By John Colebourn
The Province
Win by West End landlord sparks concerns
A decision by the Residential Tenancy Branch allowing rent hikes of 40 per cent in a West End Vancouver apartment is like Christmas for landlords, a tenants’ advocate said Thursday.
“It’s Christmas everyday for landlords now,” said Stephen Hammond, an organizer with RentersFightBack.com.
“It’s just a matter of [...]
By Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun
Renter advocates say tenants across British Columbia should brace themselves for “staggering” rent hikes in the wake of a decision giving a Vancouver corporate landlord the right to bump up rents in an apartment building by almost 40 per cent.
“Provincewide rent control is effectively dead as we know it,” said Spencer Herbert, [...]
By Katharine Sawchuk and Dave White
NEWS 1130
Tenants in Seafield Apartments in Vancouver’s West End have been handed a 38 per cent rent increase. This is due to a regulation in the Residential Tenancy Act which lets landlords increase the rent if they can prove it’s significantly below market value.
Christine Ackerman with Renters at Risk says [...]
CBC News
The Residential Tenancy Branch has handed down a split decision in a dispute between a group of tenants in the west end of Vancouver and their landlord.
The owners of the Seafield Apartments had applied to raise the rents in the building by as much as 73 per cent, well above the four per cent [...]
By Sandra Thomas
The Courier
West End NDP candidate Spencer Herbert says a decision by the Residential Tenancy Office to allow an almost 40 per cent rent increase at the Seafield Apartments in the West End signals the end of rent control.
“Rent control is effectively dead in this province,” said Herbert, who represented the former Vancouver-Burrard riding [...]
By Matthew Burrows
Georgia Straight
Vancouver city council today (April 9) relaxed a bylaw to make it easier for landlords and homeowners to rent dwellings during the 2010 Olympics.
In the city services and budgets committee meeting, councillors also called on the province government to amend the Residential Tenancy Act to prohibit evictions between June 1, 2009 and [...]
By Shauna Lewis
X-Tra West
“They’re basically destroying community if they continue to do this,” says longtime tenant Andrew Simmons, pointing to the companies behind many of the eviction notices.
“If companies like Hollyburn Properties and Gordon Nelson Investments continue to purchase more and more buildings then they are forcing out those people that are on the margins [...]
By Jackie Wong
the West Ender
Vancouver apartment dwellers may have come to the conclusion that fighting an eviction at the region’s Residential Tenancy Office (RTO) is more or less a rite of passage for renters nowadays, given the increasing number of tenancy disputes across the city. Many of them have been attributed to low vacancy rates, [...]
Sandra Thomas
Vancouver Courier
Supporters and media surrounded a jubilant crowd of tenants from the Emerald Terrace apartment building in the West End Monday morning as they celebrated a decision allowing them to keep their cats.
“Yay for cat people,” one of the supporters yelled as several of the tenants, including 81-year-old Mary Milligan, addressed the crowd.
The tenants [...]
By Kristen Thompson
METRO VANCOUVER
Mary Milligan no longer has to choose between her beloved cat, Niko, and her home after the B.C. Tenancy Board ruled her landlord can’t evict her for having a pet.
The west-end resident, along with a half dozen neighbours at Emerald Terrace apartment, said they were told by Hollyburn Properties in December [...]
By Stefania Seccia
24 HOURS
A west-end group of residents and their cats can breath a sigh of relief after B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Branch blocked the evictions that would have forced them – and their furry friends – out.
The group of cat-owners had verbal permission to keep pets, but last December Hollyburn Properties tried to evict them [...]
The Province was the first paper to report the favourable decision in the tenants favour in the Emerald Terrace Pet Eviction Case against Hollyburn Properties. What a scoop!
Kent Spencer
The Province
A group of West End tenants and their beloved cats are purring today after a residential tenancy board ruled that they can’t be evicted for owning [...]
With only a week away, Seafield Apartments residents are preparing for their hearing at the Residential Tenancy Office to dispute landlord Gordon Nelson Investment’s application for a geographic rent increase. Gordon Nelson is claiming that residents are paying up to 73% less than other renters who occupy similar units in the West End of Vancouver. [...]
By Matthew Burrows
Georgia Straight
A West End landlord seeking to jack up rents says he will consider negotiating with his tenants face to face at a March 11 dispute-resolution hearing rather than via conference call.
“If that is everyone’s wish, then we would consider it,” Chris Nelson, co-owner of the Seafield Apartments, told the Georgia Straight in [...]
Sandra Thomas
Vancouver Courier
In the 1987 movie Batteries Not Included, a pregnant woman, an elderly couple and an artist face eviction by a greedy developer anxious to tear down their building.
In the movie, the tenants are saved by tiny alien robots–which could come in handy in the West End, where a pregnant woman, an elderly couple [...]
By Matt Kieltyka
24 Hours
The owner of a West End apartment building has no reservations about raising tenants’ rent by up to 73 per cent.
Jason Gordon, of Gordon Nelson Investments, took ownership of the 12-suite Seafield Apartment building at 1436 Pendrell Street last year and says the proposed rent increases are fair.
“It’s a competitive business and [...]
By: Jon Ferry
The Province
Does capitalism always have to be on a collision course with compassion?
It seems so in Vancouver’s West End, where tenants in yet another apartment building have learned that bottom-line-minded landlords can charge pretty much what they can get away with.
Making ends meet these days is stressful enough. But try being nine months’ [...]
The Vancouver Sun does a great job of discussing geographic rent increases, what they mean and the various legalities surrounding this eviction/rent-gouging strategy.
By Catherine Rolfsen
Vancouver Sun
Several West End renters, including an elderly brother and sister who’ve occupied their apartment for nearly half a century, are facing potentially hundreds of dollars in rent increases from [...]
Seafield Apartments residents found this article in the Province today. Emerald Terrace residents will be fighting landlord Hollyburn Properties at the Residential Tenancy Office today over the eviction notices they were issued over owning pets.
By Kent Spencer
The Province
Seven tenants of a West End apartment block who are being told to get rid of [...]
The Province does a good job in this article Seafield Apartments residents found today. Jon Ferry dismantles Hollyburn’s rationale for evicting Emerald Terrace tenants who have pets. Allergies? Come on.
Jon Ferry
The Province
Tshoo . . . tshoo. As my pals will tell you, I’m an allergic guy who reacts badly to everything from dust mites to [...]
You know that the situation is bad when even The Province thinks what you’re doing is wrong with a capital W. Seafielders found this editorial by The Province in their newspaper today, regarding the evictions of residents at Emerald Terrace who have pets.
In early December, cat owners at Emerald Terrace highrise in Vancouver’s West [...]
Sandra Thomas
Vancouver Courier
A West End tenant says the company that owns the building in which he lives is evicting tenants while avoiding costly renovation or building permits.
“Give up your cat or move out,” said Andrew Simmons, a tenant of the Emerald Terrace apartments on Nelson Street. He was given an eviction notice Tuesday by Hollyburn [...]
It is very interesting to see Allan Wasel demand over and over again that Hollyburn has a no-pets policy as shown in this article. In fact, Hollyburn does allow new tenants across the street from Emerald Terrace to keep pets. Seafielders learned this interesting tid bit afer atending the Emerald Terrace press conference last week. [...]
Catherine Rolfsen
Vancouver Sun
June MacGregor may soon face a terrible choice: her home or her beloved companion.
The 79-year-old is among seven tenants of Emerald Terrace — a West End apartment building recently bought by Hollyburn Properties — who are battling eviction notices issued because they have pets.
“I feel angry and I feel really, really upset,” said [...]
By Carlito Pablo
Georgia Straight
A number of tenants in a West End apartment building are fighting to keep their units not just for themselves but for their pets as well.
The residents, according to Vancouver-Burrard NDP MLA Spencer Herbert, are contesting eviction notices issued to them by Hollyburn Properties, owner of the Emerald Terrace at 2045 Nelson [...]
Many Seafield Apartments residents went to council to speak in support of Councillor Tim Stevenson’s motion to request needed amendments to the Residential Tenancy Act from the province. Some of the suggestions made by Seafielders, most notably those made by our own Brian Broster, were implemented as amendments to the motion.
By Jackie Wong
The West Ender
In [...]
By: Jackie Wong
The West Ender
Vancouver’s rental vacancy rates will remain below one per cent in 2009, according to the latest rental-market report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The report, released last week, shows that Vancouver has a rental-apartment vacancy rate of 0.3 per cent, one of the lowest rates in the Lower [...]
By Chris Wirth
Special to The Epoch Times
A newly-coined word, “renoviction,” has come into use in certain circles in Vancouver. It describes a trend in which landlords are evicting tenants for renovations and then raising the rent – often by as much as 50 per cent.
Housing advocates claim landlords are exploiting a provision in the B.C.’s [...]
The “right of first refusal”, which Tim Stevenson is suggesting, is used in Ontario to combat evictions for unnecessary renovations designed to gouge profits and take advantage of a tight rental market. It has effectively removed the financial incentive for landlords to evict tenants for unnecessary renovations. Despite popular belief that this law will result [...]
Mark Moore, a Seafield resident in Vancouver, wrote this letter in response to “Renters brace for reno, eviction” appearing in the Courier on November 7, 2008, to correct several errors in the story. The correction appeared in the Courier on Wednesday, November 19, 2008.
To the editor:
I am a tenant of Seafield Apartments, the building profiled [...]
