SUNDAY

THE VOICE OF NORTH AND WEST VANCOUVER

Evictees protest decline

THAT THEIR DAYS
COULD BE NUMBERED

RESIDENTS OF a mid-Lonsdale area apartment block
staged a protest Friday to focus attention on what they say
is the death of rental housing in North Vancouver City.

Shan Williams said she and the
12 other residents of the Boscobel
apartment block at 201 West
Eighth St. were given 60-day evic-
tion notices Aug. 31 after the
apartment block was sold to the
Burnaby-based Mide Development
Ltd.

A company spokesman declined
Friday to comment on the com-
pany’s plans for the Boscobel, but
North Vancouver City has received
a proposal to build a 12-unit,
three-storey strata-title apartment
block on the site.

NORTH Vancouver City Ald. Bill
Belt ... ‘People being displaced
are noi able to find alternative ac-
commodations."*

Fred Smith, the city's director of
development services, said Friday
no building permit has been ap-
proved as yet and no demolition
permit issued for the Boscobel.

But on Friday the apartment's
residents hung a banner from the
Boscobel’s balcony announcing the
premature demise of rental hous-
ing on the North Shore,

Williams, who has lived at the
Boscobel for the past 24% years,
said Friday’s protest was not
directed at the development com-
pany or North Vancouver City
hall.

“It’s for people who rent,’® she

By TIMOTHY RENSHAW
News Reporter

said, ‘‘to let them know that their
days could be numbered. Rental
units are being sold, and they are
coming down left, right and cen-
tre.”’

Williams added that some of the
apartment’s residents will appear
Monday night before council to
b:ing the Boscobel situation to the
aticction of council, and ‘‘to try to
get some.hing passed by council to
get this type of thing stopped, so
developers cannot come in and buy
up rental accommodation, tear it
down and put non-rental up in its
place.’*

Ald. Bill Bell, who this week
raised the issue of displaced people
on the North Shore living in
squalid conditions along the city’s
waterfront, said that although the
city’s rental housing crunch is hav-
ing its most obvious impact on the
low-income end of the social spec-
trum, it is also affecting other
renters,

“All types of rental units are be-
ing torn down throughout the city
and being replaced by con-
dominiums worth upwards of one
half million dollars,’’ he said.
“People being displaced are not
able to find alternative accom-
modations.”’

The Bascobel tenants, he said,
‘are very upset and worried. Some
are unable to find rental accom-
modations while others arc now
facing a 100 per cent increase in
rent with an equivalent apartment,
up from $400 a month to $800 a
month.’”

A Sept. 20 News story chronicl-
ed the plight of several homeless
people living in a rat-infested con-
crete bunker on the city’s water-
front at the foot of Forbes
Avenue.

Two of the bunker’s occupants
were former residents of the low-
rent St. Alice and Olympic hotels,
both of which are being
redeveloped as luxury residential)
buildings.

. Van rental housing |

APARTMENT DWELLERS [
WARW OTHER RENTERS |

re

TENANTS OF the Boscobel apartments staged a protest Friday in an attempt to focus
public attention on the current rental housing squeeze in North Vancouver City. (Left
te right) Joe Maffei, Trevor Sunderbruch and Jehn Tomblin hung a banner and effigy
from the balcony of the mid-Lonsdale area apartment block, which was sold recently
to developers. ;

September 24, 1989 News 985-2131 Classified 936-6222 Distribution 986-1337 60 pages 25¢