Push is on to hike costs for Vancouver developers wanting to convert SROs

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Single-room rentals, which Vancouver uses to house people at risk of homelessness, are disappearing at what advocates say is an alarming rate as hot demand for housing leads to more Downtown Eastside hotels sold for redevelopment.

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One city councilor is seeking to halt the trend by forcing developers of single-room occupancy buildings, which house close to 7,000 Vancouver residents, to pay more to replace the rooms they take out of the low-income market.

In a motion going before council on June 7, Coun. Jean Swanson is proposing a bylaw change that would bill developers more than $500,000 for each unit of social housing they convert, alter or demolish, instead of a current $230,000 fee.

Costs to replace social housing downtown have “increased significantly” above the existing rate, Swanson says, which was implemented when the single-room accommodation by law went into effect in 2003.

Aging SRO buildings, which historically served as dorm-type accommodations for loggers, fishermen and miners looking for a place in town to crash for a few nights, are now a “necessary housing of last resort,” according to a 2020 city report.

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The need for low-cost housing was underscored by the April fire that displaced 71 residents of Gastown’s Winters Hotel, which Atira Property Management operated as supportive housing with funds from BC Housing.

Diana Dawkins, a resident for five years, was able to rent her first-floor room at Winters using her $600-a-month Old Age Security pension allowance.

When fire swept through the century-old hotel on April 11, she lost all of her belongings and is now living at Atira’s Sorella Housing for Women, paying $675 a month for rent.

“I feel helpless,” she said. “I have no furniture, nothing to show for being 67 years old. Not even a family picture or the jewelry I was planning to hand down to my children.”

Along with the Winters renters, 79 residents at the adjacent SRO, the Gastown Hotel, were displaced for weeks after the blaze.

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Swanson’s motion is seeking clarity from city staff as to whether the bylaw conversion fee applies to hotels destroyed by fire. If it doesn’t, she is asking for it to be included, to prevent further SRO loss in cases similar to the one at Winters.

“We typically lose three to four SRO hotels in a year in the Downtown Eastside,” said housing advocate Wendy Pedersen. “However, in the past few months, we’ve lost four alone.”

“Hundreds of people have been dumped out on the streets with nowhere for them to go. The single-room vacancy rate is now close to zero.”

Another SRO hotel, the Cobalt Hotel at 917 Main St., is in the process of being sold to a hotelier, according to Swanson’s motion. The purchase will mean its current residents will need new homes once the conversion begins.

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After the city set limits in November on how much landlords of SRO hotels can increase the monthly rent of rooms, two other low-cost downtown hotels — the Lucky Lodge and Vogue — collectively emptied hundreds of tenants back onto the streets.

The vacancy rate of private SRO hotels in Vancouver’s downtown core dropped to four per cent in 2015 from 14 per cent in 1992, according to the city’s latest survey of single-room accommodations.

However, the rent of units continues to increase. The number of SRO rooms renting for more than $450 tripled to 41 per cent of all rooms in 2015 from 14 per cent in 2009.

Swanson submitted a draft of the motion to the mayor and council last month but has since modified it to recommend that city staff “look into” making the changes to the single-room accommodation by law as opposed to “implementing it.”

When asked why, the councilor told Postmedia, “One is possible, the other isn’t.”

— with files from Dan Fumano

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