: Close the loopholes in the SRA bylaw to protect the low-income housing stock by adding to the definition of SRO Hotel “conversion”: Raising rents above welfare and pension rent rates
- PROVINCE: Implement effective rent controls in the SROs to stop evictions and the emptying and upscaling of buildings by investors.
