Dan Fumano: While the Sun Ah residents have a reprieve -- at least for now -- the saga highlights a much bigger problem: Vancouver's heavy, precarious reliance on privately owned SROs to keep people out of homelessness.

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Tenants in a building in Vancouver’s Chinatown were shocked at the notice posted last week in their common area. They had three months, it declared, to pack up and get out.

The landlords had decided to close the 40-room, single-occupancy residences, the announcement said. After Jan. 31, the water, electricity and heat would be shut off.

After five insurance claims caused by fire and water over 15 months, the landlords were unable to insure the building, according to the document signed by the leadership of the Lung Kong Association, the Chinese clan association that has owned the Sun Ah Hotel at 100 East Pender for nearly a century.

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“People were just terrified,” said Brian O’Donnell, who has lived in the Sun Ah for eight years. “The elderly people, they were really freaked out.”

The following day, eviction notices were taped on every tenant’s door. They were the standard-issue B.C. Residential Tenancy Branch’s “Notice to end tenancy for cause” forms, but with an unusual feature. Instead of ticking one of the 19 boxes describing the reason to end the tenancy (such as tenants engaging in illegal activity or failing to pay rent), someone had drawn by hand a 20th box, ticked it, and wrote their own reason in pen: “Landlord cannot obtain building insurance.”

On Wednesday, Postmedia phoned property manager Hunt Tse, who said he had already received pushback about the evictions.

Flooding, fires and damage had become “big problems in the building,” Tse said earlier this week. “The owner tried to evict the tenants, but of course, you can’t. Because we don’t have any legal means to evict those guys.”

On Friday, new notices, on Lung Kong letterhead and signed by Tse, were taped to every front door — the evictions were “formally withdrawn.”

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