The owners of a West Vancouver home who built a 1,500 square foot structure at the back are now taking the District of West Vancouver to court.
The district ordered the 1,500-square-foot building to be demolished in July because it was constructed without permits.
The owners blamed the builder for not obtaining the permits and said there is no evidence that the building is unsafe.
“It seems they want to try every possible angle to correct what was really quite an obvious misstep,” West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager told Global News.
Shortly after purchasing the property in 2021, the B.C. Supreme Court petition claims the homeowners hired the original developer to build a gazebo to replace a smaller gazebo in the backyard, and understood he would obtain all the necessary permits.
The builder, who claims he’s owed nearly $150,000, told Global News that he walked away after the gazebo was 30 per cent complete because the owners failed to obtain permits.
“We got screwed over,” Kamran Gerami, owner of the house, told Global News. We trusted a reputable builder to build it and he screwed us over.”
Gerami added that they were not trying to build the second property without permits.
“The builder who built the home said he would get the permits,” Gerami said.
The homeowners allege the district breached its duty of fairness by refusing to grant an adjournment of a council meeting that their lawyer was unavailable to attend, and by relying on a new staff report and a now-repealed building bylaw.
“The impugned decisions and reconsideration decision were based on the fundamentally flawed July 2025 report, which referred to and relied on the 2004 building bylaw, but cited the provisions of the 2025 building bylaw,” the petition to the B.C. Supreme Court states.
Sager said the entire issue is disappointing.
“Always hate seeing the taxpayers have to spend money unnecessarily,” he said. “Honestly, for the people who own this property, I just don’t see how they could win this.”