Power problems plague new Victoria rental building

Aeryn Donald rents one of the 130 units in a Pacifica Housing building called The Dalmatian in downtown Victoria. It’s affordable, subsidized housing that Donald is happy to have, but an issue has arisen.

“We have had a number of power outages over the last week,” said Donald.

Donald says the outages have lasted an hour at times, one lasting more than five hours.

“People are frustrated,” said Donald. People like Kassandra Lima who also lives in the building and has reached out to Pacifica numerous times, getting no answers.

“You get the party line: 'Oh, power outages happen,' but not consecutively over the last six out of eight days,” said Lima.

“I called BC Hydro because you know, it’s a power outage and they told me that it was an internal building issue,” said Donald.

BC Hydro confirmed that to CTV News on Friday.

CTV News reached out to Pacifica Housing for an interview. It said nobody was available, and issued a statement saying: "The Dalmatian has experienced four power outages in the past week, which originated following a BC Hydro-related outage. The electrical engineer for the project and the developer are actively investigating the matter."

The Dalmatian opened its doors in May. The Victoria Fire Department’s new fire hall is also housed in the building but is not affected by the outages.

“I sleep with a CPAP machine,” said Kerri Alexander-Royster, another tenant in the building. “It just means I have sleep apnea. I stop breathing when I go to sleep so I have to wear a mask that forces air so that I don’t die.”

Alexander-Royster hasn’t had a good night's sleep in more than a week.

“The mask has not been blowing the air while I’m sleeping so I wake and I can’t go back to sleep without it,” she said.

“I think they have some issues, maybe the building went up too quickly,” said Lima.

Lima says one of the building's elevators has been down for two days on top of the electrical issues.

“We have hot water pressure issues, sometimes we don’t have hot water at all,” said Lima.

As Pacifica Housing works with the electrical engineer and the developer on the project to find the fault, people living in The Dalmatian know they are fortunate to have a subsidized unit in the building. They just wish their landlord could work out some of the building's issues.

“Today will be day five,” said Alexander-Royster. “Is it going to go off at 1 o’clock in the afternoon or is it going to go off at 7 o’clock? Because it’s going to go off.”

“People seems to be really frustrated and feeling like Pacifica is not listening,” said Donald.

“We’re getting annoyed,” said Lima.