Spencer Herbert, newly elected MLA for Vancouver-Burrard, is presenting the Long-Term Renters Protection Act to the B.C. legislature.

Credit: Doug Shanks

NEWS: New bill aims to protect B.C.’s long-term renters

On the evening of December 28, 2007, tenants of an apartment building at 1234 Barclay Street received a package in the mail from their landlord that was distinctly bereft of the holiday generosity characteristic of the season. Indeed, they were quite the opposite. The packages contained notification of a rent increase, in amounts that seemed to vary suspiciously between tenants. “Our property managers had not increased our rent at all in two years,” recalls Lynne Lawrie, who has lived in the building for 17 years, “but they were asking for increases of anywhere from 1.4 per cent up to 24.03 per cent, based on information they had gathered comparing our rent with similar suites in the area.”

Rent hikes like the ones Lawrie and her neighbours faced are becoming more common in an increasingly competitive rental market, where landlords are able to justify significant rent increases with the belief that they are just keeping up with market demand. Section 23(1)(a) of B.C.’s current residential tenancy regulation (not to be confused with the Residential Tenancy Act) says landlords can apply for a rent increase above the standard annual increase if the unit’s rent is significantly lower than that of others in the same geographic area. The rent increases that result from landlords who exploit that section of tenancy regulation can hurt long-term tenants the most, forcing them from their homes or obligating them to be complicit in rental arrangements that endanger them financially.

Spencer Herbert, the newly elected MLA for Vancouver-Burrard, is bringing forward a private members’ bill to the provincial legislature today (November 27) that he hopes will stop landlords from abusing parts of residential tenancy regulation that hurt long-term tenants. The bill, called the Long-Term Renters Protection Act, aims to remove section 23(1)(a). “[Tenancy regulation] is supposed to be about balance, so that renters and landlords can have some security,” says Herbert. “It’s not designed so you can just say, ‘Hey, I feel like charging this amount of rent today and a huge amount the next day.’”

Herbert conducted a survey of other provincial tenancy regulations across the country, and found that B.C.’s is the only one containing a provision for geographic-area increases. “It’s quite often the people with the least who are hit the hardest,” he says. “Quite often it’s seniors who’ve lived there ever since the building was built. They pay their yearly increase, they pay their taxes, they follow the rules, yet one of the rules the government’s put in place is now being abused and forcing them out of the only community they know.”

Given her experience at 1234 Barclay, Lawrie supports Herbert’s bill. She was eventually able to rally her neighbours and negotiate lower rent increases at the Residential Tenancy Office, but it was a stressful experience that not everybody is capable of following through successfully. “I thought we were protected until it happened to us,” she says. “For long-term renters who have been paying rent for years to suddenly get an increase like this is upsetting and unsettling. Spencer Herbert’s [act] is needed.”

Martha Lewis, executive director of Vancouver’s Tenant Resource Advisory Centre (TRAC), can understand a landlord’s motivation for increasing rents to maximize profits, but she would also like to see section 23(1)(a) scrapped. “Nobody expects a landlord to be providing free housing or taking a financial loss on his business... [but] this is being misused, and I hope that the government can see that and just get rid of it,” she says. “Just because you’re a tenant doesn’t mean you don’t want security of tenure, the same as a homeowner. It’s a huge upheaval to leave your home, whether you’re renting or owning.”