As owners upgrade, renters fight burgeoning evictions
Frances Bula
Sun
As owners upgrade, renters fight burgeoning evictions Affordable housing has disappeared or is coming under threat at an alarming rate during the past year. It’s a trend that has local municipalities scrambling
Affordable housing has disappeared or is coming under threat at an alarming rate during the past year, as the three-storey walk-ups and mobile homes that provide some of the Vancouver region’s lowest-cost housing are torn down or made over to get higher rents.
It’s a trend that has local municipalities scrambling to find ways to stop demolitions and invent new ways to encourage construction of low-cost rental housing. It has also prompted a wave of citizen activism and even legal battles over what are called “economic evictions” — tenants who are forced out so landlords can do upgrades and then rent the properties for dramatically more money.
In Richmond and Vancouver, tenants are fighting evictions, while planners are hurriedly drafting policies to try to protect existing rental stock. Richmond declared a temporary moratorium on demolitions and conversions in July.
In Coquitlam, Port Moody and along the Sea to Sky Highway, low-income residents of trailer parks have lost their long-time homes.
In North Vancouver city, councillors passed a motion last week to require that council be notified about any proposed demolition and that staff look for ways the city can keep a lid on losses of affordable rentals.
“We’ve had four demolitions in the last couple of years and I think it’s the leading edge of a tidal wave that’s coming,” said North Vancouver Coun. Bob Fearnley.
Verna Semotuk, a Greater Vancouver Regional District planner who deals with housing issues, says it’s a regionwide problem.
“We’re hearing about this everywhere: Maple Ridge, the northeast sector, Burnaby, the North Shore, Richmond. There is great concern about redevelopment pressure.”
In Vancouver five low-cost apartment buildings currently face demolition, all to be replaced with much higher-end and, in some cases, fewer units. The city is also seeing tenants being evicted so landlords can renovate and rent for significantly higher amounts.
While Vancouver doesn’t have jurisdiction over rent control issues, it has policies to try to prevent demolitions or conversions — policies it is now looking to strengthen.
“The rental stock we have is a finite supply,” said Vancouver planner Rob Whitlock, who is drafting a new policy. “If there’s five-per-cent turnover every year, in 20 years time, it will be all gone. We are quite nervous.”
But everyone is struggling over a difficult situation with no easy answers. Investors by and large stopped building rental apartments in the late 1970s, after the federal government removed tax incentives that had encouraged a post-war boom in apartment buildings.
That stock is now up to 40 or 50 years old with no replacement in sight. And developers, encouraged by years of low mortgage rates and an apparently insatiable market of condo buyers, are on the hunt for under-used sites where they can build and sell quickly.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006