A North Vancouver man is lamenting the eviction of his tenants after the District of North Vancouver enforced the shutdown of his rooming house.
The District of North Vancouver, however, states the home is a safety risk.
Dan Moscrip bought the home on the 1600 block of Bowser Street in 2014. It had functioned as a rooming house under the previous owner for about 10 years, he said. Moscrip paid his down payment, and got a mortgage based on rental revenue the home was already bringing in.
Since then, he has shared the home with six other men who each pay $460 or $650 a month in rent. But when Moscrip applied for a permit to upgrade some electrical work, district staff told him it was illegal to have tenants and that the home had unpermitted work done to it in the past.
“As soon as we went for the permit, they just sunk their teeth into it,” he said.
Moscrip said he wanted to resolve the issue with the district. He received a stack of papers needed to apply for a rezoning that would bring the home into compliance but district staff warned that it would take upwards of a year to get it before council and there was no guarantee council would agree. In the meantime, he’d likely have to evict his tenants, he said.
“I asked ‘How do I get a building permit for something that’s 20 years old? And when he picked the phone up off the floor after laughing so hard, he said ‘I’ll check that out and get back to you,’” Moscrip said.
The fines for bylaw infractions were stacking up, and Moscrip, who had had a heart attack and triple-bypass surgery, put the house up for sale.
The evictions take effect today, Sept. 1.
Moscrip said that he’ll be OK financially after selling the home but he worries for his tenants. With vacancy rates below one per cent, finding a new home is extremely difficult, and at those prices, impossible, he said.
He’s particularly concerned for Rick Davies, who spent 40 years working as a carpenter on the North Shore but now lives on a disability pension. He’s already been evicted twice in two years due to apartment sales.
“I’m going to be homeless again,” Davies said. “One arm of the government gives you a pittance to live on, then the other one kicks you out so you’ve got to live in a ditch. It’s bloody ridiculous.”
Davies said he’s looked but there’s nowhere on the North Shore that he can afford. His family has lived here for more than 100 years, he added.
Davies said he feels like it’s part of a deliberate effort to push low-income earners out.
“All these rich people, they’re really going to be sorry when there’s no one to take their money at the gas station, no one to serve them their dinner and mix them their drinks, to make their beds and clean their rooms at the fancy hotels,” he said.
Moscrip said he hopes someone will come forward and offer up reasonable accommodations. In the bigger picture, Moscrip said he feels the district’s policies and enforcement may be exacerbating the affordable housing crisis.
“It’s really sad that the district doesn’t want to allow mini-rooming houses. Their mind set is that people live in houses and apartments and anything else is wrong,” he said. “They don’t want to use that housing stock in a manner which could make it more functional and more efficient.”
District spokeswoman Stephanie Smiley said the house wasn’t compliant with area zoning and the illegal work posed safety concerns.
“The district does allow rooming houses but not in areas that are zoned single family,” she said. “It’s important to remember you get permits when you do that kind of work to ensure the work is done to a certain standard. Any time work is done without permits, it’s potentially a cause for concern and in this case, we have real safety concerns for those residents.”
