Squamish Nation hopes to develop it but first it must be cleaned up, and that’s where the problem starts

David Karp
Sun

It’s prime waterfront land in North Vancouver worth well over $100 million. But it’s not teeming with overpriced condos and luxury townhomes. It’s sitting empty.

The federal government has a long-term lease on the 22-hectare property with the Squamish First Nation. But the land is seriously contaminated, with complex legal battles brewing over who is responsible for the cleanup.

In 1974, the federal government signed a 71-year lease with the Squamish. It wanted to build a Pacific Environment Centre and coast guard base on the site, just to the east of the Lions Gate Bridge.

But changing government priorities meant the government cancelled those plans, leaving the land vacant. Then, in the mid-1990s, the government made a disturbing discovery: the land was toxic with heavy metals.

A MESSY BATTLE

Over the last 35 years, the federal government has spent $124 million of taxpayer’s money on its lease with the Squamish First Nation. It has spent another $31 million cleaning up the property. But despite numerous warnings and political commitments over the years, the land is still contaminated and unusable.

It took the federal auditor-general three years to point out that the land was sitting vacant. In 1984, the auditor-general flagged the problem a second time, and recommended an alternative use for the land.

In 1988, the auditor-general again brought the problem to the attention of Parliament, noting, “The Bureau of Real Property Management … is now coordinating the efforts of the departments involved to expedite examination of the alternatives and an early resolution of the matter.”

Tests in 1995 and 1996 determined that the land was toxic, rendering it impossible to develop even if the government could find a use for it. Since then, there have been many promises to clean up the land.

In 2005, then-environment minister Stephane Dion told CTV, “We have made a lot of progress to the point where today I may say, give us three to five years and we will make the site usable.”

Conservative candidate Cindy Silver made the cleanup an election issue in North Vancouver in 2005. Peter Krahn, who was in charge of the site for Environment Canada for years, made it an election issue again in 2007 when he ran for the Conservatives.

But despite the numerous political commitments to clean up the land, the site is still a mess, caught up in a tangled web of court cases and finger-pointing.

The issue stems from the Vancouver Wharves site, a cargo terminal next door to the Pacific Environment Centre lands.

Most of the Vancouver Wharves site is not on the property leased by the federal government. However, when it took over the site in 1974, the government subleased a 10-acre portion of its Pacific Environment Centre land to Vancouver Wharves.

In 1993, BC Rail purchased the Vancouver Wharves operation, acquiring the sublease with the federal government in the process. The Crown corporation used the subleased portion of the lands as a rail yard for trains that transport ore.

The federal government alleges that ore spilled during the loading and unloading of those trains, resulting in contamination of the Pacific Environment Centre land. In 2002, the federal government launched a civil court case against BC Rail and Vancouver Wharves, seeking damages for the contamination. In 2004, the federal government launched another court case, attempting to evict BC Rail from the chunk of land it was subleasing.

“Spillage of ore concentrates has caused contamination of the shallow soil all along the rail lines and in other areas,” Stanley Feenstra, a hydrogeologist from Ontario, wrote in an expert report submitted to B.C. Supreme Court.

“Soil quality criteria for commercial/industrial lands … were exceeded in every shallow soil sample … and were exceeded by factors of 100 times to 4,200 times for many of the samples. Soil quality criteria for lead, cadmium, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, molybdenum and selenium were exceeded also in many samples.”

Officials at BC Rail declined to comment on the allegations.

“It is probably one of the most costly [federal sites in B.C.] to clean up. I’m not sure if I could say it’s one of the most hazardous,” said Vic Enns, Environment Canada’s remediation manager for the Pacific Environment Centre site.

The 2004 case was settled out of court in August 2007, with BC Rail agreeing to vacate the Pacific Environment Centre site in June of this year and pay an undisclosed sum to the federal government for rent. The parties are scheduled to return to court in February 2010 to address any remaining issues.

But the 2002 case over who should pay for the cleanup is still unresolved.

According to BC Rail’s 2007 financial statements, the parties reached an agreement in principle in February 2008. “The [agreement] will form the basis of the negotiations of a final agreement that is to be negotiated over the next 12 months,” the documents said.

But 12 months have come and gone, and no settlement has been reached. Officials with Environment Canada refused to comment on the delay. BC Rail corporate secretary Shelley Westerhout Hardman would only say, “The date for concluding a final agreement was extended by mutual agreement. As for the reasons, the matter is before the courts and … BC Rail will not be commenting further.”

The legal action appears to be preventing open dialogue about the site.

“There’s a court action, and everyone is going to choose their words very carefully,” said Squamish First Nation Chief Gibby Jacob. “When it comes to legal activities, everyone is told, ‘The less you say, the better — especially to reporters.'”

One thing is certain, however. The government has spent $3.9 million on legal costs so far, and that number can be expected to rise as the fight continues.

Small steps forward

However, some progress with the cleanup has been made. In 2007, with BC Rail looking to unload assets, the Vancouver Wharves site changed hands. Texas-based Kinder Morgan, a publicly traded energy transportation company, signed a 40-year lease for the site with BCR Properties Ltd., a subsidiary of BC Rail.

The agreement cost Kinder Morgan $40 million and required it to take on “unspecified liabilities,” The Vancouver Sun reported in 2007.

Kinder Morgan’s lease covered the main Vancouver Wharves site, as well as the small subleased portion on the Pacific Environment Centre land. However, with the sublease expiring in June as a result of the 2004 court case between the federal government and BC Rail, Kinder Morgan has been building a new rail yard with modern environmental controls.

“There is a containment area that’s been installed. This is a new piece of rail that is replacing the old piece of rail … [so we can] move off the Pacific Environment Centre site,” said Lexa Hobenshield, manager of external relations for Kinder Morgan.

“Technology and care for the environment have come a long way since the site was originally installed. We’re using the latest environmental standards to do that work.”

Kinder Morgan signed a 10-year agreement in December with multinational consulting firm Arcadis. The company will assist Kinder Morgan in cleaning up the contamination on the main Vancouver Wharves site. However, Hobenshield stressed that Kinder Morgan would not be involved in any cleanup of the federal government land, including the subleased rail yard it inherited from BC Rail.

There has also been progress on the government’s end. In 2007, Environment Canada spent $500,000 to clean up 1.2 hectares of the 22-hectare property. However, it was an area with some of the shallowest soil contamination on the site. The cleaned-up area is fenced off from the rest of the property to ensure it doesn’t become contaminated again.

“That’s the first area on the property that has actually been taken completely to the final cleanup stage,” Enns said. “As it becomes vegetated, it will become used like other wild spots along Burrard Inlet. Used not by people, but by critters — birds and small things can get in there. But we just want to keep people out for now.”

The federal government has also remediated two other, smaller areas on the site.

Watching and waiting

The Squamish First Nation has been patiently watching the federal government’s actions. When asked if he was happy with the progress the government has made, Chief Jacob chose his words carefully.

“Happy is subjective,” he said. “I’ll acknowledge the work that has been done to date. I think there are probably not a lot of options that were available other than what they’ve done.

“They are doing an awful lot of work,” Jacob said. “They’ve made the site like a Swiss cheese, identifying where all the hot spots are, and taking very good steps.”

The federal government has presented the first nation with a plan for cleaning up the land, but neither the federal government nor the Squamish Nation would provide details. When asked if the Squamish would help pay for the cleanup, Jacob replied, “Absolutely not.”

“All I can say is that we’ll hold everybody’s feet to the fire on this,” Jacob said. “The issue is between Environment Canada and BC Rail right now, and as such, we’re best to leave it in their hands. If we are not satisfied at the end of the day, then we’ll look at all of our alternatives. Certainly, our dog isn’t in this fight right now.”

Enns sees a different picture.

“I don’t think anyone is sitting back, personally. The key parties are all very engaged at trying to bring this to a conclusion,” he said.

So far, the Squamish have been patient. After all, it is a 71-year lease. But the Squamish want to develop the land when the lease ends in 2045 — or earlier, if the land gets cleaned up and Environment Canada negotiates an early end to the lease.

The first nation’s Capilano Master Plan has the Pacific Environment Centre site pegged for high-density residential development such as highrise apartments.

“We’re always looking at development. We’re a nation of land developers,” Jacob said. “Right now, we have nothing firm, but obviously we’re not going to let such valuable land sit there fallow. We will want to develop that at some point.”

Enns estimates it will take about five years to clean up the land, once a full-scale cleanup starts. That doesn’t include years of monitoring that must take place after the cleanup is complete to ensure no spots were missed. However, no one is actually willing to put a time line on when the full-scale cleanup will start.

“There are some important stakeholders, like the Squamish, who have to have input into [the cleanup],” Enns said. “And until we complete those discussions, we won’t be able to give a definite time frame.”

Enns chuckled when asked if the cleanup will ever get done. “Definitely,” he said. “It will get done.”

In the meantime, the Squamish will continue to receive hefty lease payments on the land. The payments are renegotiated every five years based on the land’s market value, and the two sides are in discussions over the rent for the next five years. The last appraisal of the land’s value was conducted in 2004, pegging it at $117.6 million.

The lease payments are a significant source of revenue for the Squamish. The money goes into the Squamish Nation’s general revenues, and also helps fund a $1,000 payment made each year to every member of the first nation.

Until the land is cleaned up, the federal government will continue to hand over cheques to the Squamish without receiving anything except the use of an empty, toxic chunk of land in return.

But down the road, if the land isn’t cleaned up, the government will have a fight on its hands with the Squamish.

“We’ve fought many battles … so we’ve been out there protecting our land and trying to get it cleaned up,” Jacob said. “We don’t sit back and wait for others to tell us what to do. We get out and be very proactive on it.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

 

Metro Vancouver charts increase of 89-per-cent over same time last year

Derrick Penner
Sun

Home sales in the Lower Mainland burst out of their long slump in July as first-time homebuyers, lured by lower prices and rock-bottom interest rates, flooded into the market.

Both Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley real estate boards reported record home sales for the month of July.

Metro realtors racked up 4,114 sales through the Multiple Listing Service in July, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said Wednesday. That’s an 89-per-cent increase from July 2008, when sales were just headed into the doldrums.

The price of the typical single-family home in Metro hit $711,702 in July, down 5.5 per cent from the same month last year but 10-per-cent higher than at the beginning of this year.

It was a similar story in the Fraser Valley, where the real estate board saw 2,089 MLS sales in July, a 62-per-cent increase from the 1,284 sold in July 2008, and a little higher than the previous record of 2,051 in July 2005.

The price of a typical detached home in the Valley reached $477,420 in July, down almost six per cent from a year ago, but up almost four per cent over the last three months.

Paul Penner, president of the Fraser Valley board, said 37 per cent of buyers in the July market were first-timers, compared with 33 per cent in June.

“That volume creates a significant ripple effect as the sellers of those homes move up,” Penner said in a news release.

Jake Moldown, president-elect of the Vancouver real estate board, concurred.

He said first-time buyers who entered the market during the boom a couple of years ago now feel comfortable moving up the property ladder.

“They understand what a mortgage is and they’re comfortable with their payments, and now they’re looking to step up,” Moldown said.

Vanessa Brown, a library technician at Langara College, is one of those buyers.

She traded a one-bedroom condo at 56th Avenue and Fraser Street in Vancouver, which she bought five years ago for $123,500 and recently sold for $196,000, for a $365,000 two-bedroom unit at Seventh Avenue and Main Street.

“I figured when the market dipped a bit, even though I would be sacrificing a bit of money on the sale of my apartment, I would have more to gain as I moved up the market,” she said.

Moldown said the strength of sales in recent months has been surprising, but he believes the overall market is stabilizing.

Tsur Somerville, a real estate expert in the Sauder School of Business at the University of B.C., said there are signs of more stability in the overall economy, but it is difficult to see the pace of sales continuing at peak levels.

“This is a very, very high level, and [long-term mortgage] interest rates have already started creeping up,” Somerville said.

“It’s a wonderful, positive statement about people’s outlook for where things are going,” he said, “but it’s hard to put together the set of circumstances where sales of this level are sustainable and persistent.”

However, Somerville said there are few signs that the market will collapse again “without some substantial shift in [mortgage] rates.”

B.C.’s employment picture, especially in Vancouver, has shown signs of stabilizing with the addition of more full-time jobs in recent months after a period of losses, said Carol Frketich, regional economist for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp..

The big question is whether high sales levels are sustainable, Frketich said. “That’s yet to be seen until we see that labour market more solid.”

Frketich it’s now a seller’s market in some areas, with inventories falling as sales rise.

In Vancouver, the number of active listings is down 34 per cent from the same month a year ago, and now stands at 12,482 units.

Sellers put 5,041 new listings on the market in July, a 17-per-cent decline from July 2008.

The inventory of unsold homes also shrank in the Fraser Valley, declining almost 23 per cent from record levels a year ago to 9,510 active listings in July.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

4,114 residential properties sell last month — a record for July

Andy Ivens
Province

The real-estate market in the Lower Mainland is cooking once again.

Despite the gloomy economy, 4,114 residential properties were sold last month in the area covered by the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver — a record for the month of July.

The total outpaced the 4,023 sales in July 2003 — the only other time July sales exceeded the 4,000 mark, according to data compiled by the REBGV.

“We’re at historic lows for mortgage rates, and there’s been a pretty good price correction,” Richmond realtor Jake Moldowan told The Province on Wednesday.

“If you look at prices from a year and a half ago to today, they have corrected.” Housing prices last month were higher than at the beginning of 2009, but still below their July 2008 level.

The benchmark price for all residential properties in Greater Vancouver increased 9.2 per cent to $528,821 in July from $484,211 in January, said the REBGV.

But home prices compared with July 2008 levels were down five per cent.

“December, January and February were three of the toughest months we’ve had,” said Moldowan, who also is president-elect of the REBGV.

“In the last three months, the market has stabilized. Our sales-to-listings ratio is very good and that tells us we’re in a balanced market.” The REBGV said, on average, it takes 48 days for a home in the region to sell.

“We look at anything of 60 days or less as a decent market,” Moldowan said.

He cautioned not to place too much stock in the year-over-year numbers because there tend to be pockets of hot and cold in the marketplace.

“When you take a look at Port Coquitlam that only had 22 sales [of detached homes] last [July], and now they have 74, you have a huge upswing” of 236 per cent, he noted.

“You have to take that with some perspective; it was so tough before.” Moldowan said that shows the importance of having a local realtor who is finely tuned in to his or her specific market.

He said the overall market is getting a boost from an influx of first-time buyers.

The demand created by first-time buyers has fuelled a market of “people who are already in are stepping up to something larger,” said Moldowan.

The positive trend was recorded in the Fraser Valley as well.

The area saw the highest number of real-estate transactions ever recorded for the month of July.

There were 2,089 sales processed on the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board’s Multiple Listings Service, an increase of 62.3 per cent compared with the 1,284 sales in July 2008.

The FVREB’s previous highest July was in 2005, with 2,051 sales.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Stephanie Armour
USA Today

Scores of homeowners who thought they’d cut a deal with their banks to sell their houses for less than their unpaid mortgages are seeing those agreements fall apart months later, contributing to the mounting foreclosures that threaten the housing market’s recovery.

The sales of homes for less than the amount owed the bank, known as “short sales,” have been widely viewed as an alternative that could help slow the foreclosure epidemic. In theory, delinquent homeowners escape a mortgage they cannot afford, and lenders, although taking a loss, avoid the even costlier process of completing a foreclosure.

Instead, many homeowners are watching potential buyers walk away as months pass while they deal with lenders’ lengthy delays, lost documents and unreturned calls, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Not all the snafus are lenders’ fault; inexperienced real estate agents who fail to turn in complete paperwork also are causing holdups, as are severely underpricedhomes.

The problems have become such a kink in the market’s recovery that banks and the federal government are launching new efforts this month to simplify and speed up the short-sale process.

Just 23% of short-sale offers that homeowners receive from potential buyers actually close, according to a February study of 1,300 real estate agents by Campbell Communications. More than 90% of agents cited a slow response from the lender as the reason short sales were lost.

“The delays are quite extensive and a real problem. It’s a serious issue,” says Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com. “You’re seeing a lot of short sales go bust, and it’s contributing to the crisis because it’s one of the reasons foreclosures continue to mount.”

Jorge DeMattos, 45, just completed the short sale on his home in Pembroke Pines, Fla. — a process he and his real estate agent, Edward Goldfarb, say took 17 months and eight separate offers.

DeMattos began pursuing a short sale after he was laid off two years ago and his income plunged from $46,000 to $26,000 a year.

Chase Bank, his mortgage servicer, rejected the first offer, which was $14,000 over what was then fair market value, according to Goldfarb.

On the next seven offers, the bank took months to respond. Each prospective buyer got tired of waiting and canceled the contract. The eighth offer, accepted in May, was $24,000 less than the first one that Chase rejected in February 2008, Goldfarb says.

“Chase made it very difficult. I had to stop paying the mortgage. It was so frustrating,” says DeMattos, who now lives with his sister in Kissimmee, Fla. “We would put the paperwork in, and they would never give a definite answer. Buyers waited for months.”

DeMattos says he owed $355,000 on his mortgage. The short-sale price was $225,000.

Christine Holevas, a Chase spokeswoman, says earlier offers on the home weren’t accepted because they were significantly below the appraised value and the homeowner didn’t send in updated financial information.

No longer uncommon

Short sales once were extremely rare. But now, with unemployment climbing and home values down, more homeowners are pursuing short sales when they can’t afford their mortgage. About 11% of all sales transactions in June are such short sales, according to the NAR.

Some delays stem from agents who fail to prepare buyers and sellers for the length of time it takes to get a short sale approved or who supply incomplete information to banks.

But many short sales are faltering, largely because some lenders may lack the internal staffing, expertise and systems to process such sales in a timely fashion. And short sales can be complex, especially if they involve home-equity lines of credit or other second liens held by different lenders, who also must agree to take less than the amount they’re owed from a home’s sale.

Several lenders acknowledge that banks have been part of the problem, in part because most have done so few short sales in the past that they’ve faced a steep learning curve.

“About half of short sales never close. We see it as a big lost opportunity, and we need to improve the rate we close them,” says David Sunlin, vice president in charge of short sales at Bank of America.

Uncompleted short sales that go to foreclosure are costlier for lenders and homeowners. For lenders, a short sale may save as much as 30% of the expense incurred by going to foreclosure.

For homeowners, a foreclosure wreaks longer-lasting damage to their credit records. A homeowner who has gone through a short sale typically can get a new home loan in one to three years, according to the NAR. A foreclosure usually means it takes seven.

Borrowers are expected to pay their mortgage during the short-sale process, but not all can afford to. That leads to abandoned properties that may sit vacant and deteriorate for months. In other cases, homeowners unable to make their payments may stay put and pay nothing, in some cases for up to a year, until the lenders’ review-and-approval process plays out.

Large numbers of uncompleted short sales are especially troublesome, because other efforts to stem foreclosures have been less effective than expected. The Obama administration’s housing rescue plan, which includes getting banks to rework home loans into more affordable mortgages, has made such slow progress that representatives from 25 major mortgage servicers were called to Washington, D.C., last month to discuss improving the efforts.

Short sales are moving into the national spotlight now as:

•Mortgage servicers ramp up their programs. Bank of America has begun trying to slash the turnaround time on short sales from up to 90 days after a buyer submits an application to just a week. In a typical short sale, a buyer makes an offer, then the bank conducts appraisals to determine the price it will accept. Setting that price can take so long that would-be buyers may walk away. To try to avoid such delays, Bank of America has begun doing appraisals and determining a minimum price it will accept before a home goes up for sale.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo has created a real estate agent education guide that explains the process, has increased staffing and has set up procedures to handle short-sale requests and explain the process to homeowners. The bank says it has cut its average turnaround time from offer to approval from up to 90 days to about 30.

•The U.S. government is getting more involved. The Treasury Department soon will detail a plan to streamline short sales by providing standardized documentation and cash incentives to lenders and a moving allowance to homeowners.

Treasury has said that servicers have opted to pursue foreclosures instead of short sales because of the complexity and time required to complete the discounted home sales.

Borrowers who complete a short sale will be eligible for $1,500 to help with relocation expenses. Second-lien holders will get up to $1,000 to relinquish their claims in such transactions.

Eligible homeowners can be accepted through Dec. 31, 2012, but the short-sale program is for those unable to get mortgage modifications from their banks.

“We realized we couldn’t reach everyone with a modification. For us, that wasn’t the end of the story,” says Michael Barr, Treasury assistant secretary for financial institutions. “The alternative is to significantly speed up short sales.”

No authoritative figures on short sales’ completion times are available, but some research indicates the problem is worsening.

A survey in March 2008 by Campbell Communications found that the average time for a mortgage servicer to respond to an offer to buy a short-sale property was 4.5 weeks. Campbell‘s follow-up survey in February found that the average response time had doubled to nine weeks.

A third survey in June found the response time was 9.5 weeks. The surveys were sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication.

“The foot-dragging means it’s taking six weeks to six months,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the NAR. “There are big delays. The review process is taking way too long.”

‘We had a learning curve’

Lenders say the approval process takes time because there are so many parties involved. Some bank officials say they’ve been learning as they go.

“We had a learning curve,” says David Knight, senior vice president for Default Retention Operations, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. “Any stakeholder has a right to disapprove the sale. Realtors out there were used to regular sales. Now, all of a sudden, the servicer and Realtor have had to learn a lot.”

Some real estate groups also are trying to improve the process. Re/Max International Chairman David Liniger says his company is aggressively working to train agents on handling short sales and other so-called distressed properties. Instead of eight weeks to close a short sale, trained agents can get them done in two to four weeks, he says.

Within the real estate industry, hopes are rising that short sales will become a shorter process.

“It’s horrible the amount of time it’s taking to do these sales,” says Valerie Torelli, who owns Torelli Realty in Costa Mesa, Calif. “It happens all the time that short sales fail and then go to foreclosure. A seller doesn’t make payments for a year and then just walks away. It’s unbelievable.”

Government action sparks scramble for alternative funding

Wendy Mclellan
Province

The B.C. government’s abrupt decision to cancel interest-free loans for owners of leaky condos has left thousands of people without the financing to fix their homes.

Housing Minister Rich Coleman announced the end of the reconstruction-loan program on Friday, just before the B.C. Day long weekend. The program was cancelled the same day.

“This is going to be a huge crisis for people who haven’t had their buildings repaired yet,” said Tony Gioventu, executive director of the Condominium Homeowners Association.

“We’re scrambling right now to find some kind of alternative funding for strata corporations, any option so people aren’t risking their homes.”

The government’s reconstruction program was set up in 1998 as part of a Homeowner Protection Office. The program provided interest-free loans to owners of poorly constructed strata units so they could have their homes repaired.

It was a loan of last resort — to qualify, condo owners had to have been turned down by a financial institution.

Owners repaid the loan based on their financial capability — seniors could defer principal payments until the property was sold.

The government paid for the program through a $750 fee charged on every new residential unit, and even though loans will no longer be granted, the fee will continue to be charged “for some time” to pay administration costs and loan interest on outstanding balances.

In the press release announcing the end of the loan program, Coleman said the slowdown in residential construction has reduced the amount collected for the reconstruction program. He said the province has approved more than $670 million in loans through the program and has helped more than 16,000 people repair their leaking homes.

But the province has thousands more strata units still to be fixed. The government program covers condos built between 1982 and 1999 and according to a 2007 report prepared for the Home Protection Office, about 42,000 strata apartment units with “major problems” remained unrepaired as of Sept. 30, 2007 — and that doesn’t include leaky townhouses and row houses.

About 160,000 strata units were built during this period and the report estimates about 20 per cent had been repaired.

The report also says the demand for the loans would grow as the cost of repairs continues to increase as more concrete buildings show signs of leaking.

Gioventu said homeowners will face foreclosure if they can’t pay the special levies required to repair leaking buildings.

“There was no warning about an end date — that’s what’s really difficult,” Gioventu said yesterday.

John Grasty, co-founder of the Consumer Advocacy and Support for Homeowners Society, said the government knows the leaky-condo problem isn’t over and cancelling the loan program will devastate people.

“They had the report two years ago and they didn’t put plans in place to make sure the program was sustainable — somebody dropped the ball,” Grasty said.

“The cost of repairs is three times what it was 10 years ago. I have no doubt there will be thousands of bankruptcies and foreclosures.”

Facing an $81,000 bill to repair her apartment in Sidney, Gwen Bell couldn’t contain her tears as she explained the disaster looming for her and the other homeowners in the building.

“We’ve all had many, many sleepless nights,” said Bell, 66. “If I can’t get the loan, I don’t know what I’ll do. You can’t sell it like this.”

Bell said the 14-unit apartment building was assessed more than a year ago, but the engineer’s report and cost estimate of about $1.3 million arrived just a couple of weeks ago. The strata council was waiting for some of the owners to return from holidays to pass the special assessment needed to pay for repairs. The paperwork that would allow owners to apply for the no-interest loans was to be mailed in the next few days.

Bell said only two unit owners still work and a couple of owners are in their 90s. Owners will each have to pay $80,000 to $100,000 to rebuild the outside walls of the wood-frame building.

Bell is hoping a protest rally outside the legislature Aug. 25 will bring attention to the plight of leaky-condo owners and convince the government to reinstate the loan program.

“This is so scary,” she said. “I paid off my apartment when I retired and I never dreamed this would happen. We’re like a family here.”

Coleman was unavailable yesterday, according to a ministry spokesman.

© Copyright (c) The Province