[Wamvan] Fwd: For Immediate Release: Join DTES groups and SRO tenants to save York Rooms

[Tami Starlight]

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Tami Starlight 
Unceded coast Salish territory/Vancouver
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Begin forwarded message:

> From: Carnegie Action <carnegie.action at shawlink.ca>
> Date: 19 October, 2011 7:50:55 AM PDT
> To: 'Carnegie Action' <carnegie.action at shawlink.ca>
> Subject: For Immediate Release:  Join DTES groups and SRO tenants to save York Rooms
> 
> For Immediate Release: October 19, 2011
> 
> Join DTES groups and SRO tenants to call for City and Province action to
> save low-income housing at the York Rooms
> 
> Contact:    Ivan Drury, DTES Neighbourhood Council: 604-781-7346
>        Jean Swanson, Carnegie Community Action Project:
> 604-729-2380
> 
> VANCOUVER, UNCEDED COAST SALISH TERRITORIES: On Wednesday October 19th at
> 10am Downtown Eastside (DTES) groups and residents of the York Rooms hotel
> are gathering in front of the York Rooms hotel at 259 Powell out of concern
> that their housing is at risk since is has been recently bought by notorious
> SRO hotel “upscaler” landlord Steven Lippman. 
> 
> In the past two years Steven Lippman has bought as many as seven hotels in
> the DTES and has upscaled the rents in most of them way above what
> low-income residents can afford. DTES Neighbourhood Council (DNC) board
> member Ivan Drury explains, “With city support Steven Lippman has threatened
> more than 300 units of low-income housing by upscaling them for students and
> young workers. The new social housing units that the government was
> celebrating during homelessness action week are just backfilling the hole
> made in the low-income housing stock by gentrifiers like Lippman. The number
> of units lost to this upscaling is almost exactly the same number of units
> that the city and province have bragged that they have built.”
> 
> Roger Hadder has only lived in the York Rooms for a few months but has spent
> most of the last nine years on the streets. “I lived homeless outside for
> seven years. Even though they’re not great, we really need these hotel rooms
> to rent at welfare prices,” Hadder said, pointing out the need for SRO
> hotels as transition places for people on the street, “If I couldn’t get a
> room in a hotel at welfare rate I’d still be on the street today.”
> 
> Damien Dubois, who has lived at the York for four years argued for rent
> controls and for a bylaw that holds SRO hotels at welfare and pension rate,
> “We need these hotels but they have to be at welfare shelter rate. At the
> York I’m paying $50 out of my support cheque for a tiny room. That just
> leaves me with $150 to live on for the month,” he said. “The only way it
> would be worse is if there was no welfare at all.”
> 
> The DNC will support tenants’ demand to owner lower rents to $375 a month
> and fix up the building for existing tenants. And together they are calling
> on the City of Vancouver and the Province of BC to:
> • CITY: Buy the York Rooms. Removing the York Rooms from the market housing
> stock is the only way to protect the low-income rooms there and it is not
> too late for the city to act.
> • CITY: Close the loopholes in the SRA bylaw to protect the low-income
> housing stock by adding to the definition of SRO Hotel “conversion”: Raising
> rents above welfare and pension rent rates;
> • PROVINCE: Implement effective rent controls in the SROs to stop evictions
> and the emptying and upscaling of buildings by investors;
> • PROVINCE: Fully fund the HEAT shelters immediately. The “Homelessness
> Action Week” announcement of 300 units of new social housing does not fill
> the need for shelter beds. Steven Lippman’s real estate investments alone
> have stolen almost as much low-income housing as has been built.
> 
> Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) coordinator Jean Swanson called for
> the city to put the action back in Homelessness Action Week and make
> affordable housing the most important issue of the civic election campaign.
> “What did we get out of Homelessness Action Week?” she asked. “A
> re-announcement of housing at the Remand Centre with only 24 units at
> welfare rate; A photo-op for the city and province at 1005 Station Street, a
> building cancelled in 2001; An announcement from the Province that they will
> not fund 4 of the HEAT shelters; and Kerry Jang’s embarrassing statement
> that the city (delete: he) is so close to ending homelessness he ‘can taste
> it.’ We still have about 700 people living in DTES shelters every night who
> desperately need homes, and that doesn’t count people living on the street.”
> 
> “The DNC has a five year plan to end homelessness in Vancouver and we have
> given it to the city for free,” said Drury: “Buy ten sites in the DTES for
> housing a year for five years and replace the SRO hotels as housing. Let
> them be temporary accommodations for people coming off the street or
> arriving in town. And do it now.”
> 
> - 30 -
> 
> Backgrounder: Why Steven Lippman’s purchase of the York Rooms worries us...
> • The American hotel (37 rooms): Lippman bought the empty American hotel and
> converted it into rooms for young workers and students with rents that start
> around $650. He got the city's blessing to bypass the SRA anti-conversion
> bylaw by promising to council that 6 rooms would rent at $400 for 10 years.
> • The Lotus hotel (110 rooms): Lippman bought the Lotus earlier this year.
> In a survey CCAP conducted in the early summer a low-income Aboriginal
> resident was told there were no rooms available, and that rents began at
> $800 a month. A student-appearing white volunteer spoke to the same manager
> minutes later and was told he could move in on the first of the month. For
> him rent was quoted as $675 a month. This discriminatory renting practice
> was confirmed in a phone conversation between a CCAP employee and Steven
> Lippman on Tuesday October 4th. When asked how much a room in the Lotus
> would cost Lippman said, “It depends what you look like.”  And about the
> rumours that he had paid low-income residents a thousand dollars to move out
> of the Lotus he said, “I have never personally paid anyone to move out.” But
> he did not deny instructing his managers to pay residents one thousand
> dollars to move out. Instead, he scoffed and said, “That's not eviction.
> They are making a free choice to go.”
> • The Golden Crown Hotel (28 rooms): According to news reports, residents of
> the Golden Crown hotel were illegally evicted and coerced or tricked into
> signing a statement agreeing to leave the building in September 2009. Steven
> Lippman and Christian Williams bought the building, empty, two weeks later.
> Williams claimed in the media that they had been “lied to” by the former
> owner who claimed the building was already empty. But on October 4th Lippman
> only repeated, “I have never personally evicted anyone.” Regardless, a news
> report now puts rent at the Golden Crown in the $650 to $825 range. 
> • York Rooms (34 rooms): Steven Lippman fired and evicted the long(time
> residential manager immediately upon purchasing the York Rooms. And he also
> immediately got a construction crew to strip the ground floor storefront and
> basement and got an architect to draw up plans for a high-end restaurant and
> bar. Could upscaling and high rents for the upstairs rooms be far behind? In
> a phone conversation with a DNC organizer Steven Lippman said he would
> “charge whatever rents the market will bear.”
> • The DNC also believes that Lippman may also own Alexander Court with 59
> rooms, and the Picadilly Hotel with 45 rooms. The Picadilly is still closed
> and the Alexander Court, after a suspicious fire, raised rents well above
> welfare rate. He also owns the London Hotel, with 73 rooms. He received a
> heritage bonus in the form of a 10-year property tax holiday, two facade
> grants, and a density transfer bonus from the City for his redevelopment, a
> massive incentive package totalling $1,374,131. Atira property management
> maintains the rooms at $375 a month but holds only a five-year lease, which
> ends, and leaves the rooms vulnerable to Lippman-style upscaling, in January
> 2014. The council motion that supported the renovation, for the purposes of
> heritage, to the tune of nearly $1.5million, qualified that if Lippman
> chooses to upscale the rooms the city will support the tenants in their
> moves out.
> 
> The DNC believes that Steven Lippman owns a total of 386 SRO hotel rooms
> that used to, or temporarily, rent to low-income people. These rooms have
> been upscaled or likely will be upscaled from low-income to student or young
> worker housing. While no one denies that students and young workers need
> housing in one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, we believe that
> this housing should not come at the expense of people who are one step away
> from homelessness. 
> 
> During Homelessness Action Week 2011 the City of Vancouver and BC Housing
> cheered their accomplishment in building 388 units of low-income affordable
> supportive housing. Compared to the loss of 386 low-income affordable SRO
> units at the hands of Lippman alone, this surplus of two lonely units is
> hardly something to cheer. Add to that the other units lost to student and
> young worker “upscale” conversions and, in overall low-income affordable
> housing, our city is not keeping its head above water.
> 
> ***
> 
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