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Almost a year after the City of North Vancouver shut down an illegal rooming house on East 11th Street, the municipality has filed another petition in court seeking an order to force the same owner to deal with a second problem property just a few blocks away.
The city filed documents in B.C. Supreme Court June 13 seeking an injunction that would force North Vancouver owner Celine Goh to deal with illegal changes to a house at 378 5th Street East, which the city alleges have flouted local and provincial bylaws and safety regulations.
Problems at the house on the corner of 5th Street East and St. David’s Avenue go back two decades, according to court documents, and have resulted in numerous complaints from neighbours.
Illegal electrical work carried out
Among the allegations are that the home has been divided into seven separate units, that construction of interior walls, electrical and plumbing work has been carried out without permits and that rooms with padlocks on the outside doors and cooking facilities have, at various points, been used as bedrooms without an adequate escape route in the event of fire.
“No lawful suite has ever been applied for or approved in the house,” according to the municipal court petition, and some of the unpermitted work has created “serious health and safety hazards and fire hazards at the property.”
At various times that has included using portable space heaters without adequate clearance, plugging appliances into power bars and “supplying power to an accessory building with interlinked extension cords.”
Rooming house has caused disturbances
Use of the property as a rooming house at various times has disturbed the neighbours and resulted in many complaints to both the bylaw officers and police, fire and ambulance, according to the legal documents, for a range of problems including “assaults, disturbances, drug-related investigations, thefts, overdose calls, outdoor burning.”
The city says since 2011, the owner has also allowed “garbage, discarded furniture, bedding plywood, bicycles and bike parts and shopping carts” to accumulate on the property.
The list of problems at the 5th Street house are strikingly similar to those listed in a nearly-identical petition filed over another illegal rooming house previously owned by Goh at 462 11th Street East.
East 11th rooming house property vacated and sold
In that case, after the court petition was filed last year, Goh sold the property at the end of August to a developer for $2 million. The city helped tenants who had been renting at that rooming house find other accommodation. The new owner has since applied to subdivide the lot and build two new narrower, taller houses on it.
Paul Duffy, bylaw officer for the City of North Vancouver, said prior to the sale of the property on East 11th last summer, both houses had been the subject of “numerous complaints” from neighbours, spanning many years.
More recently, the number of tenants believed to be living in the 5th Street house has been scaled back to one or two, said Duffy, and a Quonset hut that had previously been used as an additional rental unit in the back yard has been removed.
But the city has not been able to determine if safety hazards stemming from unpermitted changes inside the house still exist, he said.
“We expect the property owner to work with us,” he said. “I’m hoping that this gets resolved in the next couple of months.”
North Vancouver RCMP acknowledge there have been a significant number of calls to the neighbourhood at various points in time.
“I’m not denying the obvious,” said Const. Mansoor Sahak, spokesman for the North Vancouver RCMP. “We are actively working with our partners.”
Owner hasn't decided what to do
Contacted by the North Shore News, Goh said she hasn’t decided yet what she’s going to do about the property.
Some of the problems have been caused by tenants or squatters in the house that she has no control over, she said.
“People are so crazy,” she said. “I just cannot deal with it. It’s so stressful.”
Goh said she’s owned the property for more than 40 years, but hasn’t decided whether to address the issues in the city’s petition or sell the property.
The property currently has an assessed value of $2.24 million. The house, built in 1910, is assessed at just a $10,000 value.
