‘A drop in the bucket’: New support for tenants forced from B.C. tower, but is it enough?

Tenants of RidgeView Place in Langford were ordered out of the building for the second time in four years after the city revoked the 90-unit building's occupancy permit on Monday.

Residents of a Vancouver Island apartment complex that’s been declared unsafe to live in for the second time in four years got a small piece of good news Thursday — but some say newly-offered supports won’t go far to helping them out of a crisis.

Tenants of RidgeView Place in Langford were ordered out of the building after the city revoked the 90-unit building’s occupancy permit on Monday, following a report from an independent engineer that found structural safety issues.

“I disassociated really quick, because in that moment it’s fight or flight,” tenant Nic Roach told Global News. “So we chose fight and just started packing and focused on next steps, where are we going from here because that’s all that’s under our control right now.”

Building owner Centurion Apartment Properties initially offered residents $1,000 in “compassionate assistance.”

In the wake of public outcry, the company has raised that assistance to $2,500. The city and provincial government have now also agreed to cover five days of temporary supports for evacuated residents, including food, lodging and transportation.

“This is not long-term. This is to get people right now, who are between insurance or whatever reason don’t have money for hotels, this is to get them through this next short period,” Langford Mayor Scott Goodmanson said.

“We hear so often that provincial governments are slow and it takes forever for things to get done. I can tell you that there were multiple meetings at multiple times at once with different individuals in these groups to get this pulled through.”

Just days before Christmas in 2019, residents of the then-nearly new building — formerly named Danbrook One — were handed a similar evacuation order.