Open letter to Richmond city council,
Re: “Older stratas starting to fall,” Feature, April 5.
I read with some alarm Coun. Carol Day siding with recent complaints from a small minority of owners in a strata seeking to redevelop , who complain the process was unfair.
It is a somewhat specious claim to call the process unfair as a provincial judge will be ruling on the fairness of the value to be obtained.
We are given to understand that their argument is that the city has allowed an increase in density and that such increase is the source of the unfairness or is instrumental in enabling an unfair process.
I have lived in a similar Richmond strata and served on a strata council of over 400 units for nearly 30 years.
We are involved in the very same process as we face an aging housing stock with limited access to capital for repair and maintenance. It is therefore, we think, a logical and beneficial process to proceed with redevelopment in order to make our way forward, instead of investing an increasing amount into an aging structure.
Recent changes to the provincial strata regulations aim to address this process by recognizing that this is a necessary process and that a small minority of naysayers are a destructive element who create unnecessary hardship by failing to participate in either planned maintenance to maintain value or in capital investments in upgrades.
We have been proactive and obtained an engineer’s depreciation report which tells us our expected costs to remain in place will (obviously) continually increase over time.
I am worried that council will take a position contrary to the argument upon which the changes to the strata act were based.
If council acts to require unanimous support from members, we will be pushed backwards into a process which will be impossible to navigate.
The end result will be that as our housing stock ages, we will reach a point where the stock degrades to the point where it will become unusable while bankruptcies will force the poorest of our members out of their homes. This is an inevitability, clearly contrary to the common good.
For decades, my colleagues, neighbours and I have attempted to balance spending with preservation of value. I feel certain that those who have attempted to refuse to pay for these ongoing investments are those same few who now cry foul over the redevelopment process.
All of our many homeowners, whether renters or owners, need to have certainty that the process will be both fair and certain, and that it will not be obstructed by council’s action.
I would like to feel some trust that the judicial oversight will be respected by council’s decisions.
Ewan Quirk
RICHMOND
