People displaced by a massive fire in Vancouver’s Gastown could be moving into new housing as early as Monday.
Seventy-one people lost their homes when the fire tore through the Winters Hotel at Water and Abbott streets last Monday, many losing everything they owned.
Several businesses, along with a women’s shelter and a single-room-occupancy (SRO) hotel had been operating from the building.
“I’ve lost everything, and I walk with a cane and I have to walk around all day from seven in the morning to six at night with nowhere to sit,” Winters Hotel resident Doug McInnes told Global News on Saturday.
“Emotionally, (I’m) not good. I spend my days kind of just concentrating on what I need to do, but having a four day long weekend doesn’t really help, because the government agencies, everything is closed.”
The majority of those displaced by the fire will now be offered long-term housing in a property at 303 Columbia Street purchased by the Atira Women’s Society in February and renamed “Tawow,” a Cree word meaning “welcome” or “there is room.”
CEO Janice Abbott said the organization had taken possession of the property last month, and had been doing maintenance on it since then.
Crews had stepped up efforts and worked through the long weekend to make the building available as soon as possible, she said.
“Assuming we find no big issues today, which at this point it doesn’t look like we’re going to, we’ll start moving in tenants tomorrow,” Abbott said.
The original plan had been to use the building as women’s housing starting this summer, but “obviously those plans have changed,” Abbott said.
“There’s many difficult things about what happened on (Monday) but probably one of the lingering ones being uncertain about where you are going to go, so the ability to be able to provide people certainty in such a short period of time seemed like the right thing to do.”
Unlike many SROs, the building has a pair of common kitchens and dining rooms that Abbott said will allow people to cook their own meals.
The rooms are also generally larger than in the Winters Hotel she said. The facility will be staffed 24/7, and rents at the property are capped at the welfare shelter rate of $375 for an individual or $570 for two people.
Abbott said a few of the older displaced residents have already been housed elsewhere, but about 65 people from the Winters are expected to move into the Tawow.
The official cause of the fire has yet to be released, but fire crews said Tuesday it appeared to have started on the building’s second residential floor and moved up from there.
The aftermath of the fire has also caused havoc for Gastown businesses, with several still inacessible due to safety concerns.
The city says Water street will be closed to vehicle traffic between Carrall and Abbott streets for at least five weeks.
— With files from Emad Agahi