Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Coming up in this episode, Laurentism talks with Wendy Peterson of the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative about a case going to the BC Court of Appeal to reinstate Vancouver's vacancy control bylaws for SROs.
Speaker: In Vancouver, it's widely understood that single room occupancy hotels or SROs are a last resort before homelessness. Rising rents means that many of these units are being lost and that directly contributes to homelessness.
Speaker: Although vacancy controls designed to protect SROs were enacted by the city a few years ago, the bylaws were quashed by the BC Supreme Court in 2022. On November 7th, an appeal in that case goes to a higher court. Wendy Peterson is the director at the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative. We've had the pleasure of speaking with her many times over the years, and I'm really pleased that she's here again. Hi, Wendy, welcome.
Speaker: Hi, thanks for inviting me on the show, Lorraine. What is the situation for tenants living in SROs in Vancouver and how is their housing threatened? I don't know if your listeners know this, but half of the households in the downtown east side live in SROs, single room occupancy hotels.
Speaker: with no bathrooms and kitchens, a lot of people. And half of those hotels are privately owned. So about 4 ,000 people.
Speaker: live in privately owned hotels, including some in Chinatown. So what's happening? The average rent in those hotels is now a shocking $736 a month, according to the city. And that's a 20 % increase since 2019. So that's not good. And why are these rents going up? Well, the landlords, unfortunately, they can increase the rents when the tenants move out.
Speaker: and there's a high turnover rate in the hotel. So people are, there's a churn, we call it the churn. People are moving out more frequently. So it's driving up the rental prices in these units. So what is vacancy control and how does it differ from rent control? Well, vacancy control is a form of rent control that ties the rent to the unit rather than the tenant.
Speaker: So this would mean that landlords can't raise the rents when somebody moves out of the unit. So when the new person moves in, say the previous tenant was paying $621 a month
Speaker: Well, the new tenant would only pay $621 per month when they move in. And the landlord would be eligible to raise the rent yearly on the tenant, like it says under the Residential Tenancy Act, but they wouldn't be able to jack up the rents between tenancies. For example, at the Lotus Hotel on Abbott and Pender, people may know the Lotus, it's pretty iconic.
Speaker: The rents there for tenants were in the $600 range and there's a bunch of low income people trying to hang on even though 600 is a lot and more than welfare rate and disability rate and old age pension rate. But upon turnover, new tenants are paying a shocking 2000 a month. So there's a lot of pressure on the tenants and there's a lot of incentive for the landlord
Speaker: to move tenants out, low -income tenants out, because they can get so much more money for the new tenants moving in. I understand that there were some arguments made by landlords that they couldn't afford to fix the place up if they didn't raise the rents.
Speaker: Yeah, essentially, the landlords are saying we need to be able to jack the rents up when somebody moves out in order to fix up the place. But we disagree. There's plenty of money there at $600 to $700 a month for these units to pay for repairs. The landlord wants to increase the profit, and they want to increase the value of their building substantially, sometimes two or three times the amount.
Speaker: like we're seeing at the Lotus Hotel situation. Vacancy control was in place in the province in the early 80s. And it's in place now in Prince Edward Island and Manitoba. And it doesn't prevent landlords from doing repairs. Landlords can still do repairs on units. And also, landlords can make an application if they want to increase the rents beyond the yearly amount.
Speaker: they could make an application to the residential tenancy branch and say, we really need to increase the rents by 50%, 100%, and then let it be adjudicated by an arbitrator at the residential tenancy branch. That makes sense, rather than just having incentive to roll over the tenants so that they can roll over the rents. Now, how was Vacancy Control 1 in Vancouver in recent years? It was in place a couple of years back.
Speaker: Yeah, it was pretty, it was a hard slog. We started I think in 2005 when we realized there was a direct connection between the loss of these rooms and the increase in homelessness. And we tried various ways to get City Hall on board for vacancy control. Eventually they agreed there was a connection between losing the rooms and increasing homelessness. And they started advocating to the province to make a change to the Residential Tenancy Act.
Speaker: But the province refused to do it. So I think in about 2020, Jean Swanson, who was newly elected Downtown Eastside renters candidate at City Hall, she put forward a motion saying that the city, City Council should investigate their own version of vacancy control and the city should do it if the province isn't willing to do it.
Speaker: And after many reports back, investigations by city staff, motions again to council, we won. And it was extraordinary. I think there's on the Right to Remain website, people can look at a video there that we took of the hearing.
Speaker: It was very dramatic. And we won with only, I think, one or two councillors voting against it. So it was pretty solid decision. And the city designed its own SRO vacancy control, which is a mate. It was a thing of beauty. That's all I can say because it worked so well and it worked for two months and the tenants didn't have to do anything. The city implemented it. They talked to the landlords. They got the rent data from the landlords.
Speaker: And they set it up so that if the landlord didn't give them the rent data by a certain date, they were punished $1 ,000 per day per room. And if the landlord was found lying about their rent data, it was $10 ,000 per day per room.
Speaker: or something to that effect. So it worked really well. The landlords complied, the data was good, and the tenants didn't have to even engage in the bylaw. They didn't have to complain or ask, go and get an arbitrator to check and see if
Speaker: If their rent was declared correctly or if their new rent was correct, the city was going to manage it and then it got shot down by two landlords, SRO landlords, the Metropole Hotel and the Pender Lodge, and it got shot down at Supreme Court.
Speaker: So why were those bylaws quashed in the Supreme Court? That was 2022. So they said it was a jurisdictional issue that only the province can do rent control. And I think the city was arguing that no, we can do it because the moment between tendencies is not regulated by the province. But when it's an empty room, that's when we can regulate and we're regulating the rent at that moment.
Speaker: So that was the reason why we lost in a nutshell. But the city decided to appeal the decision, which is great. So that's why we're going to court on November 7th. So what's what's the thrust of the case that's now going back to court in this case, the court of appeal on November 7th? Well, this is a big case and it's big because there's been three other groups that have joined on as interveners.
Speaker: So we have the city versus the two landlords. My group, the SRO Collaborative has been accepted as an intervener. And so has another coalition of tenant advocates from CLAS, TRAC, and the one on Vancouver Island that I can't remember right now. And the third intervener is Landlord BC.
Speaker: The union of landlords has jumped on to say, we don't want vacancy control in SROs because it'll be a slippery slope potentially across the province. And this is bad for landlords across the province. And they're arguing the same point that the SRO collaborative is arguing. And they're saying that local people shouldn't make decisions about local issues.
Speaker: the collaborative is arguing with our lawyer, something called subsidiarity. I learned the technical term, and that is that local people should make local decisions about local issues. Namely, our city hall should have the power to do this because we're most closely and most deeply affected by the issue, and it may not be an issue that's affected across the province.
Speaker: So it comes down to jurisdiction and we'll see what happens. It's going to be an exciting hearing on November the 7th down at the Robson Courts. I understand that the City of New Westminster has a similar vacancy control bylaw, which was upheld by the BC Court of Appeal. How confident are you that you might be able to actually get this enacted or win at the Court of Appeal?
Speaker: I think that one is, it's not exactly vacancy control, but it is something where the city is intervening around rents. So that is in New Westminster a precedent. It's not exactly vacancy control, but I think it's upon rent eviction. So how confident am I? Not super confident, but I'm really hopeful. And I hope the judges, the three appeal court judges are sympathetic to renters.
Speaker: and understand the situation well. And I hope the city makes a good case that they have a right to intervene and have a right to regulate around rents with their license by -law. And we'll make a great case too around our subsidiarity arguments, just to show the long struggle for human rights and the long struggle around this issue over decades in the downtown Eastside. So yeah,
Speaker: hopeful am I? I'm kind of trying not to get my expectations too high. And I think if we lose, we'll really need public support to help get the province on board to change the law to allow the city to do this. And it'll be great if other cities then will also have the opportunity to fight for rent control, extra rent control in their neighborhoods as well. Well, thank you so much for joining me and I really wish you luck on Tuesday.
Speaker: And others can come down on Tuesday to the courthouse down at Robson, come and find us. There's going to be a big contingent of people outside, and we booked the biggest courtroom there so people can come and watch the court case. It'll be really exciting. What time should people show up? I think 10. I think it's a full day thing from 10 to 4, and our lawyers, Rebecca, is speaking in the afternoon. Wonderful talking with you, Wendy. Thanks, Lorraine.
Speaker: I've been speaking with Wendy Peterson. Wendy is the director at the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative. The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash redeye.
