A senior faced with eviction from his Fairfield home has been told he’ll be able to stay in his apartment.
A representative from Brown Bros., the property management company for 575 Vancouver St., said at a Residential Tenancy Branch hearing Tuesday morning that the eviction has been cancelled.
Martin Twocock, 71, who relies on a pension, said the hearing was over within minutes and he was “delighted” at the outcome.
However, neither he nor his advocate, Emily Rogers from Together Against Poverty Society, were given a chance to ask how the evictions were served in error, which is what the landlord, Headwater Projects, told the Times Colonist last week.
“What bothers me is that lack of transparency,” he said.
Twocock said he’s been under an enormous amount of stress since the eviction notice was hand-delivered by a property manager at the end of May.
The notice asked him to vacate the suite by Sept. 30 so the landlord could renovate, and offered $1,500 plus one month of free rent if he vacated within 30 to 60 days.
The Together Against Poverty Society, a Victoria-based tenant-advocacy group, has raised concerns about several renovictions at two neighbouring apartment buildings, at 575 Vancouver St. and 1009 Fairfield Rd., since they were acquired by Headwater Projects in April 2017.
After Twocock shared his story with the Times Colonist last week. Vancouver-based Headwater Projects said eviction notices at both buildings were served “in error.”
A company spokesman said in an email the matter had been “rectified,” but did not respond to questions about what that meant for Twocock or how the errors occurred.
Jenny Uhrig, a tenant at 1009 Fairfield Rd., was given an eviction notice in May and fought it before the Residential Tenancy Branch, which decided last week that her eviction should be cancelled because the renovations can be completed without ending the tenancy.
Headwater also served mass eviction notices to tenants of a 32-unit building at 2626 Cook St. in January 2017, just months after it purchased the building.
“I hope this indicates a shift on how they intend to do business in our community,” Rogers said.
