When I finished the very long post about my crash, recovery and hernia repair adventures, I briefly touched on our move back to Vancouver from the Victoria area. It’s been a real – ahem – adventure that I plan to never repeat again. We ended up selling for less than we wanted to, had to view rentals by ferry, and ended up in a place that has so much truly disruptive noise beyond our control, that we may well end up having to break our lease due to health issues. Seriously, it’s that bad.
Selling
When we bought in Victoria we ended up settling in a Colwood townhouse. The townhouse was very nice and comfortable, but the area was both isolated and isolating. The subdivision of Royal Bay had a small strip mall with fast food, a liquor store, and there was a newish secondary school, and virtually no services beyond that. It was about a 35-40 minute drive to Victoria and most daily tasks forced you to drive everywhere, often to big box stores in Langford. Walkability and bikeability were almost nonexistent. Running and cycling meant taking your life into your hands and being relegated to gravel on the side of the road in a literal car sewer. After about six or seven months of this we’d had enough. And the wind in Royal Bay … it almost never stopped.
The other issue for us was Island Health. My reality since the crash is one of needing the medical system more than I used to. Waiting two years for hernia repair and the wait times for specialist consults and even just ER visits, convinced us that Island life was not a retirement solution for us. Vancouver has its issues of course, but healthcare is better.
Unfortunately, shortly after we listed our place for sale, a realtor in our complex listed theirs and lowballed everyone in the area by setting their price aggressively low. We ended up losing $15k from what we paid seven or eight months earlier. Getting out was our only goal, so we simply dealt with it and moved on. We left the Island for good (aside from any future visits) in mid-June to rent in Vancouver.
Renting
There was no way around viewing potential rentals by ferry. Not only does this complicate seeing things on short notice, but it gets prohibitively expensive very quickly. With a round trip on BC Ferries costing well over $200, and significantly more if you stay overnight, you don’t want to be doing it for very long. By our third trip over, we settled on renting a “townhouse” in the west end. There were a couple potential flags, but nothing we figured was a deal-breaker, and the building managers were very nice, accommodating guys. I have placed the word townhouse in quotes because it’s really just 800-900 sq ft on one level with a small basement with a very low ceiling. We have our bike trainer, desk, and have squeezed our sofa bed down there. It’s mostly unusable space which barely allows me to stand.
Regretting
The potential flags we did identify were the noisy location of Bute and Haro Streets (a block off Robson), and we noticed the Lime e-scooter station on the other side of the bike lane beside our place on Bute. However, we thought the excellent walkability, proximity to Stanley Park and Coal Harbour for running, cycling and dog walks would more than compensate for the noise.
Breka
What really didn’t register was the 24-hour Breka cafe across the alley. This has become the bane of our existence not three months into our lease. They get several deliveries a day and most of them come by refrigerated truck. This means not only do we hear the squeal of brakes and the hiss of hydraulics, but the trucks usually have to idle their engines while they complete the delivery to power the refrigeration (often for at least 15 minutes or more). We have had deliveries come up the alley as early as 6:30am and as late as 1:30am. And, the alley to the south of Robson is already noisy without the Breka issues.
It is worth noting at this point that we are at street level with the deliveries, probably feet from our bedroom, and they are NOISY because it’s not only the brakes and hydraulics I already described, but virtually every delivery includes a truck tailgate slamming the ground. It is utterly impossible to sleep through. We have to run our portable AC unit and HEPA filter on high to create enough white noise to get any sleep at all, but the window AC adapter means we can’t get an airtight seal to block out that much alley noise.
Also, due to Breka’s location, people routinely park in the lot behind our place, or in some cases decide to use the lot to play music or flash lights into our apartment (both have happened more than once). Any light in the parking lot is diffused by the smoke glass on our front door or bedroom window. There is often little peace at night until midnight, or later if there are deliveries or Breka gets busy.
I haven’t even mentioned that all the recycling is right below our front door in the same parking lot, so whether it’s people rooting for cans and bottles, or the weekly (early morning) garbage and recycling pick up, we hear all of it VERY clearly.
Door Slamming
There is also a door that leads to the upstairs units right on the other side of our bedroom. Every time someone enters or exits – many times a day – the door shuts with a resounding SLAM, and the wall of our bedroom literally vibrates. This begins as early as 6am with people leaving for work, and continues off and on until as late as midnight.
I am a light sleeper and have trouble getting back to sleep after being wakened. Coupled with still recovering from the crash/brain injury (good sleep is imperative, not optional) my recovery and mental wellbeing is challenged on a nightly basis by endless alley noise. This is where living here is having significant health impacts for me.
Lime
We can ignore most of the e-scooter stupidity, but with it so close to our living room windows, we are always aware of the squealing of the scooters turning, the clacking of the scooters into the charging rack, and people screaming like idiots from about 6am until at least midnight every day. There is no consideration, nor much awareness I suspect, that people live not twenty feet from where they’ve decided to scream at the tops of their lungs while on a bender.
In Closing
It’s a shame that things are turning out this way, but we feel under assault with little semblance of privacy or peace. We have never broken a lease in our lives, but feel we will likely have no choice lest our nerves be completely shot after living here for a year.