Tenants at the Sherbrook Inn say they’re scrambling after receiving eviction notices months after the new owner said he had no plans to kick them out.
The owner said Saturday the change comes after months of unpaid rent.
The inn was purchased in mid-May by Neil Soorsma, a businessman who has owned the Royal Albert Arms since 2019. He said in June he planned to create an “upper-scale” version of the hotel by refurbishing the bar, beer vendor and hotel rooms. He said he had no plans to evict tenants, telling CBC it was “just not right to treat people that way.”
RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES
The Sherbrook Inn was purchased in mid-May by Neil Soorsma, a businessman who has owned the Royal Albert Arms since 2019.
The West Broadway Community Organization said in a news release sent Friday afternoon that out of the 17 tenants living at the hotel when it was taken over by Soorsma, eight have been evicted in recent weeks and three others have received notices of eviction.
“We are truly blindsided to see the building owner take these actions” Kelly Frazer, the organization’s executive director, said.
“We call on the landlord to allow the tenants (to) stay and make arrangements for missing rent. Our organization will help tenants catch up on late rent payments and connect them to other income supports.”
The organization said long-term tenants have also served as employees at the hotel, providing front desk, maintenance and cleaning services without fair compensation.
“They ask how they are expected to keep up with rent payments if their landlord and employer doesn’t pay their wages,” the statement reads. “Tenants are planning further action through the labour board.”
Soorsma said all evictions were done through the residential tenancies branch and came after months of unpaid rent.
“Anybody that’s paid their rent is still living there,” he said.
The previous owners had allowed tenants to sit at the front desk or do maintenance work with hours banked toward their rent, he said. When he took over, he offered rent paid for odd jobs, but sent out a letter ending the practice in July, saying work was not being completed.
“I’ve gone out of my way to try and help them. It’s just they’re insistent on the status quo, and I can’t do that,” he said.
“It’s a business. We need to rent these rooms. I have obligations. People want their money on the other side.”
Holding tenants to account is part of his plan to change the Sherbrook’s prior dangerous reputation, he said.
“I’m trying to change things to the better,” he said. “I’m not saying everybody has to be stellar people, but we’re trying to move it up a notch or two and make it so that the people that live there are a benefit to the area.”
Among the tenants evicted is Michelle Dore, who moved into the Sherbrook Inn in December after being hired to do front desk work and maintenance.
After the end of January, she said the previous owners told tenants they couldn’t pay them and to bank their working hours, with their rents lowered accordingly.
Dore said when Soorsma took over, he said he wouldn’t be honouring that agreement, suddenly leaving many tenants without work or a way to pay rent.
“When Neil took over, he told us that he wasn’t interested in evicting people, because we were all worried he was going to come and kick all of us out,” she said.
Dore said tenants, including herself, quickly began receiving eviction notices for non-payment of rent.
It was a “nightmare” for tenants, some of which have lived at the inn as long as 15 years.
“There’s a few of us here that still have other income and things like that, that are actually helping people; we’re feeding people in the building,” she said. “There’s people here who don’t have food.”
She was given until this Friday to leave and has found another place to live. Other tenants plan to appeal the decision, including one who will present at the residential tenancies commission at a meeting open to the public Monday afternoon.
The situation has broken up a stable living situation for people who may become homeless otherwise, Dore said.
“There’s tenants who’ve lived here for 15 years,” she said. “We were a family, like a community.”
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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