Housing advocates protest outside of hotel owner’s home

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WEST VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Three tents are now sitting on the boulevard along Hadden Drive in West Vancouver.  Protesters are camping out, not far from the home of a man who owns several Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels on the downtown Eastside, and is trying to buy two more.

Steven Lippman is among the bidders for a pair of run-down SRO hotels, to be sold through the courts on Wednesday.  Protester Ivan Drury helped set up the campsite near Lippman’s home, and says the landlord already owns other SRO’s where upgrades led to higher rents.
    
“We do need these buildings to be upgraded, but not at the cost of them being upscaled.  We need upgrades, but we need protections to ensure that they are upgraded for the people who need them the most, not for people who can afford to choose to live in other places,” says Drury, who suggests Lippman’s other buildings have seen rents rise from the $400 range, closer to $700 a month after renovations.  

The campers plan to stay till Wednesday, hoping to let Lippman’s neighbours know what he’s doing.

Gregory Williams says he will live outside to show them what Lippman is forcing some of Vancouver’s poorest people to do.

“People end up staying in housing just like this – or even worse than this since these are actually kind of nice tents – when developers buy up SRO’s and turn them in to student and young worker housing,” suggests Williams.

Geoffrey Howes, with Lippman’s Living Balance Property Investment company says the hotels they want to purchase are slums, and need major work.

He adds their plan is to upgrade the rooms as they are vacated, something he admits will increase the rents.
    
“A little bit more expensive, but only about $50 more a room, and anybody in the current rooms that doesn’t want their room upgraded will stay at that $375 rate, so we’ve never evicted anybody,” claims Howes.

He suggests the buildings have to be updated to meet the fire code, and extra washrooms are needed in one of them where he says a single bathroom serves 32 rooms.

Meanwhile, Drury says even if they wait for tenants to leave before making the changes, high turnover rates in SRO’s mean it won’t be long before most of the rooms are demanding rents that put them out of reach for people collecting welfare.

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