Vancouver SRO being evicted as East Hastings decampment looms

Police were on scene Tuesday morning as some people were evicted from a single-room occupancy (SRO) hotel in the Downtown Eastside, but the City of Vancouver says the eviction notices posted in the building aren’t legal.

The people being actively evicted from the SRO say they have nowhere to go.

Protestors from the Vancouver Tenants Union and the Stop the Sweeps Coalition piled into a hallway at 322 Cambie Street to support people getting moved out.

“There’s eight units in the building and everyone that I’ve talked to said they’re going to be homeless if they get evicted,” said Jess Gut, an organizer with the Vancouver Tenants Union.

VPD Constable Tania Visintin says in a statement, “officers did not evict anyone and were there to keep the peace, as the property management company employees boarded up what they say are vacant rooms.”

Visintin reinforced her statement about VPD’s role Tuesday morning in an email to CityNews.

“VPD officers stood by to keep the peace while employees from the property management company were on site boarding up vacant rooms. VPD officers did not evict anyone,” her email reads.

Related articles:

• Vancouver police, city works to clear Downtown Eastside encampment

• Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside getting 330 housing spaces: Minister

But the landlord’s representative says police were there to help remove trespassers.

“There’s a bunch of people here who are not tenants that are currently trespassing in the building. We asked them to leave, and they didn’t. So now we’re getting them to leave the building. The tenants are not being affected, but the people who are not tenants are being evicted. When the rooms have no tenant and they’re vacant, we’d like them to be boarded up for the safety of everyone,” said Tyler Johnson, managing director at AWM Alliance Real Estate Group Ltd.

This building decommission notice was posted on one boarded up unit, Directing the tenants who were inside to remove all their personal belongings by the morning of April. 3.

But in a statement – the City of Vancouver says in part: “The ‘building decommission’ eviction notice is illegal … City has informed the Residential Tenancy Branch Compliance and Enforcement Unit and will assist tenants as much as possible … If a building is unsafe to occupy and needs to be vacated, the City will issue an ‘Order to Vacate’. In this case, the City has not ordered the building unsafe to occupy.”

Whoever is getting kicked out of this building, it’s during a time in the Downtown Eastside where the threat of a large police-involved decampment looms over people living on the street.

“So when people have nowhere to go, what the city is doing is just sending in the police to push them out, and push them to nowhere essentially,” said Gut

As for these boarded up units, the building owner says it’s considering renovating them for new tenants.

In an email to CityNews, the City of Vancouver adds “some tenants remain in their homes and have not moved.”