HOUSING

HOUSING Tribunal orders strata to allow owner’s three cats

by Carlito Pablo

Townhome owner Jennifer Schlosser convinced the Civil Resolution Tribunal that her strata council is required to accommodate her need for three cats. Photo by Svetlanna Sultanaeva/Getty Images.

Jennifer Schlosser needed three cats since she was a teen.

She has an anxiety disorder, and the animals calm her. The pets prohis spouse have a right to keep the cats under provincial human rights legislation. That’s the Human Rights Code, wherein Section 8 states that no person should be vide her emotional support.

In 2020, her husband, Zackary Lenius, bought a home at a townhouse complex in the B.C. resort town of Sicamous.

Not long after the spouses moved in, the strata notified Lenius of a complaint regarding the cats. The strata corporation’s bylaws allow only one pet per lot.

Lenius responded by saying that he and denied service, accommodation, or facility on the basis of disability. The dispute eventually reached the online Civil Resolution Tribunal. In her reasons for decision, Kate Campbell, vice chair of the tribunal, noted that the CRT may or may not choose to resolve a row that involves the human rights code. Campbell exercised the discretion to decide the matter. And she did so in favour of the woman keeping her three cats.

The spouses provided a May 20, 2021, letter from a B.C. family physician identified only in the reasons for decision as Dr. McKeough. The physician wrote that Schlosser has a “diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder”. McKeough agreed with previous health care recommendations regarding her treatment.

“It is clear that her 3 cats are beneficial for her mental health, and that having to remove an animal would be significantly detrimental to her diagnosed medical condition,” the doctor wrote.

The spouses also provided a May 25, 2021, letter from a Saskatchewan family doctor identified only as Dr. Adetola.

The physician “diagnosed Ms. Schlosser with moderately severe anxiety disorder in summer 2020, and that Ms. Schlosser had obviously had the condition for much longer”.

Campbell accepted Adetola’s position that Schlosser had “found therapy” with her three cats, which she had used for a “long time since she was a teenager”.

“I find that the uncontradicted evidence of Dr. McKeough and Dr. Adetola establishes that Ms. Schlosser has a disability, for the purposes of section 8 of the Code,” Campbell stated. g

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Vancouver’s Olympic Village has finally landed a buyer. The property in the Canada House on the Water development sold for $8,350,000, which was well below its asking price last year.

The three-bedroom-plus-den condo listed on September 13, 2021, for $12,800,000.

This means that the sale price of 701–151 Athletes Way was $4,450,000 under its original price tag.

After failing to sell at the September 2021 listing, the luxury property returned to the market twice for a lower price, $9,988,000, in December 2021 and February 2022.

The eventual selling price of $8,350,000 was also below the property’s 2022 assessment. That current valuation of the property—which the listing agent RE/MAX Crest Realty says boasts of “breath-taking” water, city and mountain views—is $9,256,000.

Sotheby’s International Realty Canada specializes in luxury properties. In an April 13, 2022, report about the market for expensive homes in this country, the company noted that sales of luxury Vancouver real estate fell year-over-year in the first quarter of 2022.

In the first three months of the year, sales dropped 14 percent, to 99 properties priced over $4 million. Also, only three properties sold over $10 million during the same period compared to six properties sold in that ultraluxury price range in the first quarter of 2021.

Canada House on the Water was built on the south shore of False Creek in 2010. It formed part of the Olympic Village that housed athletes during the Olympic Winter Games hosted by Vancouver.

Canada House is composed of two buildings with addresses at 151 and 181 Athletes Way. The April 22, 2022, sale was reported on May 5.

by Carlito Pablo