Laurel Fraught, a 74-year-old grandmother of 23, lived with a leaking roof and unreliable temperatures in her Vancouver mobile home for years.

Water ran down the walls of the 1968 trailer in Vancouver Mobile Terrace day and night. Her children had repaired what they could, but they weren’t experts. Without the funds for professional help, she thought she’d spend the rest of her days surrounded by puddles of water and warped floors.

But the city of Vancouver stepped in, using its Housing Rehabilitation Program to fix up the grandmother’s home. Contractors replaced her roof and even got her a new heat pump, water heater and oven.

“It just floored me. It was like winning the lottery,” Fraught said, sitting on the couch in her cozy — and more importantly, dry — home full of visiting grand

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