By Jackie Wong
The Tyee
The hallways in The Seafield apartment building have been stripped of their carpets. Pebbles and dust line the dark walls. It’s the first day of March, and the 80-year-old, 14-unit walkup in Vancouver’s West End is in rough shape — in more than one sense. For two and a half years, the [...]
By Jackie Wong
The Tyee
Carolyn Ali didn’t expect to be a boomerang kid in her late thirties. She’s worked for a decade as a freelance writer. In recent years, as her husband battled an illness that limited his ability to work, her job has been the couple’s chief source of income. Their $850-a-month one-bedroom apartment in [...]
Posted By: WestEnder Staff
The WestEnder
Mark Moore, Christine Brandt and Andrew Simmons stood outside the West End’s Seafield Apartments on a bitingly cold Wednesday morning trading war stories.
The trio had turned out to support 15 of the building’s tenants who last week learned they’d successfully fought mass evictions by their landlords, Gordon Nelson Investments Inc. But [...]
By Sandra Thomas
Vancouver Courier
The owners of the Seafield Apartments in the West End are selling the 75-year-old building, which has been at the centre of a much publicized tenant/landlord dispute since 2008.
Jason Gordon, a partner in Gordon Nelson Inc., told the Courier Wednesday the deal to sell the Seafield closes March 1. Gordon would not [...]
By Shauna Lewis
Xtra West
Ownership of an apartment building located in the heart of the gay village has changed hands following the announcement of a Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) ruling that overturned the landlord’s attempt to evict several tenants to carry out renovations.
For David Bronstein and his partner, Donald Ransom, the eviction fight took its toll. [...]
CKNW/980 AM
Tenants of a West End apartment building have scored another victory in their long fight against eviction.
Standing in front of signs that read “justice at last”, the 15 people who call the seafield apartments on pendrell street home are celebrating their latest win. Earlier this week,the residential tenancy branch ruled eviction notices invalid.
“They started [...]
By: Dave White
NEWS1130
They get to keep their homes without a massive rent increase — but the fight isn’t over yet.
People at the West End’s Seafield Apartments have won their grievance with the Residential Tenancy Branch. An arbitrator says the landlord acted in bad faith when he gave notice for so-called “renovictions” and a shocking [...]
CBC News
Tenants of a downtown Vancouver apartment building are celebrating after learning they won’t have to move out so the owners can renovate the building.
The news comes after an adjudicator at B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Branch dispute resolution service ruled the landlord acted in bad faith when it issued eviction orders under the pretence that they [...]
BY JEFF LEE
VANCOUVER SUN
A West End apartment owner acted in bad faith in trying to mass-evict the 14 tenants of his building 10 days after failing to win a 73 per cent rent increase, the Residential Tenancy Branch ruled Monday.
In a decision hailed by legal aid lawyers as a rare and strongly-worded rebuke, the branch [...]
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130)
Another group of tenants in Vancouver’s West End is speaking out against the so-called “renovictions.” People living at the Seafield Apartments received eviction notices just 10 days after fighting off a planned rent increase, but they are vowing to continue their fight.
Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert says the notices came after the [...]
CTV.ca
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson is calling on the provincial government to close a loophole that allows landlords to evict tenants, perform minor repairs and then bump up the rent in their suites.
Robertson spoke at a rally of frustrated renters in the West End on Sunday, saying the city is powerless to protect them from so-called [...]
CKNW Vancouver
So called ‘renovictions‘ are happening again in the West End and need to be stopped. That according to residents of the Seafield apartment building.
They say renovations aren’t necessary and eviction notices from building management claiming they are, are nothing more than a cash grab.
Ten days ago the Residential Tenancy Branch ruled in favour of [...]
By Andy Ivens
The Province
Tenants in a West End apartment building are vowing to fight the mass eviction notices they received from their landlord, which they have labelled “renovictions.”
But Jason Gordon, co-owner of Gordon Nelson Investments Inc. (GNI), says his company needs to retrofit the 79-year-old building because its electrical system is shot and the building [...]
By Tiffany Crawford
Vancouver Sun
Residents of a West End apartment who feel they are the victims of a legal loophole that allows for “renovictions” gathered in the street today to protest their landlord’s decision.
An elderly man battling cancer and a pregnant woman were among the throng of angered and desperate tenants holding signs outside Seafield Apartments [...]
By Kent Spencer
The Province
A landlord in Vancouver’s West End, whose 38-per-cent rent increases were disallowed in court earlier this year, is under fire again from residents.
Christine Brandt and Mark Moore, a married couple who have lived in the Seafield apartments for 11 years, said Friday they’ve been given an eviction notice because landlord Gordon Nelson [...]
By: Leah Hendry
CTV
Tenants in Vancouver and New Westminster are complaining that they’re being unfairly evicted so that landlords can raise their rents, and they’re calling on the provincial government to do more to protect them.
Christine Brandt and her husband Mark Moore have received an eviction notice from the Seafield building on Pendrell Street in Vancouver’s [...]
By Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun
Two weeks after 82-year-old cancer patient Lynn Stevens was served with notice of eviction from her West End apartment, the building’s owners appeared to ease up on their initial hard-line position, offering a possible solution to the situation — at a price.
Hollyburn Properties Ltd. agreed this week to move Stevens into a [...]
Report from Peter Grainger
Ctvbc.ca
Eighty-two-year-old Lynne Stevens is one of the latest and most prominent victims of “renoviction,” a trend which sees renters getting evicted on the pretense of major renovations.
Stevens is being evicted from her suite in Emerald Terrace, one of nearly two dozen West End properties near Downtown Vancouver owned by Hollyburn Properties.
“I thought [...]
Bethany Lindsay
North Shore News
WV property company draws fire for forcing out cancer patient
A North Shore management company has once again been accused of attempting to evict tenants from its apartment buildings in order to raise rents.
Complaints about rent increases and evictions at buildings owned by West Vancouver’s Hollyburn Property Ltd. date back at least as [...]
Report from Peter Grainger
Ctvbc.ca
Renter and newly declared activist Cynthia Holmes showed CTV several empty newly renovated suites in the Emerald Terrace — something she says proves the company doesn’t need to evict existing tenants. May 11, 2010.
Rental rights groups say ‘Renovictions‘ – evicting existing tenants in order to charge more rent – are on the [...]
CBC Vancouver
A second tenant is being evicted from an apartment building in Vancouver’s West End in a growing controversy over the tactics being used by the building’s owner.
“They want to convert my suite into a manager’s suite,” said Andrew Simmons, who had just received an eviction notice from Hollyburn Properties Ltd., owner of the Emerald [...]
Report from Peter Grainger
Ctvbc.ca
Lynne Stevens, who has been renting a West End suite with Hollyburn Properties for 41 years was told to move out, the company saying it needs her apartment at Emerald Terrace on Nelson Street and one other unit as caretaker suites. May 10, 2010.
A Vancouver property company under fire for trying to [...]
By Shauna Lewis
Xtra West
A gay man and an elderly woman with ovarian cancer are the latest targets in a wave of evictions still affecting Vancouver’s West End.
The tenants have filed for arbitration against Hollyburn Properties but say they’re concerned about the area’s diversity and history if these evictions continue.
“Young gay people gravitate toward the West [...]
By Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun
An 82-year-old widow and ovarian cancer patient who is facing eviction from a West End apartment vowed Friday she will “fight until the end” to stay in her home of 41 years.
“Right now I have to believe that we are going to win this. That keeps me going,” Lynne Stevens told [...]
By Shauna Lewis
X-tra West
The landlords of Seafield Manor apartments in the West End have dropped their appeal of a January Supreme Court ruling that overturned their 38 percent rent increase.
The tenants had asked the court to weigh in after the Residential Tenancy Office allowed the increase last April. The landlords had originally sought a 73 [...]
By Matthew Burrows
Georgia Straight
A struggling, pet-loving renter must vacate her one-bedroom suite in the West End by April 1, but insists she
has nowhere to go.
“I don’t have a place, and I don’t know what to do,” Laryssa Troniak told the Georgia Straight by phone.
Moving to a new place, she said, “is too expensive. I’ve been [...]
By Jackie Wong
The West Ender
After more than a year of tenant-landlord conflict, residents of the West End’s Seafield apartment building were relieved last week to learn that the rent increases applied for by their landlords were overturned by the B.C. Supreme Court.
The January 12 judgement by Supreme Court Justice Linda Loo called the landlords’ application [...]
Darcy Wintonyk
CTVBC.ca
Gordon Nelson Investments has been ordered to refund tenants after a B.C. Supreme Court judge overturned an almost 40 per cent rent increase.
Justice Linda Loo found that a decision by the Residential Tenancy Office (RTO) to allow landlords Gordon Nelson Investments to raise rents at Seafield Apartments in April 2009 by 38 per cent [...]
Sandra Thomas
Vancouver Courier
The Supreme Court of B.C. overturned Tuesday a controversial ruling by the Residential Tenancy Branch last year that would have allowed a West End landlord to increase rents by up to 38 per cent. Madam Justice Linda Loo call the initial ruling “patently unreasonable” and also ordered Gordon Nelson Investments to return all [...]
By Keith Fraser
The Province
Landlord ordered to refund paid increases; new hearing to be set
A judge has overturned a decision that allowed a landlord to raise rents in a Vancouver West End apartment building by up to 38 per cent.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Linda Loo called the April 2009 ruling by the Residential Tenancy Branch to [...]