A local social agency is co-ordinating an effort to help former Victoria Towers residents get the money they're owed after they were burned out of their homes in early November.
Active Support Against Poverty (ASAP) has been trying to file a group-based complaint to the provincial government's Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) to compel the building's owners, Pacific West Properties in Vancouver, to pay out rent and damage deposits.
However, ASAP manager Audrey Schwartz said proceedings have been complicated by the fact that some tenants have received cheques for their rent only, others for their damage deposits only and
others have received no refund at all.
Tom Durning of the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre in Vancouver said it's a common
predicament.
"Say you lost everything and I lost only a couch and a TV, so they can't join them up because they're not all identical," Durning said. "Now say the
swimming pool fell apart, that's something in common, then they can join the applications."
The same thing applies to rent.
"Maybe every rent is different," Durning said. "Some people are paying $500, some people are paying $400, so they have to go individually."
But Schwartz hasn't given up and she's encouraging former residents who have not yet filed claims to contact ASAP. Many have simply been too busy with other priorities to put up a fight.
"They're setting up new homes, some of them have home care coming to different places, they have to make different arrangements - they're trying to hang onto their daily lives," Schwartz said. "And these kinds of systems can really get you down."
Ken Biron, one of the 94 people who were forced out of the apartment block at 20th and Norwood by the Nov. 3 fire, was refunded $518 for the month's rent but is still waiting for his damage deposit.
"The attitudes of the landlords have not been anything that was respectable towards us," Biron said.
An attempt to reach Pacific West Properties' Vancouver office by phone was met with a message
saying the mailbox for its voice message is full.
