Victims or wrongdoers? Inside the $1.6M financial fight over a fire-plagued Vancouver property
Owners convicted of numerous fire infractions fighting demolition bill for East Van property now worth $20M
When a prosecutor accused Feng Yan of neglecting the fire-ravaged apartment building she and her husband had owned for nearly two decades, the Vancouver woman told him they thought of the East Vancouver property "like a child."
"And what state is the building in now?" the prosecutor asked.
This was December 2024, at which point 414 East 10th Ave., was an empty, garbage-strewn lot.
A massive fire in July 2023 had rendered the low-rise apartment building uninhabitable and another blaze a little over a year later resulted in the city ordering the structure's burned-out shell to be demolished.
Yan and Fu De Ren were on trial for ignoring orders the fire department had issued between the two fires to board up the building and provide round-the-clock security to protect against squatters causing the type of fires that ultimately claimed the property.
The first blaze had left more than 70 people homeless — many of them low-income tenants living on welfare — yet prosecutor David Clements pointed out that Yan and Ren described themselves as "victims."
"Of course we were," Yan replied.
"Other people caused the fire and burned our building. Are we not the victims?"
'It must be condemned'
Yan and Ren were convicted of bylaw offences and fined a combined total of $37,500 as a result of that proceeding — but the saga of the battle over accountability for the neglect of 414 East 10th has taken on new life in recent weeks.
In early July, the couple filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court seeking to prevent the city from tacking $1.6 million onto their property tax bill as payment for security and demolition costs borne by taxpayers after Yan and Ren failed to follow fire department orders to secure the property.
Their bid for an interim injunction was dismissed, but in an affidavit in support of the application, Ren claims he intends to "escalate" his fight to "city council, the mayor, the municipal ombudsperson and the B.C. Ministry of Municipal Affairs."
Meanwhile, even as the couple's latest fines remain unpaid, the city has brought new bylaw charges dating back to March 2024 against the owners — accusing them of failing to comply with the fire chief's order and "creating life safety concerns."
The plight of the building has received widespread media attention, but CBC News has obtained records of previously unreported court proceedings that shed new light on problems a judge said point to deeper societal issues.
In sentencing the couple last December, Judicial Justice Zahid Makhdoom said people had died in similar situations in other parts of British Columbia.
"They burned to death," Makhdoom told the couple. "Think about it, how painful it is."
"Ideally all tiers of our government — federal, provincial and municipal — have a duty to ensure we have sufficient housing for everybody. However, we don't live in an ideal world and there is an ever increasing need for social housing," Makhdoom continued.
"Nobody should take umbrage because somebody else is making money — but when it is done at the cost of other human beings' safety and health and security and protection, it is wrong. It must be condemned."
'They were not sent to my home address'
In a series of email exchanges with CBC, Ren claimed he has been treated unfairly by the city and a fire department he accused of "procedural irregularities and bureaucracy."
According to court documents, Ren and Yan — who are self-represented — are relying on the same defence Makhdoom rejected in provincial court to mount their B.C. Supreme Court bid to avoid the tab for the demolition.
Although they live in a $3.9-million home on Vancouver's west side, the couple listed 414 East 10th Ave., as their "mailing address" on the property registration for the East Vancouver apartment building.
As a result — and as required by law — that address is where the city sent the orders relating to the property by regular mail and registered mail. A fire inspector also posted a physical copy onto what was left of the building.
"They were not sent to my home address," Ren wrote in his affidavit.
"Instead the orders were posted on the burned, uninhabitable property and mailed to that address, which had no mailbox and was guarded by private security."
Ren claims he only learned about the order for 24-hour security when he visited city hall in February. And he says he wasn't aware of the demolition order until it was emailed to him in March 2025 — months after the building was torn down.
Ren repeated the same circular argument multiple times during the bylaw trial: he didn't get the orders because they were sent to the now defunct address — that he had given them.
His interruptions tried Makhdoom's patience to the point that he ordered a sheriff to escort Ren out of the courtroom.
"So when a person did not receive the order, how could he know what he is supposed to do?" Ren asked just before he was ejected.
"This is the key — the key point here."
'We have been wrongly accused'
Over several days of individual testimony at last year's bylaw proceedings, Yan and Ren repeatedly professed their innocence, blaming a tenant who lit a candle for the first fire and citing the difficulty of providing social housing.
"There's a lot of news stories in the media describing us as bad people," Yan told Makhdoom.
"We feel that we have been wrongly accused."
Ren claimed he has "spent a hundred times more than any landlord" caring for the building.
"I help the city government to take in approximately 30 people who were on welfare," he said.
"With those people staying in there, it gave me a lot — a huge amount of trouble."
Ren lashed out at the prosecutor, Clements, and the fire department, accusing the city of having "grave hatred against me."
He also claimed fire officials stopped calling him before inspections — an accusation that drew a scoff from Clements, who said Ren pulled a fire alarm in violation of the law during one inspection in 2020 after inspectors stated that it had not been properly serviced.
"He argued with them continually," Clements said.
"The city inspectors came to the conclusion that attempting to work cooperatively, and bylaw warnings were not going to get him to change."
Another fire, another empty lot
According to their testimony, Fen and Yan immigrated to Canada over 30 years ago.
Fen — who is also know as Henry — is listed as a partner in Wesincere Realty Co., a real estate company licensed for trading, strata and rental property management.
In that capacity, he spoke last March at a seminar "focused on Canada's private mortgage market and B.C.'s rental law."
"Henry's discourse bridged the gap between statute books and street-level realities," a news release for the event read.
Ren and Wu have amassed property around the Lower Mainland assessed at a combined value of more than $30 million — including an empty $6.5-million lot in Burnaby that once housed an apartment building, but was ravaged by fires in 2009 and 2013, displacing 100 tenants.
"What happened to that building?" Clements asked Yan in cross-examination.
"I don't want to say," she replied.
"I put it to you that building burned down while you were the owner of that building," Clements continued.
"The government handled that," Yan said. "What kind of power or ability did we have to handle that situation?"
In 2023, Burnaby council approved a recommendation authorizing staff to enter the vacant property in that city after issuing 16 bylaw violation notices related to "overgrowth, debris and materials contributing to the unsightliness of the property."
In a statement to the CBC, a spokesperson for the City of Burnaby said the city has received five additional complaints since that time and issued four more bylaw violations.
"We are actively taking steps to ensure that compliance is met," the statement said.
Despite the couple's objections, Clements repeatedly drew parallels between the fates of the Vancouver and Burnaby properties — disputing Yan's insistence they had "never encountered anything like" the Vancouver fire when it happened.
Yan claimed she and Ren wouldn't have known what company to call to board up or demolish a building.
"I put it to you that you didn't make any effort," Clements said.
"I put it to you that you left the mess there for other people to deal with."
'Perhaps they should receive jail time'
The fires at 414 East 10th were mentioned prominently in the fire department's annual reports for both 2023 and 2024.
Clements said so many firefighters were tied up with the second fire that they lacked resources to handle a blaze in another part of town on the same day.
He said the fire department was forced to go house to house near the other location — a construction site — "asking people to use their [garden] hoses to wet down their own property to stop further fire from spreading."
At sentencing, Makhdoom noted Yan's insistence that she was a religious person — but said she turned a blind eye to "those people who are also created — at least from your perspective — by God."
"People who own these buildings and demonstrate lack of consideration for others, not only they should be heavily fined — but perhaps they should receive a certain jail time so that they recognize how it feels when you're on the other side," the judicial justice said.
"The task of the court is to denounce the wrongdoer. And, respectfully, both yourself and your husband — you are wrongdoers.... A majority of people living these times — they are simply a few paycheques away from living in a building like 414 East 10th."
The couple claimed they were on limited income so Makhdoom gave them until the end of June to pay the $1.6-million bill. They recently obtained an extension pushing that date until the end of September.
'The market made the value increase — not me'
Today, the lot at 414 East 10th remains empty, surrounded by broken blue fencing that appears to have done little to stop people from dumping garbage on the property.
As of last week, the City of Vancouver said it had not received a copy of the Supreme Court lawsuit and would not comment on the status of Yan and Ren's property tax bill.
Despite their legal troubles, the couple received some good news earlier this year: the property's assessed value more than doubled from $9 million to $20 million because of its proximity to the Broadway corridor — an area marked for significant development.
Ren and Yan paid $2.2 million for the property in 2002. It's currently listed at $15.8 million.
The lot's value was the subject of one of the final exchanges between the prosecutor and Yan last December.
"I put it to you that you did very little to take care of your 'child' — but you'll be quite happy to reap the benefits of a sale of this property," Clements said.
Yan insisted none of it was their fault.
"It's the market who made the value increase — not me."
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