Chass Duff is still living with his partner in a shed he built in his parents’ backyard a year after fires left the former Travellers Inn apartment building on Queens Avenue uninhabitable.
The shed is next to a chicken coop, with an extension cord from the house providing electricity.
The 43-year-old, one of 60 tenants left homeless by the fires, said the couple can’t find an affordable rental because of the tight housing market.
His son lives in the small house on the property with his grandmother and step-grandfather.
The couple receives $1,440 monthly from B.C. disability pensions and pays $450 monthly rent to Duff’s mother, who is working.
After the fire, Duff and his partner, Sarah, lived separately in shelters. But he said they don’t want to live in new downtown housing projects around people using drugs, since they’ve been clean for about two years.
“This whole year has been the hardest struggle I’ve ever had,” said Duff, adding that as far as he knows, only eight people from the building have found homes. Mostly “elderly and [needing] care,” they were singled out for priority help, he said.
Duff lived at the former Travellers Inn at 760 Queens Ave. for only eight months, paying $825 a month for one room before the first fire on March 20 last year and another the following day.
He said there were problems, such as flooding from a toilet that constantly backed up on the floor above, but he liked the location — it was close to community services that benefited Sarah.
“We thought this was a great stepping stone to a better place. I had a great job, too, in property maintenance.” Duff said he lost the job because of the trauma of the fire, and homelessness affected his ability to get a new job.
While Victoria police continue to investigate the cause of the fire, the damaged property remains boarded up and tenants are still waiting for 10 days of rent to be returned to them, along with security deposits.
Victoria’s Together Against Poverty Society helped four former tenants negotiate monetary awards through the B.C. Residential Tenancy Branch for the refund of their security deposits, but none has received the money owed, said TAPS executive director Kelly Newhook.
Marginalized people are expected to go to provincial court to get the order enforced, said Newhook, adding TAPS must rely on lawyers donating their time and expertise for that to happen.
Even when a Residential Tenancy Branch arbitrator makes an order for payment — in this case from building owner Robin Kimpton — the branch cannot enforce its own order, said TAPS tenant legal advocate Yuka Kurokawa. In contrast, the B.C. Employment Standards Branch has the power to enforce its own orders.
Other provinces have stronger tenancy protection. In Manitoba, if a landlord refuses to comply with rent-related orders from its rental tenancy branch, the branch is able to register its order with a superior court “and garnish wages or bank accounts or file a lien against property the landlord owns,” the legislation says.
B.C. Assessment Authority pegged the former Travellers property as worth almost $3.6 million as of July 1, 2016. Even with major fire damage, the buildings on the site are valued at $590,000.
Thirteen of 85 suites were destroyed in the fire, while others were heavily damaged by smoke and water.
Last June, the Victoria Fire Department completed its investigation, determining the first fire at 11:59 p.m. March 20 had been deliberately set. The cause of the fire at 7:21 the following morning was undetermined, said assistant chief Steve Meikle.
Victoria police major crimes unit continues to investigate.
A witness reported seeing someone running from the scene, and a stack of mattresses next to a truck carrying combustibles was deemed to be the source of the fire. As the fire grew, it spread to the truck and rolled up the north wall of the apartment building and onto the balconies.
There was no electrical outlet in the vicinity of the source and no trace of accelerant, Meikle said. “This was an intentional act by a person or persons unknown.”
Part of the Queens Avenue building could have been salvaged had rehabilitation begun right away, Meikle said.
Tenants had to wait 10 days after the fire for Kimpton to have a generator installed to allow light in the hallways for a few hours a day, for a few days only, Duff said. Tenants had to find their own light source to retrieve their belongings from their units.
One of five signs on the building’s front window lists a phone number for Belfor Property Restoration, described on its website as “the leading global restoration and repair company.” The head office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, did not respond to a request for comment.
While media reports last year estimated $1 million in damage, Meikle said the department has not arrived at an estimate.
“We’ve been waiting to hear from the insurance companies,” he said.
Handed a list of questions outside his Victoria residence Tuesday, Kimpton told a Times Colonist reporter: “Don’t hold your breath.”
