Owners of private single-room-occupancy hotels in Vancouver who want to convert a room in their building to something other than low-income housing such as an office or upscale hotel room will now be subject to a $125,000 fee each time they upgrade the accommodation.
The fee, which used to be $15,000, is a measure city council adopted Wednesday in an effort to protect dwindling private low-income stock and prevent tenants from losing their homes. More than 1,700 privately owned rooms have been converted or lost between 2004 and 2014, with 1,160 in the Downtown Eastside.
“Our aim is to keep people housed,” Abigail Bond, the city’s assistant director of housing policy, told reporters after Wednesday’s meeting.
The new fee comes in the form of an amendment to the existing single room accommodation bylaw. Another change will require owners to obtain a city permit before doing any minor repairs to a room. That’s being done to monitor the repairs and ensure the owner has found alternative accommodation for a tenant instead of booting the person out on the street.
“You can no longer use minor work as a reason to evict tenants,” said Bond in acknowledging the concern from housing advocates, who spoke to city council about the various reasons tenants get evicted from their rooms.
The new $125,000 fee, however, will not apply to an owner who renovates a room, keeps it as a single-room-occupancy but ends up charging more for the room. Bond said staff opposed the fee because it doesn’t want the city to discourage owners from renovating single-room-occupancy rooms and keeping that stock.
Although many owners charge more than the $375 per month government-issued shelter rate for tenants on income assistance, the city and councillors recognize the income for an owner isn’t always enough to pay for renovations to keep a building as a single-room-occupancy hotel.
“We wanted money to be re-invested in the work done to the building, so to layer on an additional fee to that detracts from our main purpose,” Bond said. “We want [owners] to spend all available funds, recognizing that [they’re] constrained and upgrading the building.”
Longtime housing advocate Wendy Pedersen urged council to have the $125,000 fee apply to owners who effectively “renovict” tenants when they make repairs to rooms. Pedersen said the average rent for a single-room-occupancy hotel is $485 per month.
“We’re losing 300 rooms a year, the city says, to that process,” Pedersen said after the meeting.
She’s not hopeful the city’s move to have owners obtain permits for minor work will halt the practice of people losing their accommodations. Pedersen said owners “don’t say we’re going to evict you for a reno, they say I’m going to evict you because you smoke, I’m going to evict you because you have noisy guests and I have video footage. So that’s the actual reality of what’s happening.”
Bond said the city plans to work with B.C. Housing to see if rent supplements can be made available to tenants facing a rent increase as a result of an upgrade to a room. The city will work with owners to have them access low-interest loans to carry out renovation work. And the city continues to urge private owners to have reputable non-profit organizations, with experience managing hotels, to take over running the buildings.
Mohammad Valayati, who spoke to council, said he lived at the Clifton Hotel on Granville Street for two-and-a-half years. Valayati, who paid $450 per month rent, said he still has legal possession of his room but the owner has gone ahead and started renovations on a building he hopes to rent for $900 per month to international students.
The former manager and handyman at the hotel said he’s receiving unemployment insurance and living with a friend. “I’m looking for a place, but it’s very hard,” Valayati said.
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