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Power to the people with vacancy control

October 3, 2024

On May 15, I was in Victoria to watch the B.C. government finally reinstate vacancy control for Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels into law.

The Residential Tenancy Act determines how much existing rents can be raised annually, but the sky’s the limit when a tenant moves out. Vacancy control removes the incentive for landlords to evict SRO tenants, throw a coat of paint on unwashed walls, call the “new” room a micro-suite and double the rent. In the last several years, this practice by landlords has increased homelessness. Vacancy control is a step in the right direction to stop this.

The DTES SRO Collaborative has been working on this issue for nearly a decade and had the following to say in a press release after the government’s passing of the new bill: 

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Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative applauds landmark provincial legislation that protects low-income tenants from homelessness

Called the Municipalities Enabling and Validating (No. 5) Amendment Act, 2024, this decisive action by the province immediately restores key protections for up to 3,600 of the region’s lowest income tenants, including pensioners.

The core purpose of this bill is to restore a landmark City of Vancouver bylaw, which was enacted in 2021 but was tied up in courts since that time. Now back in full enforceability, the SRO vacancy control bylaw:

• Restricts how much rent can be raised between tenancies in SROs;

• Imposes stiff penalties on landlords for non-compliance, and saw 100% compliance for the eight months it was in force; 

• Allows proactive enforcement by the City, taking the onus off the tenants to report violations of the bylaw;

• Allows for whistleblower protections for tenants who come forward to report violations of the bylaw;

• Ultimately removes the economic incentive to evict the lowest income tenants, meaning more people will be able to keep their homes.

This is a historic moment for the DTES neighbourhood. The SRO Collaborative started working on this issue in 2015, and some of the tenants have been working on it even longer. 

“In 2007 we realized there was a direct connection between the loss of low income SRO rentals and homelessness,” said Richard Schwab, SRO Collaborative president and long-term tenant of the Arlington Hotel. “I’ll sleep more soundly thanks to the city and the province. I look forward to what’s next, working to get all levels of government on board for investments, get landlords on board, get SRO buildings bought and renovated. And make plans, with the tenants included, for the construction of new apartments.

“Ultimately, at the SRO Collaborative we believe that it is possible for homes in the DTES to be community-friendly places to live where we can get the services we need, work together on projects in our hotels and work towards our big goal of regaining our agency to govern our space. We have already started working on this in some hotels and people can come see it in action,” he said.

“Housing, homelessness and being forced into encampments or onto the streets are huge and devastating issues in our community,” said Wendy Pedersen, executive director of the DTES SRO Collaborative Society. “SRO vacancy control is the crucial first step to prevent more people from slipping into the life-altering chaos that people experience when they lose their homes. We’re encouraged by the progress we have made [last month] with SRO Vacancy Control — and there is still lots of work to be done.”

Many individuals and organizations contributed to the adoption of this important legislation.

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Vacancy control is a beginning for SRO tenants, but we also need a different kind of economy. The moment that we create an economy that has fair and equitable distribution of wealth and resources,  homelessness becomes history.

 Houselessness provides clear proof that trickle-down neo-liberal capitalist market-driven supply-side economics doesn’t work. This system not only creates homelessness, but landlord gouging creates deepening poverty for an increasing number of working-class and middle-class families.

Land”lord”-ism is a remnant of feudal cruelty that gives a certain class of persons the power to deprive people of a home. Ownership of property beyond one’s own principal home and possibly what’s needed to operate a small business should be against the law. That would begin our journey out of the criminal inequities and inequalities of late-stage corporate capitalism.