By Neil Vokey and Sara Sagaii

On February 27, city staff delivered a report back and initial work plan on councillors Swanson and Fry’s motions from Dec 2018, respectively named “Protecting tenants from renovictions and aggressive buyouts” and “Establishing a renters office at the City of Vancouver”.

Good: temporary relocations, business licenses, and retrofits

It was promising to see that besides providing supply, two new “pillars” are now added to the city’s approach to housing affordability: protection of tenants and reinvestment in existing stock. There are some positive steps being taken under the first pillar in line with the two motions passed in December and complemented by the second pillar that aims to preserve existing affordable stock.

For instance, the city is contemplating the use of business licenses as a tool to penalize bad landlords, working with the province to strengthen the Residential Tenancy Act guidelines to properly accommodate tenants during renovations, while at the same time providing incentives to landlords to upgrade and retrofit older buildings without displacement. It’s also encouraging to see a holistic, interdepartmental approach to establishing a renters office and commitment to consultation with tenant advocacy groups such as VTU, TRAC, and SRO-Collaborative.

Much is yet to be undetermined about these initiatives but we applaud the city for exploring a new approach under the new council’s direction and will be following these developments closely.

Bad: vacancy control missing

Notably absent from the city’s report was any consideration of vacancy control (tying rents to units instead of tenants) as a tool for tackling rental affordability and displacement. The purpose of motion B10 was to provide strong and immediate protection to renters priced out by a soaring market, and those in favour of the motion spoke passionately to council about a crisis requiring urgent solutions. The city was asked by council to report back on the viability of vacancy control as a solution. It was therefore deeply disappointing to find that the city’s report made no mention of vacancy control, and that city staff had made no attempt at investigating the relief its implementation would provide to renters.

Current policies of vacancy decontrol are clearly not working for Vancouver’s renters who for the last four years have seen rents increase by an average of six percent  annually, each year between 1.5 to two times the increase permitted by the provincial government. We encourage the city to centre its ongoing research on a meaningful consideration of vacancy control as a solution to our twin crises of affordability and displacement, instead of caving to the development industry’s unfounded fear mongering around vacancy control.

Ugly: Rental 100 and luxury supply

While we welcome the renewed commitment to increasing supply of rental units, it is crucial that the city facilitates the development of the right kinds of supply. So far, efforts to build more rental housing have consisted almost entirely of luxury market rentals (wrongly named “affordable”), with a few below-market in each development.

According to the city’s website, the current affordable rental program, Rental 100, achieves affordability “primarily through tenure, since renting is inherently less expensive than owning. In addition, more market rental housing gives higher earning residents more options to choose from, lowering the pressure on demand for lower priced rental units”.

The trickle-down economics rationalization for this focus and the notion of market supplies becoming more affordable by age can be proven false only by a look at the city’s own chart of rent levels for different age stocks: pre-1960 stock now rents at an average of $1,360. For a full-time minimum wage worker, this would constitute 70 percent of gross income.

As per the stats provided in the presentation, only 30 percent of renter households (households with incomes higher than $80k) can afford new market rate units. Yet, this is the income bracket that the city targets for “support” through its rental incentive programs. It is also worth mentioning that the percentage of lower income renters would have been higher had so many people not already been displaced or priced out of the city. Catering to the top incomes while we are seeing an exodus of lower- and middle-income residents and record high homelessness is adding insult to injury.

In order to prioritize affordability, the city needs to refocus its attention from market-rate/high-end supply to a truly affordable supply (geared to 30 percent of average incomes), while placing an emphasis on preserving existing affordable stock.

For 10 years the city has enabled the construction of luxury rentals, without regard for displacement and gentrification that they cause and with little regard for affordable options for lower-income tenants. And over the last 10 years, the rental crisis has only intensified. Continuing with more of the same will not build the homes we need nor will it bring rents down.

What is clear from the first staff report back is the city’s inability to build new affordable supply for anyone making below $80,000 within its current framework. Something needs to drastically change.

If the city is committed to facilitating new rental supply, it needs to work more with the nonprofit sector, explore new municipal taxation mechanisms, and strengthen calls to provincial and federal governments to contribute to the creation of affordable supply, including the implementation of the most cost-effective tool for long-term affordability, namely vacancy control. The first step is to stop calling unrealistic rents “affordable” and to start naming the problem.