Renters nervous as income supplement nearing end
June final month for initiative set up to help tenants
The upcoming June rent due date — June 1 is Monday — is the last one where tenants will get between $300 to $500 of their total rent paid for them, directly to landlords, under a temporary provincial program.
For Evelyn Platt, a receptionist at a private company, the end of the $300 monthly supplement that started in April comes as she and other tenants feel there is still a wide and uncertain gap ahead in terms of their monthly incomes recovering.
Platt has been able to pay her rent and bills narrowly, putting together her Canada Emergency Response Benefit and a small retirement pension.
In a city where the $2,000-a-month CERB payment is quickly matched by Platt’s high rent of $2,185, the additional $300 rental subsidy has been helpful in easing the tightness with her other bills.
“I’m not required at the office right now and I don’t know if I will get to go back. The company has lost a lot of money,” said Platt, who worked as a social worker for over 20 years. “I’ve been looking to downgrade (and pay lower rent), but there are also moving costs. It’s all very uncertain.”
The three-month, temporary rental supplement program was set up at the beginning of the pandemic shutdown when physical distancing measures closed businesses.
Among the hardest hit renters were those with reduced or obliterated monthly incomes who live on their own and can only apply for one CERB benefit toward rent costs.
“Our bosses have been saying, ‘Don’t go with anyone else.’ If things open, we can get in right away, but they don’t know when that’s going to be,” said Zaina Hassan, who had been working as a set assistant in the local film industry.
The CERB payments are available until early October. Hassan wonders if the supplement can be extended “to get us through.”
“(It) has been such a good system … It has been a stress release to have that extra amount off. There are really (no ways to make money) right now unless you have a job you can do online.”
For landlords, especially mom-and-pop owners rather than larger corporate ones, the supplement has at least eased the amount of rent they aren’t able to collect in full as well as help with continuing costs such as mortgage payments, utilities and repairs.
“It’s been a big mix,” said Cynthia Jagger of Goodman Commercial Inc., who has informally been polling landlords to gauge the impact on them of rent that is not paid.
“If you have 1,000 units and 30 don’t pay, that’s (a) three per cent (loss). If you have a triplex and one person doesn’t pay, that’s a 33-percent loss.”
At the end of April, LandlordBC, which represents owners and manager of rental housing, presented “a strong case” to increase the supplement from $300 to $700 for renters without dependents, and from $500 to $1,000 for those with dependents, as well as extend it to August, said CEO David Hutniak.
He doesn’t see any sign of this happening.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said it’s “continuing to monitor the impacts from COVID-19, how long the pandemic lasts” and that it is “looking at what transition measures will be necessary moving forward.”
It has received just over 86,000 applications and approved more than 79,600. Some are still in the approval process, but 6,500 were deemed ineligible.
Hutniak estimates there could be tens of millions of dollars over the last three months in unpaid rent.