VANCOUVER — The owner of an illicit east-side rooming house that caught fire Tuesday night, killing three people, has been ordered to demolish the property by the City of Vancouver.
“We are issuing an order today to the property owner to demolish the property,” deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston said Thursday.
If the owner doesn’t comply by Jan. 14, said Johnston, city staff will seek an order from council to demolish the property themselves.
On Tuesday night, a faulty electrical cord connected to an old set of Christmas lights started a fire at the small home at 2862 Pandora St., killing three and sending one to hospital.
Johnston confirmed Thursday that the city’s bylaw department — along with firefighters and police — had issues with the property dating back years.
Those issues came to a head last spring when the city discovered the property was being used as a rooming house, in contravention of city bylaws that state no more than five unrelated people can live at a single home.
On Aug. 26, the city ordered the owner — listed in property records as Choi H. Leong — to stop renting to multiple tenants and to make repairs by Oct. 31.
The city conducted a followup inspection on Nov. 5.
A copy of that inspection report, released Thursday by the city, indicates nine people were living in the house at that time, including individuals identified as Joe, Garland, Steven, Dwayne, Matthew and Harry.
According to the report, only minimal repairs had taken place and “no smoke alarms have been provided”.
Johnston said city staff decided at that point to have the city prosecutor pursue fines against the owner in court and to go to council for approval to pursue a court injunction ordering the home vacated.
However, more than six weeks after the last inspection, neither had occurred.
“The process was underway,” said Johnston. “It’s not abnormal for it to take a month or two for us to file for legal action. We would have been before council in January asking for an injunction to vacate the building.”
Johnston said properties like 2862 Pandora are rare.
“Every year we issue 6,000 violation orders and probably 20 to 40 have the scale of these types of problems,” he said. “We try to strike a balance with bringing these property owners into compliance and ensuring that we’re not booting people out on the street.”
Each year, said Johnston, the city obtains five to 10 court injunctions against property owners — either to vacate a property or to make repairs.
And in one or two cases a year, he said, city staff go to council for permission to demolish a nuisance property such as a vacant house occupied by squatters.
Johnston said dealing with problem properties, from initial complaint to court injunction, can take up to a year.
He said the city has the authority to immediately evacuate a building when there is an imminent safety concern, such as a broken stair or exposed wiring, but none of those situations applied in the case of the Pandora house.
Looking back on the file, said Johnston, “there’s not a lot we would do differently than what we did with this property.”
Dan Mulligan, assistant chief building inspector in Burnaby, said his city only deals with one or two illegal boarding houses a year. But he often gets frustrated at how long it takes to resolve them.
“There isn’t a quick, expeditious way to deal with these things, in spite of the fact there might be some fairly significant hazards or risks to the occupant,” he said.
Mulligan said that like Vancouver, Burnaby starts with orders and then moves up to injunctions and demolitions. But the process can take years.
Mulligan said in cases of imminent danger, like exposed wiring, the city can take more immediate steps, like getting BC Hydro to turn off the power.
But that approach can backfire, because it may just encourage residents to bring gas-fired barbecues or candles inside for warmth and light.
Mulligan said the biggest obstacle to dealing with problem properties more quickly is that city bylaws — and those who enforce them — generally aren’t taken that seriously.
“I think the provincial government and councils are reluctant to give some bylaw officer or building inspector the power to start ordering buildings evacuated,” said Mulligan. “But the other side of that coin is: When you need it evacuated, who’s going to do it?”
cskelton@vancouversun.com
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