A bar owner in Vancouver’s Granville Entertainment District (GED) said he’s fed up after his club was flooded again from the supportive housing in the former Howard Johnson Hotel above, and this time, he was shocked at what he found when he tracked the water.
Alan Goodall told Global News he arrived at Aura at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 24, to find water pouring down in front of his main bar.
Goodall said he called Community Builders, which operates the provincially-owned Luugat single-room occupancy (SRO) building, to see if it could source the leak.
After approximately two hours, Goodall said the housing operator couldn’t determine where the water was coming from, and so he went upstairs with the plumber and night manager.
“We found the leak within 30 seconds,” recalled Goodall.
The plumber, he said, discovered an overflowing toilet in a first-floor unit, which also contained evidence of hoarding.
“This was like months of build up,” the Aura owner said in an interview. “We’re talking two to four feet of garbage or hoarding garbage or however you want to describe it, but it was right up to the door.”
Goodall said the room had no bed, and the conditions inside made it uninhabitable.
“For me, it’s just frustrating,” he said. “If we do some quick math here, the province paid $55 million for this building, divide it by 100 rooms – that’s $550,000 a unit – and this unit was basically being used as a storage room.”
“It’s horrific,” said BC Conservative interim leader Trevor Halford. The fact of the matter is that the province is operating like a slum landlord.”
Halford recently toured Aura and spoke with Goodall about the ongoing challenges he’s experienced as the ground-floor commercial tenant in the BC Housing building.
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B.C.’s Housing and Municipal Affairs minister said the housing operator is doing its best to support residents with high needs and vulnerabilities, and denied the province is a slum landlord.
“I don’t agree with that,” Christine Boyle told Global News in an interview on Tuesday. “These are challenging conditions, of course, in a building that wasn’t purpose-designed as supportive housing.”
Goodall, who said he pays an average of $30,000 in monthly rent, said he was forced to close early on Friday night due to the latest flood.
“It’s absolutely critical that I am able to earn revenue on the weekends,” he said. “I’ve been dealing with this for six years now, so it’s incredibly frustrating.”
After enduring more than 200 floods since the province purchased the former hotel in June 2020 to house people from encampments, Goodall said he now has full-time drying equipment at the ready.
Still, he said, it doesn’t rectify the damage to drywall and electronics.
Goodall said a number of Aura’s LED walls and speakers in the ceiling no longer work, while pot lights above the bar have popped out.
“I have numerous areas around the club that haven’t been fixed, and it’s been months now,” Goodall told Global News.
“They’re taking a loss of income because the province is failing to meet its obligations as being a landlord and that to me is unacceptable,” Halford said in an interview Tuesday.
Boyle said BC Housing will be assessing the damage related to Aura’s latest flooding event to determine if there’s necessary compensation, as it has done in past incidents.
“I don’t know the specifics yet of the costs and damages of this flooding incident and so we’ll get those details and then there will be work to look at what compensation is needed, understanding the challenges this business owner is facing,” Boyle told Global News.
Boyle added she understands the business owner’s frustrations, and it’s why the province is working to relocate Luugat tenants to good, stable, alternative housing.
Last November, the provincial government announced the Luugat would close by the end of June.
Boyle said she’s optimistic that deadline will be achieved and as of Tuesday, more than half of the original 80-plus tenants have been relocated, while a number of other tenants have been offered alternative housing.
There is still no timeline for the closure of two other provincially-owned SROs, the Granville Villa and the St. Helen’s Hotel.
Vancouver Fire Rescue Services told Global News that recent fire inspections show fire and life safety systems are being maintained in the Luugat at 1176 Granville Street, although inspectors do not go inside individual rooms.
Despite an April 9 fire, Deputy Chief Justin Mulcahy said the overall fire safety condition continues to improve as the building is being decommissioned as an SRO, with tenants only residing on the first and second floors.
“As occupancy has decreased, we have observed a corresponding reduction in fire incidents at this address,” said Mulcahy. “Specifically, there has been a 60 per cent reduction in fires with damage in 2026 when compared to the first quarter of 2025.”
As for the resident living in the unit above Aura where the most recent flooding originated from, Boyle said the operator is working with them to address “cleanliness issues” in their unit.
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