Renters hardest hit by housing crisis

Dear editor: In our present housing-affordability crisis, the people hardest hit are renters. Whereas prospective home buyer might experience frustration at being left out of an ultra-expensive market, tenants face possible homelessness if they can’t keep up with skyrocketing rents.

No discussion of housing affordability is complete without addressing how the new NDP government has let down those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

In the NDP’s new initiative for tackling our housing crisis, Homes For BC: A 30-Point Plan for Housing Affordability in British Columbia, they offer remedies from the speculation tax to cracking down on tax fraud, but there is no mention of measures to tackle high rents.

In fact, at a time when every measure should be taken by our government to protect tenants from the effects of this volatile market, the B.C. NDP seems hell-bent on making housing even more unaffordable for tenants.

One of the first things Premier John Horgan did in 2018 was to raise the percentage by which landlords can increase rent to four per cent, the highest it has been in five years.

Tenants in B.C. deserve real protection from their elected leaders. Horgan should honour his promise of a $400 yearly grant for renters. The allowable rent increase for 2018 needs to be reduced immediately to a less precarious level. The right of tenants to dispute a rent increase they deem unfair should be reinstated. Doreen Marion Gee, Victoria