Emily Lowan's BC Greens promise to bring back vacancy control
The BC Greens announced that it will protect renters by implementing vacancy control and ending pet bans.
In a policy brief, the BC Green Party said that “good rental homes” are key to solving the housing crisis, as more and more people are priced out of ever owning a home.
“I’m one of the 33 per cent of British Columbians who are renters,” said Emily Lowan, the leader of the BC Greens, in a release.
“I know firsthand how demoralising and nerve-wracking the experience of trying to find affordable housing can be, even more so when the government has walked away from protecting renters. That’s why the BC Greens are stepping up with a plan to deliver affordability for renters and protect them from the people trying to profit off of the housing crisis.”
Vacancy control
In B.C., landlords and property managers are allowed to increase rent for current tenants once per year. However, once that tenant leaves, they can then raise the price as much as they want, typically to the market rate.
“Vacancy control ties increases in rent to a unit, rather than a tenant, reducing the incentive for landlords to evict tenants without fault,” reads the BC Greens’ policy brief.
They said that the Residential Tenancy Branch would continue to determine annual increases.
“In 1973, BC NDP Premier Dave Barrett passed vacancy control, which ties allowable rent increases to units, not individual tenants, to fight a spiralling cost-of-living crisis and low vacancy rates. It was effective and popular, yet was stripped away by the following conservative government,” said Lowan.
In 2025, the BC Greens introduced a bill to bring vacancy control back to the province, but it was unsuccessful.
In 2023, Daily Hive Urbanized asked then-Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon his thoughts on this tool for keeping rent costs down, and he said that their approach was instead to build more housing supply.
Pet bans
While the BC NDP did include ending pet bans as part of their 2024 platform, it has yet to see the light of day. The BC Greens wrote that about one quarter of cats and dogs surrendered to the BC SPCA are there due to the limited pet-friendly housing.
The BC Greens said they would amend the Residential Tenancy Act to end the blanket no-pet clauses in rental contracts. They said they would instead “develop appropriate management guidelines on pets in rentals.”
The BC Greens also promised to restart the Community Housing Fund and Indigenous Housing Fund, with the plan to build and protect 26,000 housing units each year. They further committed to protect 2,000 “deeply affordable rental homes” each year.
The provincial election is on Oct. 24.