VANCOUVER Suites bylaw discriminatory, COPE, housing activists say Vancouver city council installed the latest measures in its crackdown on secondary suites last week, implementing a long-term program that, it has been charged, will cause a net loss of low-cost housing for needy tenants. The move comes at a time when housing analysts are pointing to an all-time record low in available units — close to the shor- tage that existed during Expo 86. The new long-term program to register so-called illegal suites will mean closure for some — possibly two thirds — of the estimated 20,000-26,000 in the city over the next 15 years. The timetable seems to accord a period of grace, but tenant activist David Lane noted that the closure of as little as 10 per cent of the suites yearly will mean zero vacancies for Vancouver and sur- rounding municipalities. “There won’t be a single vacancy between here and Langley,” Lane, co- ordinator of the Tenants Rights Action Centre, warns. Council’s labour-supported opposition calls the new bylaw discriminatory and says that it will, despite claims to the contrary, close many suites that provide a safe, clean living environment. Aldermen Bruce Eriksen and Libby Davies of the Committee of Progressive Electors charge that the secondary suites are being used a scapegoat for urban over- crowding and that council should instead promote a sound social housing policy for the province. The new program, recommended by cohneil’s.. neighbourhood, . cultural by full council Jan. 5, establishes a review process in which residents in an “RS-1” area — single family zoned — decide on whether to allow retention of secondary ‘suites. If the residents opt to allow secondary suites, the owners may face costs up to $56,000 — according to city staff esti- mates — to bring the suites into com- pliance with city maintenance bylaws. If the neighbourhood decides to abolish the suites, the owner is given 10 years in which to phase out the unit, but will still be required to spend possibly thousands of dol- lars to bring it up to city standards. Ostensibly the process is democratic, but Eriksen and Davies point out that council has already unilaterally moved, in the case of the east end neighbourhood called “Joyce Station area,” to exempt part of the neighbourhood from the review. The enforcement program will, no mat- ter how residents choose, wipe out hundreds of suites anyway, since the new bylaw will allow only one extra suite per house. A list of some 500 suites currently allowed for “hardship” reasons shows the majority of houses contain two or more additional suites. The new program stipulates that owners must register the additional suite within 120 days of the completion of the neighbour- hood review. Failure to do so will mean, if the city is successful in getting provincial approval for a city charter amendment, fines ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 — the stiffest for any bylaw infraction. Costs to upgrade suites are likely to be most prohibitive for older houses, where ceiling heights and amenities such as sprinkler systems will in many cases have to be installed. Ironically, the-so-called “big houses” or “Vancouver specials,” consi- dered a prime reason for the suites crack- down, already meet city standards. “Where this will impact most is on older housing for older people,” says Davies. “The bylaw is so strict on compliance that even to phase out a suite over the 10-year 2 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 13, 1988 . and community services committee and passed period, one could spend up to $30,000 in upgrading costs. “People of course won’t comply with those strictures, so we’ll still have a witch- hunt for illegal suites.” Says Eriksen: “We’re not trying to defend greedy developers, but the fact is that a lot of secondary suite owners are ordinary working people trying to pay offa mortgage or make up for a low income. They’ve been phoning me, so I know who they are.” “There should be no crackdown, period, until they’ve dealt with the housing crisis,” David Lane of TRAC comments. Lane charges that the current right-wing dominated council is doing nothing to build or promote low-cost options such as non- profit and co-operative housing. And he noted that council has not pushed for low- cost housing in available areas like the former Expo lands on the north shore of False Creek. (The COPE aldermen criticized Mayor Gordon Campbell for his fait accompli approach to the unilateral cancellation by the provincial government of the North Park project for the northern most portion of the Expo site. The project, a three-year effort by city planners and the former B.C. Place Crown corporation, contained low- cost housing. Currently Economic Devel- opment Minister Grace McCarthy is entertaining bids from wealthy foreign interests for development of the site, with no provision for affordable housing.) “Basically, the idea seems to be to drive _low-rent tenants out of Vancouver and into — the suburbs,” Lane says. University of B.C. social planning profes- sor David Hulchanski notes there has been little public housing built in B.C. in recent years (projects in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside by groups such as First United Church and the Downtown Eastside Resi- dents Association — constructed with the aid of the previous city council — are not public housing.) Social housing is built with federal government guidelines but at the initiative of the provinces, and B.C.’s Socreds have an “abysmal” social housing record, Hul- chanski observes. Hulchanski, who supervises studies by graduate students of rental housing in Van- couver, says an increase in British Colum- bia’s population last year, coupled with declining rental stock due to destruction of existing units and lack of construction of new units, has caused the current vacancy crunch. “On top of all this, council has announced its crackdown. This is bad for all tenants, because it creates an additional scarcity and forces rents up,” he notes. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) shows Vancouver’s vacancy rate at just over one per cent. In the outlying municipalities the rate is slightly higher: 1.7 per cent. Rents, according to the federal agency, are also climbing. Despite that, crackdowns on secondary suites continue, not only in Vancouver but in other members of the Greater Vancouver regional district. Residents in North Vancouver district have vowed to fight the council’s proposed bylaw prohibiting second kitchens with a public campaign. The Committee for Suite Justice charged Jan. 11 that the bylaw, which goes to public hearing soon, is “an incredible infringement on the rights of citizens. “Tt is completely inconsistent with mod- ern housing trends and people’s needs,” the group charged in a release. The committee also hit council for distri- buting a circular to households threatening fines for failure to register secondary suites when the fate of a bylaw on secondary suites is “in limbo.” The district is appealing a lower court decision quashing the bylaw, which limited use of secondary suites to relatives of the property owner. The lower court decision resulted in Delta municipal council passing a bylaw last November making all secondary suites illegal. Vancouver city council is still considering a bylaw on secondary suites for relatives, a proposal Davies and Eriksen in a monthly column on city hall termed “ludicrous.” BRUCE ERIKSEN ... bylaw hits low- income homeowners hardest. DAVE LANE ... council driving poorer tenants out of Vancouver. Fe ri Letters Where is Sun on forest crisis? Maurice Rush, B.C. leader, Communist Party of Canada, writes: Why is it that the Vancouver Sun has not commented to date on the extensive series of articles carried during the last week of December in the Globe and Mail on the crisis in British Columbia’s forest industry, and particularly on the serious charges against MacMillan Bloedel which border on scandal. Can it have anything to do with the fact that the forest industry and MacMil- lan Bloedel have just completed a $2.5- million media advertising campaign, including full-page ads in the Sun, extol- ling their efforts to provide “Forests Forever?” The articles in the Globe point in the opposite direction — that the compan- ies are decimating our forests. Among the serious charges made: @ MacMillan Bloedel, “which is mak- ing record multi-million dollar profits, is jeopardizing the timber supply over thousands of square kilometres of Crown forest lands while neither the public nor the provincial government is aware of its actions;” ® “MacMillan Bloedel has exagger- ated its supply of standing timber in order to justify cutting as much high- value virgin forest as possible:” e “The forest giant has also been wasting enormous amounts of usable cut wood and has failed to inform the government of the extent of the waste:” @ “Up and down the B.C. coast, the forest industry is heading for trouble because it has been cutting the down the old trees faster that new ones can grow. As a result, the accessible old timber could run out years or even decades before the new forest is ready to harvest. Thousands of jobs may be lost, dozens of single-industry logging towns could dis-: appear and the provincial economy would be in for a shock.” There is lots more, including the charge that the RCMP is investigating some of MacMillan Bloedel’s activities. Do the people of B.C. have to wait for a newspaper from Ontario to tell them of the scandalous situation in their number one industry? Surely it’s time that the Sun faced up to its responsibility. B.C. needs a full Royal Commission of inquiry into the state of the forest industry before it is too late.