Yellowknife’s Sunridge Place gets a new name and new tenants

A Yellowknife apartment building with a troubled past has been renovated and rebranded following a fire earlier this year.

On March 27, a fire at the Sunridge Place apartments – owned by Northview Residential REIT – forced all tenants out of their homes.

While the fire was confined to a single unit, the entire building located on 51A Avenue was deemed “not habitable for any occupants,” according to a press release published by the City of Yellowknife at the time.

“Northview and the Yellowknife Housing Authority are coordinating efforts to ensure the well-being of affected tenants during this transition,” the city stated.

Now, Northview is advertising renovated apartments for higher rent in the building, which has since been dubbed Sa Naio by the REIT.

Public housing tenants who lived there before the fire won’t be returning.

Captures from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine in May 2024 show rent for the Sunridge apartments starting at $1,350 for bachelor units, $1,500 for one-bedroom units, two bedrooms for $1,750 and $2,000 for three-bedroom units.

The current listing for the Sa Naio apartments have the rent posted for 30 percent more.

Northview declined Cabin Radio’s interview request and did not answer questions provided in writing.

Bob Beis, the chief executive officer of the Yellowknife Housing Authority, said 10 public housing tenants lived in the Sunridge apartments at the time of the fire in March.

The Yellowknife Housing Authority is the agency responsible for operating public housing – offered at subsidized rates – in the city through Housing NWT.

“They couldn’t stay in the building, so we found places for them all around town. Any place that we had vacant, we moved them in,” said Beis of the displaced tenants.

“Some of them weren’t even in the right size units. We didn’t really have the luxury of waiting around.”

Beis said none of the public housing tenants will be moving back into the renovated Sa Naio building.

A spokesperson for Housing NWT said before the fire happened in March, there was already a plan in place to move subsidized housing tenants into buildings owned by the agency, rather than by private real estate groups, as they are built and renovated.

“These efforts will also help to increase the supply of market rental units within Yellowknife for private renters,” said the spokesperson in an email to Cabin Radio.

Sometimes a difficult home

One Sunridge tenant who was away when the fire happened said he had to fly home early from a trip to move his belongings out. (He requested anonymity to more openly discuss the sensitive nature of his housing and his tenancy at Sunridge.)

The tenant said he was put up in a hotel for two nights before the housing authority found him alternative accommodation, where he’s still staying.

Beis said the housing authority is planning to move the displaced tenants into what was previously called Aspen Apartments after renovations are complete in late October.

The tenant said Sunridge was sometimes a difficult place to live.

“The police would attend once every two or three days, they’d be there sometimes twice a day for various reasons – mainly for domestic problems, I think. But there [were] other drug problems there too,” said the tenant.

“People were constantly asking me for money, knocking on my door when they thought it was someone else’s door, making a noise and shouting and yelling and running up and down the hallway and so on. It was kind-of noisy and frenetic there.”

In recent years there had been incidents of a man wielding an axe in the building, drug trafficking and nearby stabbings.

Despite the problems, the tenant said Sunridge provided opportunities for building strong community connections.

He would see the woman in the unit next to him frequently because she would ask to borrow his microwave.

“I got tired of lending over my microwave, which was fairly large and heavy, so eventually I bought her one from Walmart. It was only $70 but she was thrilled to bits to get that,” the tenant said.

Another neighbour in the building would sometimes ask him to buy them cigarettes. The tenant said cigarettes weren’t in his budget. Instead, he’d drive the neighbour to the bottle depot once a month where he could get a return for his empties, which he could then use to buy cigarettes.

He said when the neighbour’s cell phone was broken, he got him a replacement flip phone and a cheap plan that the tenant mostly paid for, as well as two more phones over the course of two years as each one got lost or damaged.

“He kind-of depended upon me, but he was always very friendly and warm and genuine when I did something, very genuinely thankful and grateful,” said the tenant. “He was a nice type of guy.”

“I had a good relationship with most of the people there,” he added.

‘I wouldn’t be able to afford it’

In his new building, the tenant said, the environment feels different.

“I miss the activity and the people being around, the social aspects of having people around you. Where I am right now, it’s very quiet and there’s no noise, and I don’t know anybody and I am on my own.” he said. “It’s kind-of lonely there, you know?”

On top of the social aspects, the tenant said he liked his Sunridge apartment, which he found to be “quite nice” with its sprawling balcony.

Before renovations began on the former Sunridge building, the tenant said he approached Northview about the possibility of becoming a tenant there once again once the units were ready.

“I said, listen, what if we make a deal that I pay you a fixed basis of rent dependent on my income that is determined by the housing authority? And at that time, that was $1,300,” said the tenant.

He said the REIT wouldn’t make any commitments at the time and told him all units would be offered at market rent once the building reopened.

“That would indicate I wouldn’t be able to afford it,” said the tenant.