B.C. government launches 10-stop consultation tour on rental issues
VICTORIA B.C.’s NDP government has begun public consultation on renter and landlord rights, pushing off any changes to rental legislation for likely another year.
The chairman of the rental housing task force, Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert, said the plan is to tour 10 communities to solicit opinions through workshops and produce a report for government late this fall.
“Often governments will think they know the questions to ask and completely miss the boat,” he said. “So I’d rather be a little bit more open-ended in our consultation series. Rather than, say, speak at us for five minutes and leave, we’re actually giving people the opportunity to engage with each other.”
The meetings begin in Maple Ridge on June 4, and then include Nanaimo, Kelowna, Nelson, Terrace, Prince George, Salt Spring Island, Victoria, Vancouver and Surrey. Full dates and times, as well as mandatory registration, are available on the task force website. The government is also accepting online responses to specific discussion questions.
“We looked at areas where there was both a high percentage of renters, different kinds of renters, so the secondary suites versus purposebuilt rental housing, large urban centres versus more smaller communities, communities impacted by tourism versus maybe resource work,” said Chandra Herbert.
The fall timeline of a report means that any changes to B.C.’s rental laws likely wouldn’t come until spring 2019 at the earliest, when the NDP government would hit its two-year mark in power.
Chandra Herbert said it would be a mistake for him to assume he knew all the answers before public consultation. Although he’s a longtime housing advocate who has extensively researched renters’ issues in his community, he said there are a wide variety of types of rental scenarios in the province, involving both tenant and landlord rights.
The NDP’s 2017 election campaign stressed renter issues. Since forming power, the new government has raised rental assistance and shelter benefits, closed fixedterm lease loopholes, boosted funding to the residential tenancy branch to create a new compliance unit for offenders, changed rules for tenants evicted due to renovations, and promised to build more rental housing.