A Whalley residential development project once again came before council on May 12, along with a public hearing where residential tenants being displaced by it told the politicians they're being left homeless.
The owner is a numbered company, 1353580 B.C. Ltd., with the agent listed as RBI Group of Companies.
This time, the applicant sought an Official Community Plan amendment for the property at 12951 and 12975-106 Avenue from urban to multiple residents and rezoning to permit a development consisting of two six-storey residential buildings featuring 10 secured non-market rental, 58 secured market rental and 70 market strata dwellings above two levels of underground parking.
Council granted this latest request third-reading approval with no debate following the public hearing on May 12, same as it did during a related where renters at Kwantlen Park Manor expressed fear about losing their homes to this development.
The May 12 public hearing was basically a sequel.
Patricia Harrison, speaking on behalf of the tenants, told council seniors, people with disabilities and "the working poor" are worried about the destruction of "their homes, for their family and children. When these buildings go down, in particular now with the Kwantlen, we are leaving huge gaps. Where will they go?
"They need to be able to have rents they can afford. And so many of them end up in the streets because they cannot afford a replacement rent to the ones of buildings you are giving permits to tear down," she told council.
"I would like to see that you have more laws 鈥� actual laws and not just suggestions 鈥� to companies of what they need to provide. Maybe they need to be building, as well as what they want, a low-income maybe six storeys of a low-income building that these people would have available to them when they are evicted and before the building is destroyed."
"People are losing their homes," Harrison told council, "so please, with your hearts, think of this as people not a building. Their homes, and families."
Kayla Watson of ACORN, a renters' advocacy group, said Kwantlen Park Manor was home to 31 families, with most paying rent much lower than can be found "than in any apartment you can find in this area today. And once again, Surrey city hall is voting to displace the tenant families from their neighbourhood.
"What's the point of having policies protecting tenants if they're repeatedly not followed and council votes over and over to approve development applications anyway?" she asked. "There's still time to make this right and listen to your constituents, which are Surrey families who live, work and raise their kids right here in this neighbourhood who want to be able to stay here."
A single mom told council she doesn't have anywhere to go. "It is true half of the building already left, but we are half still there."
She said she calls BC Housing every day for hope and is told, she said, "You have to wait, you have to wait.
"I came to Canada to work hard for my kid, for me, but I don't come here to depend on the government. I don't want to do that, but if I have to 鈥� well, if they accept me because I'm still on the waiting list, right."
A woman who said she is a disabled senior citizen and also has disabled children told council she will be homeless as of May 31. "I cannot find anything affordable," she said. "I will be forced out of Surrey 鈥� I've lived here for 32 years, I have two disabled children living with me and we will all be on the streets.
"B.C.'s pushing me out. I was born in B.C. My kids were born in B.C. My parents were born in B.C. and right now the most affordable place I can go is what, Nova Scotia? Across Canada. This is ridiculous. I'm being forced out of my home, 32 years, to live on the street. So what, I can be killed my other homeless people? It's not fair."
