This time last year, several Marina Estates residents were on tenderhooks awaiting help that could mean the difference between keeping or losing their home.
A year later it turns out some were forced to sell while others were granted reprieve thanks to the Housing Protection Office (HPO) Reconstruction Loan Program.
The program distributed interest free loans specifically for leaky condo owners but had shut down before processing Marina Estates requests, leaving some owners with nowhere to turn to finance repairs at a cost of $50,000 to $80,000 per unit.
Residents whose applications were on the waiting list when the program shut down in July 2009 persisted, but only 21 of the 47 applications were approved.
To qualify for the loan, homeowners had to have inadequate savings or equity, or couldnt qualify for a conventional loan to pay for building repairs.
Based on this criteria, 26 Marina Estates owners did not qualify, said BC Housing senior public affairs manager Sam Rainboth, who reminds the community that the HPO was the lender of last resort.
Its unclear how many residents lost their home after failing to secure loans since Marina Estates strata council president Corey Lancaster refused to provide the information.
Im not willing to discuss how many people left their homes, she said. Obviously you can see in the paper that people have listed their properties for sale so obviously there have been some units sold.
Marina Estates resident Johnny Stork states on his blog he fought from day one, to get these repairs.
I haveamasseda huge amount of documented andirrefutable negligence which has cost us, the owners, dearly, he claims.
The many serious issues of misconduct, negligence andmismanagementstill need to be addressed if we hope to avoidsimilarproblems, and costs, in the future.
Lancaster said the huge costs associated with the repairs could not be foreseen.
Its not something that anybody anticipated that we would have to be spending so much money, its a hard thing to budget in for, people couldnt foresee that happening.
This despite a Chief article dating back to 2007 which quotes an engineering report claiming it would $4 million to fix the water damage due to building envelop failure.
At the time, strata council considered suing the District of Squamish for approving shoddy workmanship.
Lancaster wouldnt reveal what the total amount of repairs is now expected to be, nonetheless she said shes not dwelling on the negative.
Weve been very lucky I think you have to look at some of the positives when youre going through a situation like this, she said.
She said the successful applicants can give thanks in large part to the guidance of project manager Powerline.
We took their advice and went ahead with it [the application] anyways, said Lancaster.
We were able to secure funding for those people that qualified, we were the last or very close to the last complex in B.C. that was actually granted funding.
We were very, very fortunate that we had started the process and that we had hired these professionals to guide us through a completely unforeseen circumstance such as HPO shutting its doors.
Launched in 1998, the Reconstruction Loan program was meant to run for 10 years but lasted 11 years. It as supposed to distribute $250 million in trust free loans, and ended up approving more than $670 million for more than 16,000 households.
According to Ministry of Finance spokesperson Jamie Edwardson, the program was meant to provide assistance to owners who did not have the ability to pay for the cost of building envelope repairs in the coastal climatic zone.
Marina Estates reconstruction started in September 2009 and one of the buildings, the one closest to the water, should be complete by January. Lancaster said the entire complex should be done within a year.
