Signs installed advertising condos while tenants still living on Vancouver property
Joanne Lee – Young
The Vancouver Sun
Tenants were caught off-guard recently when giant signs advertising The Cut, a new townhome development project, were suddenly plopped in their front yard.
Charity Justrabo in front of her home at Nanaimo Street and Grandview Highway in Vancouver on Feb. 20. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG
Charity Justrabo and two other housemates rent an older home on the corner of Nanaimo Street and Grandview Highway in East Vancouver.
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They were caught off-guard recently when giant signs advertising The Cut, a new townhome development project, were suddenly plopped in their front yard.
“The person who was putting up the signs was very friendly and helpful and said, ‘I was actually told that nobody lives here,’ ” said Justrabo.
She got in touch with their landlord, which is Fabric Living, a Vancouver real estate development company. It apologized for not letting them know about the signs, sent a gift basket and the signs were removed the next morning.
Two of the signs are eight-by-eight-feet in size, and one of them is an imposing eight-by-16 feet and wraps around the property’s corner lot.
Justrabo snapped a photo and sent it to her family group chat. Her sister, who is involved with a documentary project about illegal billboards and corporate visual clutter, “really grabbed onto it in a way that maybe not everyone would have,” and she tweeted it.
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On Tuesday, Fabric removed the signs.
Vancouver city Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung said it’s always important to understand the specific facts of each situation.
However, the general interest in the signs can also be seen as “a symbol of those pressures in the rental market and the amount of change there has been in the City of Vancouver.”
“We do see at council that there are renters who are on month-to-month leases or even longer leases, but still are at more risk of displacement if they are in an area where there is a lot of development than if they were in a purpose-built rental.”
She advises tenants to be aware of their rights by reaching out to the city’s Renter Office.
Justrabo and her housemates had been renting the home from the longtime owner of the 2,500-square-foot, four bedroom, “single family home” that sits between the Commercial-Broadway and Renfrew SkyTrain stations. It was the kind of rental home where friends got wind of someone moving out and a vacancy being available from other friends, said Justrabo.
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Last summer, Fabric Living bought the home and a vacant lot across the street in a joint listing. That’s when the tenants started a month-to-month rent arrangement. The listing details state the current zoning, RM-12N, allows for a 3-1/2 or four-storey townhome or condo. There are also other properties on Grandview Highway that are listed for sale in a possible land assembly.
CEO of Fabric Living Jordan MacDonald described The Cut to Postmedia News as a project that will “bring more family oriented homes to this great neighbourhood of our city to service ‘the missing middle’.”
He said the company had told a third-party property manager that landscaping work would start on the properties so that signs could be installed, but “due to a miscommunication, only the landscaping work was communicated to the tenant by the property manager.”
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He said the signage contractor spoke of his own accord and was never provided any information by Fabric or its property manager that the property was empty.
Justrabo realizes the transformative changes that are coming into the area. After all, the lot across is vacant and there are more houses being listed for sale in potential land assemblies.
“But just talk to us like we’re people,” she said.
In describing how the signs on their front lawn had hit a nerve, the 33-year-old University of B.C. graduate student with a steady income said: “I think it’s the real lack of communication and feeling like the fact that I can’t afford a mortgage in this city really puts me down the ladder of interests.
“And, I’m someone who is stable compared to so many people in the city who don’t have a chance of that.”
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