Surrey’s Mayflower co-op residents fear they’ll lose their homes

Surrey’s Mayflower co-op residents fear they’ll lose their homes

Published 3:04 pm Friday, October 9, 2026

A group of Mayflower Co-op housing members who are worried about the prospect of losing their homes attended a Surrey mayoral election debate at the Sheraton Guildford on October 7 dressed in yellow shirts and seeking answers from candidates.

Resident Brandi Murphy said 92 families stand to be affected.

“The plan was to safely relocate 92 existing families. Instead, BC Housing and the current administration have hung us out to dry. Many of our diverse, volunteer-run community members have lived here for over 20 years and are now facing total displacement and separation from loved ones,” she told the Now-Leader.

“We feel used. Our co-op was the bargaining chip used to secure city council funding, and now our lives are being turned upside down.”

She said the building is owned by a developer in Hong Kong.

Last December Surrey council approved at third reading a proposal to build a 24-storey tower containing 230 rental units downtown following a public hearing on December 15 at City Hall. It involved Provincial Rental Housing Corp. plans to build the tower at the southeast corner of 104 Avenue and 132 Street over three levels of underground parking, on vacant land where a gas station used to be.

A representative of BC Housing told council at the time that 92 residents at Mayflower will have no place to live if it isn’t approved.

Vanessa Wong, a senior manager of development with BC Housing, noted in December that the City of Surrey’s 2025 housing needs report forecasts the city will need over 53,000 more dwellings to address its five-year housing need and Whalley, including the city centre, is one of three neighbourhoods with the highest number of low-income households and has the highest rate of renters.

“Our application is proposing to help alleviate those pressures and respond to those needs by providing affordable, accessible, quality housing in the Whalley neighbourhood through the creation of 230 affordable rental units,” Wong told council.

Murphy said the residents left the mayors’ debate feeling none the wiser about what’s going on. Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.

Chris Schuessler, an organizer with the renters advocacy group BC ACORN, said about 20 people from Mayflower were among those who attended the debate.

He said Locke mentioned during the debate the cancelling of BC Housing projects in February. The Now-Leader reported in May that Locke said she’s “steaming” about the provincial government stopping 954 supportive housing units in Surrey while at the same time expecting it to meet housing targets it imposes on the city.

“We got a letter in February – they cancelled all eight of eight units, 954 housing units all different kinds women’s transitional, youth housing, shelter and supportive housing, Indigenous housing like that,” Locke told the Now-Leader in May. “They cancelled every one of them on us. It was $421 million. I’m actually steaming over this.”

On Feb. 19 Locke and council received a letter from Naomi Brunemeyer – BC Housing’s director of regional development for the Lower Mainland – concerning the “need to adjust the pace of housing developments” given “fiscal constraints.”

Asked if any Mayflower residents are in imminent danger of losing their homes, Schuessler replied, “No, but they all feel there’s some impending like in a year or two they’re going to have to find somewhere else. So it’s this sort-of vague, foreboding sense they have.

“They’ve been looking all summer for something to get some clarity,” Schuessler noted. “They thought they’d been given special accommodation. Like they have 92 units, they thought they’d get 92 units in this 230 unit building they’d have a kind-of co-op section of it I guess, along with the BC Housing population but now they’re told they have to sort-of enter the general BC Housing population, in which most of them don’t qualify for.”

“They’re stressed out,” he said. “They probably think they have to sign something completely new but they want to keep the co-operative together. A lot of history there.”

Schuessler said “it does appear that construction on the 104 Avenue project is going forward with a move in date of February 2030 – but relocation promises for Mayflower have disappeared.”