Vision Vancouver says it will call for a moratorium on the demolition of single-room occupancy units.

In a news release issued today, Vision Vancouver Coun. Tim Stevenson promises to introduce a motion at the Tuesday city council meeting calling for a moratorium in "certain parts of the city".

Stevenson didn't include a copy of the motion along with the news release, so it's unclear where exactly it will apply if council ends up approving the measure.

Stevenson, Vision Coun. Raymond Louie, and members of the former COPE council approved a single-room accommodation bylaw during council's last term. Under the bylaw, owners of 198 buildings in the downtown and Downtown Eastside could only convert single-room occupancy suites into other uses if they paid $5,000 per suite into the city's affordable-housing fund.

The Vision news release calls for a moratorium until this bylaw can be "strengthened".

(Brigit Snider, who owns an SRO building on the Downtown Eastside, told the Straight last month that she thought the existing bylaw was discriminatory. http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=19579)

This year, approximately 350 single-room-occupancy rooms have been lost in the Downtown Eastside, according to the Pivot Legal Society. The most recent evictions were at the American Hotel on Main Street, which is within walking distance of where the Olympic Village will be built on the southeast shore of False Creek.

CBC Radio recently reported that a Residential Tenancy Branch arbitrator ruled that the evictions at the American Hotel weren't legal. According to the news story, there are only 14 residents left in the building. Normally, eviction notices are handed out after a property owner obtains a development permit, which didn't occur in this instance.

In the August 31-September 7 issue, the Straight reported that Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, a University of Toronto sociologist, had written an academic paper explaining how cities that host the Olympics often experience rising homelessness. She noted that the evictions often occurred in "Olympic precincts". http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=20119

To read Vision Vancouver's news release, scroll down:

MEDIA RELEASE

For Immediate Release Saturday September 30, 2006

Vision Emergency Motion To Call For Moratorium On SRO Demolitions

Vision acts to overcome Sullivan's inability to meet Olympic commitments

(Vancouver) Vision Vancouver will bring an emergency motion to council this Tuesday, calling for the city to put a moratorium on the demolition of any more Single Room Occupancy (SRO) units until the Single Room Accommodation by-law can be strengthened.

This motion is to prevent future evictions similar to what occurred at the American Hotel.

“This motion is in response to our failure to live up to our Olympic commitments,” said Vision Councillor Tim Stevenson. “One of the pillars of our Olympic agreement was that there would be no evictions, yet that is precisely what is happening now. We need a method for controlling evictions before we issue permits.”

“Yes, housing is a provincial responsibility, but we as a city have several powerful tools at our disposal, one of which is the SRA by-law,” said Stevenson. “It is unconscionable that the Mayor is not doing everything in his power to stop these evictions. We want to make sure the Olympics are done right.”

The Vision emergency motion would put a moratorium on all SRO demolitions and evictions, similar to the ones regarding other land conversions in certain parts of Vancouver.

One of the most well known is the one banning the conversion of business offices to condos in the downtown business district.

“If we can exercise our power to prevent conversions in the business district, surely we can do the same to prevent SRO conversions, which hurt our city's most vulnerable,” Stevenson said. “The Mayor's lack of leadership on this issue is compounding our housing crisis. It is far more expensive to evict people than to house them. We need to be doing everything we can to get ready for the Olympics, and this emergency motion is one way of doing that.”