Plan to purchase over 100 SROs remains on back burner, as hundreds of residents have been displaced by fires

Vancouver city council agreed to seek $1 billion in provincial and federal funding two years ago to buy over 100 single-room occupancy hotels so that some 2,500 rooms, in very old buildings, could be renovated or turned into self-contained units.

That money hasn’t been raised and any action on the matter is pending the election of a new city council. Meanwhile, there have been a half-dozen fires in single-room occupancy hotels in recent months that have killed some tenants and displaced many more.

“I’ve been in the neighbourhood for 30 years, living and working, and it’s definitely the most fires you’ve seen in a long time,” said Wendy Pedersen, director of the SRO Collaborative, which focuses on creating programs for tenants in privately-owned SRO hotels.

“These buildings are very old. There are a lot of people packed in them that have a lot of needs. The electrical systems, and everything, is getting outdated, so the long term solution is to replace these hotels with units that aren’t going to burn down so easily.”

Pedersen doesn’t see an easy pattern that links why there have been more fires.

The most recent fire was on Saturday in a unit at Sereenas Housing for Women on Powell Street in the Downtown Eastside, which is run by Atira Women’s Resource Society. It displaced 50 residents.

Earlier this month, a fire displaced 39 tenants at Keefer Rooms. It initially broke out in the kitchen of Gain Wah restaurant, raced up the vent pipe to the roof of the building and caused the extractor unit to explode.

In August, a fire on Powell Street damaged two SROs, putting 42 residents in one and 17 in the other out of their homes.

In early June, an e-bike battery explosion in the Hotel Empress killed one man, and in April, a blaze in the Winters Hotel in Gastown killed two people and forced more than 70 residents to move into a nearby hotel.

In early July, a fire broke out at Vancouver Street Church, but crews were able to keep it from spreading to the seven-storey Maple Hotel next door.

“I know pretty much about the details of most of them, and I don’t think they’re connected,” said Pedersen.

However, what you can “put your finger on” is that building managers need to up their game in terms of fire safety, she said.

Pedersen is currently working on a tenant project to do the same in privately-owned SROs that aren’t run by non-profit groups.

This involves appointing leaders in each building who want to be more involved and know how to share information and organize other tenants in return for being paid a small honorarium to help co-ordinate fire safety plans.

If tenants can be involved in fire safety plans, they are more likely to be successful, according to Pedersen.

It’s a model she thinks could also be applied in the SROs run by non-profit groups.

Coalition of Progressive Electors council candidate Jean Swanson said there are annual fire inspections, but if there could be more frequent ones that identify causes or issues, it might be possible to implement quicker solutions.

For example, she said, if bike batteries are an issue, there could be rules or provisions for safer batteries rather than cheaper ones that are at a higher risk of exploding.

With the most recent fire at Sereenas Housing, Swanson recounted the fire department saying one unit on the second floor was engulfed in flames and then the fire spread to the third floor and damaged four units.

“I am wondering about the sprinklers. What happened to the sprinkler in that one room?”

Pedersen said enabling tenants to lead fire safety programs could result in more attention and interest in programs with incentives or fines that keep fire extinguishers refilled and sprinkler systems promptly reset.

jlee-young@postmedia.com

With a file from Tiffany Crawford