Vancouver considers upping fee for converting rooming houses
Posted July 2, 2015 11:36 pm.
Last Updated July 2, 2015 11:42 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The City of Vancouver might be imposing higher fees for private companies that buy up old Downtown Eastside hotels in order to convert them into market rentals.
A new report is recommending the fee be increased from $10,000 to $125,000 per room that is renovated.
“We don’t want people tossed out in the streets, and that’s what we’ve been seeing year over year,” says City Councillor Kerry Jang.
“What we are seeing is a lot of investors trying to buy up the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) buildings and converting them into market housing. The problem with that, of course, is that the low-income people living in these units are thrown out in the street.”
The report shows about a thousand rooms were lost in the Downtown Eastside over the past ten years.
It says the lowest rents in the private SRO stock are decreasing ($375 or less decreased from 60% in 2007 to 24% in 2013) and highest rents are increasing ($451 increased from 14% in 2009 to 31% in 2013).
Forty-one per cent of the stock (75 buildings and 2,903 rooms) is held by individuals who have owned and operated SROs for many years.
Jang says the money collected will go to other hotel owners who are having difficulty paying for regular room upgrades for welfare tenants.
“It’s because they are very old, the rents don’t cover the costs of renovating them. So the money generated by this program will go to help repair these buildings and give people and the owners a hand up.”
The report comes up for discussion at city council July 7.
