Renters agency swamped with calls for aid
Demand booming as tenants feel squeeze from soaring property values and rents
Part 1 of 2
Deb Dawson returned home from work one evening this year to the slip of paper every renter dreads.
“There it was on my door: surprise!” said Dawson, 64. “The first reaction when you get an eviction notice is shock.”
The notice, in April, gave her two months’ notice to vacate her home of 21 years.
Dawson, on low-income seniors’ assistance and nearing retirement, didn’t want to move. Although her rent had doubled over the years that she’d lived in her Mount Pleasant apartment — during which time area rents skyrocketed as her local park evolved from a place for the street-level sex and drug trades to a place for farmers’ markets and workouts — rent controls meant it was the only place in the city she could afford.
The reason given for eviction wasn’t anything Dawson had done, but because the landlord had “all necessary permits and approvals required by law to demolish the rental unit, or renovate or repair the rental unit in a manner that requires the rental unit to be vacant.”
Dawson called City Hall and was told: “No current applications or permits have been submitted or issued from this department for the above-noted building.”
She called the Residential Tenancy Branch, the provincial body that mediates disputes between landlords and tenants. The June hearing to decide whether or not Dawson had to leave her home was a short three-way conference call with her landlord (a representative of a B.C. holding company) and a tenancy branch arbitrator.
When Dawson hung up the phone at the hearing ’s conclusion, she sat at her kitchen table, sipped her coffee, and said she didn’t hold out much hope she’d be able to stay.
But later that month the arbitrator cancelled the eviction notice, ruling the landlord “provided insufficient evidence to support the reason to end the tenancy.”
Without the tenancy branch, Dawson would be out of a home.
But while Dawson’s experience demonstrates the importance of the tenancy branch in a city where just over half of households are rentals, many tenants who receive illegitimate eviction notices are more likely to simply pack up and leave, not having the time, energy or wherewithal to navigate an arbitration process that many say is too difficult to access, largely because the Residential Tenancy Branch lacks resources.
Indeed, almost a third of the people who called the branch in June abandoned their calls (the average wait time for a call to be answered was more than 30 minutes), according to numbers provided by the province.
In Vancouver’s environment of steadily rising property values and rents and near-zero rental vacancy rates, government statistics show demand for the branch is booming: In the last two fiscal years, the number of calls to the branch jumped by more than 20 per cent, to 328,055 calls in 2016-17.
Meanwhile, turnover and staffing levels appear to be a problem, with the number of employees leaving the branch rising by 80 per cent between 2015 and 2016, with 23 people departing the agency last year, up from 13 the year before. In the first seven months of this year, 17 employees left, while the branch hired 13. Five of the 30 full-time
Right now the (branch) is, in our view, under-funded and underresourced.
arbitrator positions are currently vacant.
While in opposition, the B.C. NDP often raised the issue of branch underfunding and staff shortages. Since forming government, they’ve said its resources will be a priority, highlighting the issue in July’s mandate letter for Selina Robinson, the minister of municipal affairs and housing, and again in Friday’s throne speech.
In response to questions about staffing, the ministry sent an emailed statement last month saying: “We are evaluating options as part of the budget process.”
So now, many British Columbians are waiting for one particular item in Monday’s provincial budget.
“(Branch funding) would be the number 1 priority in my mind and, I think, for a whole lot of other stakeholders. If they fix this quickly, there’s going to be a huge improvement in landlordtenant relationships, literally overnight,” said David Hutniak, CEO of LandlordBC, which represents the rental housing industry.
“We’ve been very blunt about the fact that both for renters and landlords, right now the (branch) is, in our view, under-funded and under-resourced,” he said.
“We have a right to timely access to justice through the Residential Tenancy Branch, and right now they’re not delivering that. There’s some very good people there, they’re working hard, but they need support from the provincial government.”
Vancouver’s vacancy rate of 0.8 per cent is “problematically low,” said a Vancity report last year, noting a “healthy” rate is at least three per cent. The same report notes how crucial rental housing is to the local economy because renters are more likely than homeowners to be engaged in the workforce.
While the difficulties facing renters in such a housing crisis are well-documented, the situation puts pressure on landlords, too.
“People sometimes are surprised when I say that we would love to see a two, three, four per cent vacancy rate.
“Obviously that would be good for renters, but frankly that would be good for landlords, too,” Hutniak said. “It would encourage landlords to make sure they’re properly managing their portfolio and their tenant relationships.”
With Monday’s budget announcement, British Columbian renters can see how the NDP’s talk of support translates into dollars.