“Renters of Vancouver” takes an intimate look at how the city's millennials are dealing with the housing crisis.

“I’ve lived in Vancouver for four years. Over that period, I’ve had to move 12 times.

My first room was with a bunch of friends who also migrated to the city with me. I got a three-bedroom townhouse in Coquitlam, which was the closest place to Downtown we could get that would actually rent to a bunch of young girls. We signed a year lease, but within two months my friends wanted to move back because they were homesick. I was still locked into that lease. The landlord seemed flexible at the time, but she tried to sue us afterwards for the remaining amount on the contract. We found another person to take it over, but at a cheaper price—and the landlord wanted to charge us the difference, which was about $300 a month for ten months. That was a tough first renting experience.

Next I moved to Burnaby. I was there for another three or four months before I figured out that the landlord was actually insane. She would come into our place while we weren’t home, and reorganise the house. I’d arrive home one day, and the couch would be on a different wall. I’d ask my roommate if she did it, and she’d be just as baffled as me. I’m pretty sure the landlord shouldn’t do that. They have to give you 24 hours’ notice before they even enter the suite, but she would come in while I was at school and rearrange furniture. She said it was to maintain the cleanliness of the unit, but we were already really clean.

And that wasn’t even the weirdest part. The suite had no windows and no shower, but it did have two toilets. We thought those toilets were really funny at first. We joked that we were going to play board games, because they literally face each other in this washroom. Who designed a two-toilet bathroom? I have no idea. It’s a great feat of plumbing. I always thought it was strange that they never managed to hook up a shower though – we had to go upstairs to someone else’s house for that.

What was the worst experience I had while renting? A few years later I moved into a two-bedroom suite with someone I didn’t know. I left for work one day, and when I came home, all of their stuff was gone. Obviously I tried to get in touch with them with phonecalls, texts, and emails, but they never contacted me back. I just could never get hold of them. I was thinking ‘How do you pack and move all your stuff in eight hours? How do you ghost on a house?’ I never heard anything back from her ever again.

Now I’m living in this place by the PNE. I’ve moved in with someone I actually know, not just someone I met on Craigslist, which is great. The place is really nice—there’s three units inside the house, and every floor is rented out to tenants. But the landlord lives in Saskatchewan. The good thing is that he’s not around to rearrange my stuff! But the bad thing is that it’s really hard to get in contact. Last week the alarm started going off all over the house for no reason, and none of us knew how to turn it off. I tried emailing the landlord, and calling him, and for more than a day this alarm was going off. No-one could get in touch with him. Eventually he called me, and was like ‘Oh, the code is this.’ I was thinking ‘That would have been super useful to know a few months ago!’

The place is really nice though, and I’d love to stay. The rent is $600, and it includes everything. But I don’t anticipate living there for a long time. I have a contract with this place—one of the only places that’s ever offered me one—but it’s month-to-month. They didn’t want us to sign a year lease, so there’s not very much security. And my roommate says she’s going to moving out to go back to Edmonton within the year. That’s a shitty feeling.

I might honestly just move out of Vancouver. I love it here, but at the same time, it’s expensive. I’m finding it difficult to make the basics work right now. Groceries are expensive, utilities are expensive, the internet is expensive. I know I could make a higher salary and get more for my money elsewhere.”