CRUCIAL OR CATASTROPHIC?
Developers oppose vacancy controls
With the provincial government’s rental housing task force’s report expected within weeks, the lobbying association for B.C.’s real estate development industry has warned that proposed tenant protections could put thousands of planned rental homes at risk.
But tenant advocates are pushing back on the industry group’s claim, calling it “alarmist” and “disingenuous.”
“We’ve got dire warnings on both sides,” said Mayor Kennedy Stewart. “This is what a crisis is. Everybody’s meter is on 10.”
On Wednesday, the Urban Development Institute, which represents developers, issued a statement saying if the B.C. government goes ahead with regulating rents with vacancy controls, more than 12,000 new rental units across B.C. “could be at risk of delay or cancellation before they are built.”
Currently, landlords are limited by how much they can increase rent each year for the same tenant, but no such controls exist for new tenants, meaning landlords can increase the rent as much as the market will bear. A “vacancy control” measure proposed by tenant advocates would tie the ability to increase rents to a unit, rather than a tenant.
The UDI statement said: “Rental projects would inevitably become less financially viable to build and maintain . ... Builders are (being) forced to re-evaluate their rental projects, with many considering a switch to condominium developments ... or cancelling projects altogether.”
But Liam McClure of the Vancouver Tenants’ Union said the UDI’s warning should be taken with a grain of salt, as property owners have their own financial interests in mind.
“It’s alarmist and it’s trying to scare the public into not supporting something that’s deeply necessary to address the affordable housing crisis,” McClure said. “It’s completely disingenuous ... High rents and low interest rates will continue to drive new rental housing units.”
McClure said the experience of other provinces with rent control, like Manitoba, suggest “vacancy control hasn’t had any discernible effect on new rental supply.”
The UDI’s warning comes amid much discussion of how provincial and municipal governments need to co-ordinate complex efforts to protect existing rental homes while encouraging the production of new ones.
Vancouver Coun. Jean Swanson has introduced a motion to protect “tenants from renovictions and aggressive buyouts” that will be heard next week. She is calling for the city to “immediately and forcefully call on the province to implement effective vacancy controls for B.C., or alternatively, to give Vancouver the power to regulate maximum rent increases during and between tenancies.”
“Over the last 40 years, I have learned that when people who have a lot, learn that they are not going to have quite as much as they are used to, they take steps to take something away,” said Swanson. “Elected people have to speak up.”
NDP MLA Spencer ChandraHerbert, one of the heads of the rental housing task force, said the report should be issued in early December.
“It’s complicated work, because you have to consider if you do one thing, what does that do to another section of the law,” Chandra-Herbert said. “You can have the greatest ideas, but how will it actually play out in real life?”
Chandra-Herbert, the MLA for Vancouver-West End, said revisions to B.C.’s tenancy legislation are “definitely overdue.”
“We hadn’t had a review of the Residential Tenancy Act for 16 years, that’s the last time the act really changed,” he said. “Renters had been ignored for a long time, and in fact, landlords had been too. In my advocacy work, I always tried to point out all sides need change and need solutions.”
Chandra-Herbert said the team has received and considered submissions from everyone ranging from the UDI and the VTU to organizations representing lowincome people and landlords.
“But I can’t say where the task force is going on any recommendation, because of course the report’s not public yet,” Chandra-Herbert said. “All I can say is we’re looking at everybody’s advice.”
We’ve got dire warnings on both sides. This is what a crisis is.