Tenants face 4.5% rent increase

Accommodation costs are expected to rise for renters next year as the Residential Tenancy Branch on Friday set the maximum allowable rent increase for 2019 at 4.5 per cent, the greatest jump since 2004.

Coming a time when vacancy rates are at an all-time low and rents are already high, the news caused a stir on social media.

Several renters said they wouldn’t be able to afford increases that could add up to hundreds of dollars a year in response to a tweet by the Vancouver Tenants Union accusing the province of listening to landlords over tenants.

“We’re in the middle of an affordability crisis and the government just decided to raise your rent more?” said the tweet, which was retweeted dozens of times.

According to the government’s housing and tenancy website, the increase is linked to the Consumer Price Index.

Landlords have long been allowed to add two per cent to the inflation rate, which was calculated at 2.5 per cent at the end of July, for a total allowable increase of 4.5 per cent in 2019.

B.C. landlords can choose to increase the rent once each year after providing tenants with three-months’ notice.

But Vancouver Tenants Union member Sydney Ball said the government should have the ability to “change the equation” and eliminate the two per cent annual increase that is added to the inflation rate.

“This is going to hurt a lot of people,” she said, predicting the impacts will have a trickle-down effect on local businesses. “People will stretch themselves pretty thin before they go homeless. This will impact their ability to pay their other bills and support local businesses.”

Ball also predicted that homelessness will rise. She rejected the argument that property owners absorb the cost of inflation and rising property taxes.

“I don’t really buy that because we’ve seen so many fraudulent uses of the Residential Tenancies Act to evict people,” she said, citing the “renoviction” phenomenon.

The allowable rent increase has been steadily rising for the last six years. In 2018, it was four per cent, up from 3.7. In 2004, it was 4.6 per cent.

Rents in Vancouver were the second highest in Canada in August, according to PadMapper, which pegged the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom suite at $2,000 and a two-bedroom suite at $3,200.