They just put it in a while not even a month ago and it really stinks.
My name is Jack Gates. I've lived here for four years, since 2014, and my room number is 216.
Jack gates is one of scores of people who live at the Regent Hotel in
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The hotel is one of several properties owned by the Sahota family.
The Sahota's have taken everything.
They're being treated like they're not people. They have no rights here, we have no rights.
The Sahota's are three reclusive elderly siblings who own and operate
some of Vancouver's most derelict housing. The Regent is one such property.
It's an SRO, or single room occupancy building, where tenants share communal
bathrooms and other facilities.
There's prostitution. There's squatters.
If they're not renting it out to the prostitutes for $60 or whatever for a
couple hours, they're putting people in in the rooms to, renting it to people
that just want to smoke a little bit of drugs and then go home.
For years the Regent has been the subject of complaints about substandard living
conditions. Last December, the City flagged nearly four hundred and thirty
by law violations at the building. Such violations are the norm for the Sahotas,
who own five Vancouver SROs. For decades the family has tended to ignore violations.
We shouldn't even be in that room if the toilet doesn't work properly or whatever.
It comes down through our ceiling into our bathroom.
We just had this all washed up up and then they tried plastering it to make it look good,
but now the stains are all coming back out.
Housing advocates say that owners like the Sahotas get
away with providing deplorable living conditions because the City doesn't want
to shut them down, forcing people out onto the street. As Vancouver wrestles
with a housing affordability crunch, privately owned SROs such as the Regent
have become the housing of last resort for some of the most vulnerable people
in the province. That includes many who are living with mental illness or
substance abuse disorders.
The nonprofit Atira Development Society took over
management of the Regent in February.
If you come in here there's
quite a bit of black mold, the ceiling has collapsed.
The Balmoral, another SRO owned by the Sahota's, sits across the road from the Regent.
The City forced it to close in June of 2017 over safety concerns.
Atira has recommended to the
City that the Regent also be closed. They say the building is too far gone and the
repairs needed are too extensive to do while the building is occupied.
I would say there's at least 60%, 70% of rooms in this almost exact or worse shape.
According to property records, the Sahotas acquired the building in 1989 for
1.5 million dollars. Its assessed value in 2018 is twelve point two million dollars.
In total the Sahota's own some 40 pieces of real estate in and around
Vancouver, mostly rental buildings, worth an estimated 218 million dollars.
Vancouver has wrestled for years with how to force owners to make repairs at
such rundown properties. The City has been hesitant to do repairs and then
bill the owners, saying the risk of owners never paying was too great.
Neither does the City want to take ownership of the properties themselves,
inheriting huge repair bills in the process.
There's a noticeable scent of excrement and, you know, that sort of thing.
Local contractors like Ben Afful were approached by the Sahota's to do work on the Balmoral.
He quoted them one point six million dollars last August to repair the basement, main floor bar and
dozens of rooms at the building, but he never heard back.
For me I'm thinking, you know, I can leave and go home but for someone who lives there,
That's their everyday, and it's amazing that people are able to stay in an environment like that.
There we go.
This is where some lucky former residents of dilapidated
SROs end up. Terry MacDonald was a resident of
the Regent until April. Now he lives at a renovated SRO that is also managed by Atira.
It it feels safe in this one. Like there's not
people walking around getting the halls and lobbies and stairwells and that.
Back at the Regent, Atira is making do with patchwork repairs while the City decides
the fate of the building, and its residents.