Vancouver Legion Branch Pledges to Fight New Year’s Eve Eviction | The Canadian News

While many British Columbians are counting back to the new year, members of a Vancouver branch of the Royal Canadian Legion are looking at the clock for another reason.

Kitsilano Shalom Branch 178 faces an eviction order, which takes effect at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Members are fighting an allegation of alleged failure to pay thousands of dollars in rent, which could result in the eviction of a building the Branch helped build, on land it donated nearly 50 years ago.

Part of the original agreement was a handshake agreement, which allowed the branch to operate the building without paying rent in perpetuity, the branch says.

“We’re waiting to see what happens at midnight,” Gavin Cameron, Branch’s attorney, told Global News.

Cameron said it’s unclear whether the Maple Crest Housing Society, which owns the building, will move to block the Legion.

But he said his clients have a strong legal claim to stay there, arguing that the landlord has not even been able to present a lease, because none exists.

The initial founding agreement is actually a trust, he said, with the Legion as a beneficiary, and that the housing partnership is violating.

“The people we are dealing with, the veterans who served our country with honor, a handshake means everything to them,” he said.

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But this was more than a handshake. This was a legion that paid over a quarter of a million dollars to build this low-income housing project. “

The owner is a housing company that founded the branch to operate low-income housing in the building. A Global News request for comment from Maple Crest Housing Society president Jeff Simons has not received a response.

But in an interview with him Vancouver Sun.Simons said the details will come out in court. He alleged that the Society is dealing with people “who are not telling the truth.”

The Legion branch has appealed to David Eby, the province’s attorney general and the MLA for leadership, but the province has not taken any steps to intervene in the dispute.

Along with the Legion office, the property includes 106 low-income housing units. The land is valued at nearly $ 40 million, a figure that could soon rise with a new subway station at nearby Arbutus and Broadway scheduled to operate in 2025.

Now it appears that the dispute will end in court.

“If the locks are changed tonight, the housing society will have an obligation to present its points in court,” said Cameron.

“These are people, some of them, who fought on the beaches of Normandy. And they will fight the fight now if necessary, even if they don’t want to have that fight. They just [want] the treatment they reached in good faith, honored. “