Infamous Langley boarding house closed

At least 20 people are being evicted from one of Langley’s most colourful homes, which has been cited for fire code violations.

The Langley City fire department’s fire safety inspector gave the home’s owner 60 days to address a number of fire-related safety concerns.

Tenants have been given until June 5 to vacate the house at 196 Street and 60 Avenue.

“Why couldn’t they wait until the Gateway of Hope was built?” said Karen Reid, who shares caretaking duties at the home with her partner Mike Hunniford.

“These people all have to go somewhere, and most will go to the streets.”

The couple has worked hard to maintain order and clean the place up as best they can over the past two years since they took over site managment.

“The people on disability here don’t know where they are going to go. One guy’s talking about buying a tent,” said Hunniford. “We were just starting to get this place together. It’s a sad day.”

The massive home, that could be more than 80 years old, is rumoured to have once been a brothel and an illegal after-hours drinking establishment. It was also home to former City mayor Joe Lopushinsky, when he was in office between 1987 and 1993.

The house had been owned by his mother Celina Lapka, a well-known business women, who left the house to her now-deceased son Richard in her will. It was embroiled in an 18-year legal battle over ownership, which led the five other siblings, including Joe, to contest it.

With its mazes of stairways, doors, hallways and rooms, some of Langley’s most-marginalized individuals have lived at the boarding house, as have criminals and drug addicts over the past 20 years.

A permanent garage sale exists on the lawn where resident chickens can be seen along with the comings and goings of many people. At the back of the property, there used to be the remnants of stolen and stripped scrap metal before Hunniford cleaned it up.

Police regularly visit the house. It has been a draw for homeless people, as well as metal scrap thieves and violent and non-violent drug addicts and dealers, Hunniford said.

“Some of the people here won’t leave when the eviction is up,” Hunniford warns.

He suggests the home be demolished immediately following the eviction, otherwise someone will either torch it or strip it.

One tenant wonders if there is any historical value to the home. She points to a trap door in one of the bedrooms, believed to be used for bootlegging to the States in the days of prohibition.

Langley’s homeless outreach worker Fraser Holland said the boarding house served a great purpose, as a between step to stable housing.

“Regardless of what people think of the place and the people, along with the people kicked out of the Horse and Rider, that’s now 22 housing units that don’t exist in Langley anymore,” he said.

Holland has not been able to find housing for most of the people who were kicked out of the apartments above the Horse and Rider Pub on 208 Street. due to a multitude of safety issues. Some are now living on the street, others are couch surfing.

“By shutting this place down [the boarding house] it moves one problem to all over the place. I’m working with some of them, but I just don’t have that many places to house these people,” Holland said.

One tenant with multiple mental disorders has no idea where he will live.

The City fire department told Hunniford that there needs to be firewalls between the one-bedroom units on the top floor.

“The owner of the house tried to get it up to code but it’s just going to cost too much,” Hunniford said.

Last week someone stripped the electrical box for the copper inside.

“It’s not always ‘poor homeless,’ ya know,” he said. “Some of the homeless have come here to live and destroyed the place. I had one guy here stealing grave markers. Two years ago this place was a 24-hour chop shop. with a stream of bikes and trailers coming in full of stripped wire.”

He cautions the Salvation Army about the kind of people they are going to be dealing with.

“They are going to have their hands full.”

The owner of the house wasn’t available for comment when this story went to press.