A heat map shows a large portion of the current bylaw violations in Vancouver are in the Downtown Eastside.
By Micki Cowan
A problematic housing unit on Granville Street has the most current bylaw violations of any licensed rental property in Vancouver, according to an analysis of the city’s rental housing database.
The database, which launched Jan. 15 2013, tracks the number of landlords with outstanding bylaw violations filed by tenants. The database listing is updated daily, with most of the unresolved violations occurring within the last three years.
The 73-unit Clifton Hotel at 1125 Granville St. topped the list with 60 violations on March 8. The issues range from a lack of smoke alarms to pest infestations.
Click on the map below to find out which properties have unresolved bylaw issues:
City Coun. Geoff Meggs, who sits on the city’s housing committee, said the database was created to address the quality of rental housing. Meggs said some landlords simply fail to repair their housing when a violation occurs and the database addresses that.
“What we’ve found is by posting these, particularly on the hard cases, it leads very quickly to better compliance, because people don’t want to be listed on this database,” Meggs said.
Since the launch, Meggs said the city’s seen a decline in the number of people with more than five infractions and landlords are fixing issues faster.
However, in the case of the Clifton, the city sought a court injunction in July 2013 to order the shareholders of the company that owns the building, Abolghasem Abdollahi, Zohreh Fazi-Mashhadi and Yahya Nickpour, to clean it up.
An injunction is a court document that allows the city to ask the court to order a landlord to adhere to city bylaws and fix their property, according to Meggs.
Meggs said the city only seeks an injunction in “really egregious” cases, but that injunctions are generally an effective way of dealing with landlords who don’t comply.
“We seek a court order that he’s got to comply with the law and if they fail to, they can be in contempt of court but also pay a fine,” he said.
Meggs said they don’t seek an injunction if the landlord is making progress or confronting their problems, and the Clifton’s injunction was the first case since the database launched in January.
Click below to hear Coun. Geoff Meggs explain what renters get out of the database:
The Clifton’s company shareholders have since been involved in their own court case, as they bicker over who has the rights and responsibilities to the property.
According to Abdollahi’s lawyer, W. Gerald Mazzei, the court case is holding back renovations at the Clifton.
Mazzei said Abdollahi already spent more than $200,000 in repairs to the property since taking over management in March.
“His plan is to fully renovate the hotel,” said Mazzei of Abdollahi. “It’s just that with all this litigation going on, he’s only been able to do sort of the bare minimum to look after the immediate concerns of the city.”
Bob Nicklin is CEO of the nonprofit Affordable Housing Societies, which owns and manages low- to medium-income rental housing in B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
The group owns one property in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside that’s listed in the database. The 84-unit building at 43 Powell St. has four unresolved bylaw infractions, which include a general maintenance issue and the need to inspect and test all emergency lights.
“We want win-win solutions and that’s what we strive to achieve,” Nicklin said. “I wouldn’t pretend that all 3500 of our tenants are happy with us either, because you just can’t keep people happy all the time.”
According to Meggs, most rental bylaw infraction are sorted out within a few months, although not always.
“There can be cases where they last a while for legitimate reasons,” he said. “That’s the kind of case where you have to be patient.”
The following annotations on this document from the City of Vancouver points out interesting ideas behind the database’s development.