Displaced tenants call for work to stop at UBC construction site [Video]

Displaced residents of a subsidized housing complex in Kelowna, B.C, are calling on the city to issue a stop-work order on the University of British Columbia-Okanagan (UBCO) downtown campus construction project after they were forced to evacuate.

Eighty-four residents of the Hadgraft Wilson Place building were ordered by Kelowna’s fire chief to leave their homes due to safety risks in their building last week. 

“It has been very difficult, everybody is nervous. There is tension,” said resident Monique Saebels, who shares an apartment on the fifth floor with her 89-year-old mother.

The apartment building, which houses people on low incomes and includes residents with physical and mental disabilities, is just metres away from a construction site where developer UBC Properties Trust has excavated an entire city block, several stories down to build a four-level underground parkade for UBCO’s $263-million Downtown Kelowna project.

The excavation is the largest in the history of Kelowna, according to the city, and in recent months the project’s impacts on neighbouring buildings have become apparent. 

There are several visible cracks on the inside …