03/05/2023
Ren•e•gade
An idividual who rejects conventional and traditional behaviour, parties or institutions. "She regaled him with stories of pirates & renegades of the high seas."
Hi👋 We are Renegade Homes, welcome to our Instagram page! We are a consulting service outfitting people with upcycled & affordable character homes meant for demolishment on Vancouver Island. We focus on houses on Lekwungen Territories aka Victoria's greater regions, where houses are sent to landfills to make space for real estate development.
OUR STORY
My partner, Dave, and I Mandalena, moved to Esquimalt back in November of 2018 from East Vancouver. We are both born and raised in Vancouver but when rent became ludacris, we tried to drum up innovative housing options. We had to abandon the city in the process.
So we packed a Uhaul, boarded the ferry, crossed the straight and started renting what we lovingly call The Yellow House off of Nelson Street. The house, which was built in 1897, was owned by developers at the time who bought the neighborhood with the intent to demolish all the homes and replace them with condominiums. Nelson st was located in the heart of a low income area with a number of transition homes on the block which got completely overlooked and uncared for during the development process. (Tbc)
We were handed the keys to Yellow House at the end of a long cold moving day, and there's no electricity or heat. So with a candlelight and a large blanket I walked about the rooms and saw: endless ceilings, ornate doors and k***s, original carved wood, grain filled fir floors with 100 year old lines. The smell of a helluva lot of history. The immediate feel was that this house is exquisite & strong. An underdog. That night I promised it would not be torn down to become landfill collection.
Here we are 4 years later with Yellow House at our seaside space on the Southern Island. It was an outright battle to get her here - inclusive with uncooperative developers and uninformed building inspectors. Our saviour was the community, lobbying, and becoming experts on the process.
Please stay tuned for the completion of Yellow House & our projects to follow!
RH
