East Van seniors hosting block party to protest renoviction

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A group of East Vancouver seniors are hoping a long weekend block party will help save them from renoviction.

73 year old Dutch Robinson and upwards of 60 other seniors will take to their street south of the PNE on Saturday to rally the neighbourhood behind them.

“We’re just going to make a lot of noise tomorrow and make people feel some love for us so we can stop this crime,” he says. “It’s a crime what they’re doing to us.”

Robinson has lived at Alice Saunders House for six years and says he doesn’t want to lose the friends he’s made or the home he’s able to afford.

“I like it here a lot, I like the people. We’ve made some very good friends. We depend on each other here and it’s going to be a sad thing to see us all have to leave and split up,” he says. “We’re pretty sad about it and we’re hoping that people come out and help us on Saturday to retrieve our dignity and to hold on to what we have here by any means necessary.”

Brightside, the company that runs the building, says the residents are not being renovicted, the process in which tenants are moved out to make way for renovations and are forced to pay higher rents if they want to move back in.

“Our current residents are our priority and are not being renovicted,” the statement says. “While redevelopment will require temporary relocation, we are supporting our residents in every way we can during this process. All residents will be welcomed back once the redevelopment is complete, and residents who chose to return to the new building will pay rent in accordance with our existing rental policy. That is, rents will be established in line with income as they are now, not market rates.”

Robinson says the residents have reached out to the city for help in preventing their eviction but haven’t had much luck.

The block party and rally are taking place at 2924 Venables St. on Sat. May 18 from 2 to 4 p.m.