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The judges reserved their decision for a later date.

Two months after Gates’ suit was filed over the Regent, Gratl launched a similar class-action suit on behalf of residents of the Balmoral Hotel, another Sahota-owned SRO across Hastings Street from the Regent.

Meanwhile, 150 Balmoral residents are trying to figure out where they will live after the Monday deadline set in last week’s evacuation order by the City of Vancouver, which cited “imminent danger” in the building due to extreme disrepair.

Wendy Pedersen, tenant organizer with the DTES SRO Collaborative, said outside court on Thursday that Balmoral residents started hearing this week that the Sahotas would offer compensation packages to displaced tenants. Residents had been told to expect notices outlining details to be slipped under their doors on Thursday, she said, “but there’s lots of unknowns.”

The proposed class-action lawsuits over the Regent and Balmoral are the first of their kind in B.C., said Doug King of the Pivot Legal Society.

In 2011, King filed an action on behalf of residents of two SROs in the Downtown Eastside, the Wonder and the Palace Hotel. However, that was filed with the tenancy branch, and not before the Supreme Court.

Though that action was successful in getting compensation for some tenants, he said Thursday “we felt we were very limited by the structure and statutory framework of the Residential Tenancy Act.”

“In our lawsuits, it was hard for the tenants, who really had to each put themselves out there as an individual and fight their individual claims. With a class action, it allows an already vulnerable group to band together and be represented as a class rather than have to fight a landlord as a group of individuals, and in theory the Supreme Court could order a lot more in terms of compensation,” King said. “If the Sahota lawsuit is certified as a class it could be a really positive step in organizing tenants against deficient landlords.”

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