An elderly blind couple say they don’t know where or how they’ll live if B.C. Housing pushes forward with a plan to evict them from Vancouver’s Little Mountain social housing complex.
Speaking with a group of Little Mountain’s last remaining tenants on Monday, Sammy and Joan Chang said that B.C. Housing wants to force them out of their longtime community in order to make way for a high-priced condo development that likely would not break ground until mid-2014.
Sammy Chang, 75, said his eviction date of Oct. 1 is within two days of a scheduled surgery.
Joan Chang, 69, said that when she moved to Little Mountain in 1974, she still had her sight, and her lifestyle here can’t be replaced anywhere else. “If they kick me out, how will I find my way around?” she wondered. “I know this area real well.”
The 1950s-era housing complex, which was home to 224 low-income units, started to wind down in 2009 after land was sold by the province to a private developer.
Holborn Developments has proposed to replace the social housing units in a project including market condos and retail outlets, in a plan that has yet to be approved by Vancouver city council.
The Changs said they have been fighting pressure to leave Little Mountain since 2009, when hundreds of residents were evicted.
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Along with other tenants, including Karin Nicoletti and Ingrid Steenhuisen, they claimed that B.C. Housing coerced other tenants to leave by telling them replacement home options will be limited if they wait, or that construction on the new development is imminent.
“There is nothing wrong with the buildings,” Steenhuisen said. “B.C. Housing keeps saying things that turn out to not be true.”
Speaking for the tenant group, former NDP MLA David Chudnovsky said the Little Mountain complex’s six hectares should have been kept as a community asset.
“We need affordable housing that regular people that live and work in the city can use,” Chudnovsky said. “There can be a reasonable plan for redevelopment here, and the first step is letting these tenants stay in their units.”
McMann said the remaining tenants have been offered a number of housing options, “all of which have been rejected.”
According to McMann, returning residents of Little Mountain will eventually be given the first right of refusal on new social housing units on the site.
The residents face a Residential Tenancies Act hearing with B.C. Housing on Tuesday.
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