Plan to purchase more than 100 SROs remains on the back burner as hundreds of residents have been displaced by the fires

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The Vancouver City Council agreed to seek $1 billion in provincial and federal funding two years ago to buy more than 100 single-room occupancy hotels so that some 2,500 rooms, in very old buildings, could be renovated or converted to stand-alone units.

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That money has not been raised and any action on it is pending the election of a new city council. Meanwhile, there have been half a dozen fires at single-room occupancy hotels in recent months that have killed some tenants and displaced many more.

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“I’ve been in the neighborhood for 30 years, living and working, and it’s definitely the most fires I’ve seen in a long time,” said Wendy Pedersen, director of the SRO Collaborative, which focuses on creating SRO hotel tenant programs. privately owned.

“These buildings are very old. There are many people crammed into them who have many needs. The electrical systems, and everything, are becoming obsolete, so the long-term solution is to replace these hotels with units that don’t burn out as easily.”

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Pedersen doesn’t see an easy pattern linking why there have been more fires.

The most recent fire was Saturday in a unit at Sereenas Housing for Women on Powell Street in the Downtown Eastside, which is run by the Atira Women’s Resource Society. Displaced 50 residents.

Earlier this month, a fire displaced 39 tenants at Keefer Rooms. It initially erupted in the kitchen of the Gain Wah restaurant, running down the ventilation pipe to the roof of the building and causing the extractor unit to explode.

In August, a fire on Powell Street damaged two SROs, leaving 42 residents in one and 17 in the other out of their homes.

In early June, an electric bike battery explosion at the Empress Hotel killed one man, and in April, a fire at the Winters Hotel in Gastown killed two people and forced more than 70 residents to move to a hotel. near.

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In early July, a fire broke out at Vancouver Street Church, but crews were able to prevent it from spreading to the seven-story Maple Hotel next door.

“I know quite a bit about the details of most of them, and I don’t think they’re connected,” Pedersen said.

What it can “point to,” however, is that building managers need to up their game in terms of fire safety, he said.

Pedersen is currently working on a tenant project to do the same for privately owned SROs that are not run by nonprofit groups.

This involves appointing leaders in each building who want to be more involved and know how to share information and organize other tenants in exchange for a small fee to help coordinate fire safety plans.

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If tenants can participate in fire safety plans, they are more likely to be successful, according to Pedersen.

It is a model that he believes could also be applied to SROs run by non-profit groups.

Coalition of Progressive Electors council candidate Jean Swanson said there are annual fire inspections, but if there could be more frequent ones that identify causes or problems, quicker fixes might be possible.

For example, he said, if bicycle batteries are a problem, there could be rules or provisions for safer batteries instead of cheaper batteries that are at greater risk of explosion.

With the most recent fire at Sereenas Housing, Swanson said the fire department said a second-floor unit was engulfed in flames and then the fire spread to the third floor, damaging four units.

“I wonder about the sprinklers. What happened to the sprinkler in that room?

Pedersen said allowing tenants to lead fire safety programs could result in more attention and interest in programs with incentives or fines that keep fire extinguishers recharged and sprinkler systems quickly restored.

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With a Tiffany Crawford file