City hall has cracked the whip on the owners of three Vancouver single-room-occupancy hotels by ordering them to repair their buildings under threat of court action.

Chief license inspector Barb Windsor told the Straight that it’s the first time city hall has used this option in enforcing the Standards of Maintenance By-law.

In separate orders, the Balmoral Hotel (159 East Hastings Street), Lucky Lodge (134 and 136 Powell Street), and Keefer Rooms (222 Keefer Street) have been instructed to fix problems plaguing their businesses.

The owners of Balmoral Hotel and Lucky Lodge—the Sahota and Laudisio families—were the subjects of a complaint filed in January by various Downtown Eastside-based organizations before the Residential Tenancy Branch for allegedly failing to maintain living standards in their hotels.

The orders issued by city hall carried a warning that if they fail to comply, the matter will be brought before city council to initiate legal action.

“It means us preparing an order, and going forward to the courts and asking the courts to give us a court order which would ultimately order the people to do the work,” Windsor explained.

It looks like the tactic is working.

As of Monday (June 8), according to Windsor, repair work was proceeding at the Balmoral Hotel. A previous inspection showed, among other concerns, that its interior walls were not being maintained in a clean and sanitary condition. Windsor also noted that a licensed elevator company has to be contracted by the hotel to fix the lift that has been out of order since February 2009.

City inspectors have yet to pay the Keefer Rooms a new visit to see if it has completed work like providing “fire rated doors”, and the repair of the bathing unit on the second floor of the building.

Lucky Lodge has submitted an application for a permit to put in the required number of bathing units in the building, as well as running cold and hot water in all the hand basins in the hotel. According to Windsor, an inspection is scheduled today (June 9).

Windsor also said that staff is preparing a report that will go to council in early July about the three SRO hotels.

Acting on the instructions of council, staff reported in March that increased enforcement of the Standards of Maintenance By-law can be done through either the court injunction or resolution process.

Council decided to go to the injunction route. “So we then said to them. ‘Fine. So start using them. Give us some test cases,’” Vision Vancouver councillor Tim Stevenson told the Straight.