Property battle between 2 friends results in precedent-setting B.C. Supreme Court case

Cynthia Brooke, left, and partner River Tucker stand outside the duplex in East Vancouver that Brooke purchased with three friends back in 2001. The property has since become the focus of a precedent-setting B.C. Supreme Court case.

When four queer friends decided to buy property together in 2001, they never imagined the side-by-side duplex would play a central role in setting legal precedent.

All the two couples knew at the time was that they wanted a “forever home.” By combining their resources, the home-owning hopefuls scraped enough funds together to make an offer on a derelict duplex in East Vancouver.

“We are offering considerably less than you are asking for your house, not as a lack of respect, but because this is what we can afford,” the four friends wrote in a letter to the seller. “Your house is the only house we have seen where (ownership) could truly be possible.”

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Cynthia Brooke and Shaira Holman are the sole remaining property owners, after their respective wives died in 2007 and 2009. They’re no longer linked by friendship, but the terms of the joint mortgage means they each hold interest in one another’s property. Only Holman wants to sell the entire duplex, now worth an estimated $3.29 million.

The B.C. Supreme Court has dismissed an order to force the sale of both lots, in a landmark ruling that supports the housing rights of people who are queer, disabled or financially marginalized.

“Given the unrelenting rise in Vancouver real estate prices, it is unlikely that (Brooke) could find a comparable house…even with the sale proceeds,'' reads the decision by Justice Crerar. “Her house is an idiosyncratically comforting home…its location in a particularly queer-friendly neighbourhood, and its proximity to her long-term health care providers.”

Cases under the Property of Partition Act are almost always decided in favour of forcing a sale, in order to increase profit from an investment. In this case, the justice asserts that while a person has the right to realize their investment, they don’t have the right to maximize it at the expense of others.

“When I purchased my home over 20 years ago, I wasn't making a financial investment, instead I was investing in the certainty of having a home in the city and community that I love,” Brooke tells CTV News by email, between an MRI and scheduled surgery. “That certainty has been rocked.”

After being seriously injured on the job as a longshore worker in 2008, Brooke contracted a virus that left her chronically ill, and she medically retired seven years later. The legal process has depleted her life savings, not to mention her health.

“Chronic stress is pretty powerful, it’s affecting our ability to sleep,” Brooke’s partner, River Tucker, explains. “To have to spend so much money and then not knowing whether we can actually finish the process, even though now we won the case.”

Brooke and Tucker are down $100,000—and that’s after their lawyer worked for the couple pro bono. To help them make up those lost funds, and finalize the legal process, a group of their friends decided to organize an online fundraiser on the website GoFundMe. In three weeks, the campaign has raised $27,000, including a $1,000 donation from their lawyer.

“There's been a real willingness for folks to come together and say, ‘yeah, I can help,’ despite the reality of challenges over the past two years,” says Anna Camilleri, one of eight people who are running the fundraising campaign. They wrote biographies for both Brooke and Tucker, which clearly outline how much the couple has supported and given back to others.

“The queer community has such a long standing history of mutual aid, we are used to pitching in when someone needs help and organizing for folks” explains Tucker, a German expat who founded Queer Box Camp Vancouver a decade ago.

“One historic example that comes to mind is the AIDS crisis when a lot of lesbians cared for gay men. Cynthia was one of them.”

The precedent set by this property battle has the potential to benefit people outside the intersecting communities Brooke is a part of.

“There is opportunity for other marginalized folks to assert their right to maintain community,” Brooke says, highlighting the example of Hogan’s Alley. “Black people continue to feel the devastation of the loss of this neighbourhood, and are currently actively working to re-establish a meaningful community in the area.”

The decision over the duplex includes an order that Holman and Brooke divide the two lots through a legislatively-sanctioned party wall agreement, and subsequently take their interest off of each other's property. Holman has appealed the ruling.

CTV News has reached to Holman, who said she is in the process of drafting a statement. 

“We just want to focus on the good that has come out of this. Setting a precedent for two rights feels very, very exciting,” Tucker says. “It’s giving all of us a bit of sanity that, you move through all of this, you have to endure all of this, but something good comes out of it.”