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Get outside for a movie and music HOY CREEK CO-OP FIRE
FRIDAY, AUG. 5, 2016 Your community. Your stories.
TRI-CITY
NEWS
Fire hits as development on hold Hoy Creek Co-op is waiting for an OK from CMHC GARY MCKENNA
The Tri-CiTy News
A fire in an abandoned unit of the vacant Hoy Creek Housing Co-op in Coquitlam is re-igniting discussions concerning the future of the Glen Drive property. The blaze broke out shortly after 5 a.m. Wednesday, damaging the upper floor and balcony of one of the empty townhouses. Electricity has been cut for months and Hugh Tait, the volunteer president of the society that oversees the property, said the fire was likely caused by someone who had entered the building during the night. “It didn’t start spontaneously, let’s put it that way,” he said, adding that keeping the building secure has been a constant problem. “It doesn’t stop. We are boarding them up every day. Every day we re-board and every night they open them up.” Wednesday’s fire is only the
most recent problem to hit the co-op. Neglect, bad plumbing and leaky condo rot have made the 60 townhouse units uninhabitable and the last tenant moved out over a year ago, according to Tait. There are still 30 occupied units in an apartment building facing Glen Drive but everything on the northern portion has been boarded up. There have been plans in the works since 2012 to sell a portion of the property to a developer and use the profits to build two new, five-storey buildings that would house approximately 160 seniors and families. But the project has been stuck in bureaucratic limbo and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), which pays the mortgage on the property, needs to approve the proposal, said Tait. He noted that even knocking the buildings down, which was supposed to happen this summer, requires CMHC to sign off, and funding issues have hampered any progress on the development.
GARY MCKENNA/THE TRI-CITY NEWS
see CITY WORKING, page 6
Hugh Tait, president of the society that oversees the Hoy Creek Co-op in Coquitlam, says plans have been in the works for four years to tear down the vacant units where there was a fire Wednesday, sell a portion of the property and use the money to build new housing.
MISSING WOMEN’S INQUIRY
PoCo judge to head national inquiry SARAH PAYNE
The Tri-CiTy News
Judge Marion Buller of Port Coquitlam.
FILE PHOTO
The federal Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls announced this week will have
C O N TA C T
a Port Coquitlam resident and provincial court judge at the helm. Chief Commissioner Marion Buller, the first female First Nations judge in B.C., will be joined by four other commis-
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sioners in the two-year inquiry to examine the systemic causes behind the violence that Indigenous women and girls experience. “Judge Buller is a person of great moral character whose
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work I respect and admire,” said Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, as she introduced commission members Wednesday.
see ‘SURVIVORS’ LOSSES’, page 3
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