SeniorS houSing in jeopardy
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Why it’S good to be a little denSe
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gaS priceS riSing to record
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Friday
April 4 2014 www.burnabynewsleader.com
next week is national Volunteer Week. Find out how to get your kids thinking about making a contribution. see page A10
Mayor talks State of the City Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
WAndA ChoW/neWsleAder
telford avenue resident Samara najei is among parents at Maywood school concerned about their affordable rental housing possibly being lost to future highrise condo developments.
Maywood families fear displacement Councillor says there’s little city can do Wanda Chow
wchow@burnabynewsleader.com
Samara Najei has lived the life of a refugee. That’s when her family escaped Iraq in 2006 for the relative safety of Syria. Now she’s concerned she could end up a refugee again, this time from her beloved Maywood community in Burnaby.
Najei, 34, is among parents at Maywood Community School who wrote to Burnaby city council asking for help in keeping their affordable rental homes. Their concerns are mounting with each rental complex that’s torn down to make way for a highrise condominium tower. “We’re like a pen of sheep. They don’t know which will be the next,” she said in an interview. The two-bedroom apartment on
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Telford Avenue is the only home her family has known since they arrived in Canada in 2008. With two adults and four kids aged three to 10 years, it’s smaller than she’d like but she makes the best of it. “I love to call it a nest,” she said. After all, their options are limited. She and her husband are both trained electrical engineers in Iraq but those credentials aren’t recognized here.
So her husband works as a technician in an office supply store while he tries to get certified here. And Najei looks after the kids, one of whom suffers from a heart condition. They pay $1,050 a month but know that if they needed to find a new place, it would be at least a few hundred dollars more. That’s if they can find another place like theirs. please see only subsidies, A4
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For Burnaby city hall, partnering with senior governments can be a double-edged sword that it needs to scrutinize closely. Mayor Derek Corrigan made the point in his annual State of the City address at a Burnaby Board of Trade luncheon at the Delta Burnaby Hotel Wednesday. Corrigan said many initiatives, such as with non-market housing and health care, require cooperation from senior governments. In the past year, Burnaby has partnered with Fraser Health and Burnaby school district to improve community health and prevent chronic diseases. And it launched a program with the province and United Way to provide housekeeping and transportation to seniors. “But as we partner on initiatives such as these, we remain vigilant, recognizing it’s critical for the longterm viability of our city that the federal and provincial governments don’t view our willingness to participate in such initiatives as an opportunity to download the tax burden onto property owners,” Corrigan said. please see The CiTy, A3