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“She said it is shocking and totally unacceptable from a human rights perspective,” said Swanson. “She was pretty horrified.”

Jack Gates, a resident of the Regent Hotel who met Farha when she visited the building on Tuesday, recalls how his room had no heat or hot water all last winter, prompting him to take his complaints to the Provincial Residential Tenancy Branch, where he was awarded $1,675 for his suffering.

Gates said Farha described the Regent’s hotel conditions “as something you would find in the third world.”

The Regent is owned by the Sahota family, who have a real estate empire worth more than $130 million, a Postmedia News investigation in July discovered. Tenants in the family’s single-room occupancy hotels have been complaining for years about poor living conditions.

Gates is part of a class-action lawsuit launched last month against the Sahota family and the City of Vancouver alleging deplorable living conditions.

He has filed a 14-page lawsuit against Parkash, Pal, Gurdyal and Kirin Sahota along with Triville Enterprises Ltd., Yang-Myung Hotel Management Ltd., Sahotacorp.

The suit says the City of Vancouver is also named as a defendant due to its responsibility for the administration of the Standards of Maintenance Bylaws.

Gates is seeking general, special, aggravated and punitive damages. He is asking for $200 a month for the time he had no heat or hot water. He is also asking for punitive damages against the landlords.

The United Nations has had workers tour the Downtown Eastside in the past. In 2007, special rapporteur on adequate housing Miloon Kothari visited the area and took a tour of Insite, the safe injection facility on Hastings Street.

At the end of his visit, Kothari said there was a housing crisis that would only improve with help from all levels of government.

jcolebourn@postmedia.com