A West Vancouver woman is reeling after an apartment fire has put her out of her home just days before Christmas.
Mona Barbour was returning home from lunch with friends Saturday afternoon when she saw the commotion outside her apartment on the 1400 block of Esquimalt Avenue.
“We were turning onto the block and I saw smoke – dark black smoke – billowing out,” she said “Sure enough it was my suite. It’s my bedroom.”
According to West Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services, the fire was first reported just after 3 p.m. It was contained to just one room but the damage was severe enough that Barbour has not been able to return.
The building is owned by BC Housing. Barbour, 50, has lived almost her whole life with partial paralysis. She receives disability payments but also works part time at London Drugs at Park Royal to make ends meet.
Now Barbour said BC Housing has told her she will not be able to return to the apartment she’s lived in for 20 years.
“They’re telling me that after they do the renovation, I can’t go back to my building,” she said. “I don’t understand why I can’t go back to my home.”
Barbour said she has been told there might be a suite available for her in East Vancouver but Barbour said that would cut her off from her whole life on the North Shore.
“I live and work in West Vancouver. I volunteer in West Vancouver,” she said.
“I’ve got to find a place to live and I’ve got nothing. I’m staying in a hotel a week before Christmas,” she added, holding back tears.
Crews salvaged some of her belongings, but as of Tuesday, Barbour had not yet had a chance to collect them,
Investigators were only just beginning their probe of the fire on Tuesday morning. Barbour said she has no idea what might have ignited it.
“The only thing I can think of is that I had extension cords and I had a night light,” she said.
Sadly, Barbour said she had been meaning to get tenant insurance but couldn’t afford it.
“I haven’t had a lot of extra money,” she said.
Barbour’s niece has set up an online fundraiser for her, which can be found by searching “Mona Barbour Needs Our Help” at gofundme.com. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had raised just more than $1,300 to help Barbour get back on her feet.
In a statement, BC Housing said it could not address the specifics of an individual’s case without the permission of the tenant but it referred to the usual process following a fire in a subsidized suite.
“BC Housing is aware of the fire and fortunately there were no injuries,” the statement read.
“In a situation like this, BC Housing would work with the housing provider and the fire department to determine when the unit would be safe to enter. If a tenant is displaced, BC Housing would work with the housing provider to identify temporary accommodation and send a message to all housing providers who use BC Housing’s Housing Registry to see if they have available housing.”
The agency currently subsidizes 1,300 units for low-income seniors and families in North Vancouver and 405 units in West Vancouver.
As of March 31, 2018, there were 11,974 applicant households on the Housing Registry for Metro Vancouver. Approximately 86 percent of the people with an application in the Housing Registry are already housed, but in accommodations that doesn’t meet their current needs, according to BC Housing.
