Vancouver buildings up parking, storage fees to sidestep rent increase limit

Vancouver buildings crank up parking, storage fees to sidestep rent increase limit

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Some Vancouver tenants say they’re seeing massive increases to parking and other fees as buildings find ways to drive revenue despite the provincially-controlled limit on rent increases.

A tenant advocacy organization says it’s an increasingly common — and not always legal — strategy it has seen landlords take advantage of ever since the COVID-19-related rent freeze took effect in 2020.

“At that point, some unscrupulous landlords were looking for anywhere they could find an excuse to increase rent,” Robert Patterson, lawyer and tenant advocate with BC’s Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre (TRAC), told Daily Hive.

Residents of The Victoria, a Strand building in East Vancouver, tell Daily Hive their parking fees increased by 17% this year, following a 15% increase in 2023. Since the building opened in 2020, fees for a basic parking stall have risen from $100 per month to $135.

“It’s exhausting,” resident Ashley T. told Daily Hive. “It’s very, very unsettling and amps up the precarity of being a renter.”

Storage locker fees in the building also shot up this year, going from $25 per month for a small locker to $35 per month (a 40% increase) and rising from $50 per month to $65 per month for a large locker (a 30% increase). The property managers also introduced a fee to reserve the amenity room, which was previously free.

All of these fee jumps are far and above this year’s 3.5% rent increase cap set by the BC government.

For Ashley, it’s frustrating to see building owners, who have equity in the property they own, extract more money from renters — who, by and large, rent because they can’t afford to own.

“It’s free rein if they can charge whatever they want and continually increase fees as much as they want,” he said. “Owners shouldn’t be offloading these costs on people who don’t have extra anyway.”

A letter to residents of The Victoria about parking fee increases. (Submitted)

The letter to building residents cited the “current economic landscape” as justification for the increased fees. Building management did not respond to Daily Hive’s request for comment on the issue.

For Roos W., another resident at The Victoria, it’s frustrating because she’s not seeing improvements or more frequent cleanings despite paying more.

“The reasoning I’m getting, which I find very frustrating, is they’ll tell me ‘oh, you know, if you look at other buildings they charge way more,'” she said. “That’s not really helping me.”

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Another building in the West End also posted a notice that its parking fees were increasing this winter — and cited “inflation and current market rates” as the reason.

Submitted

And over in Marpole, Morgan Pitcher told Daily Hive in October that his building also ratcheted up parking fees. He has lived in a Logan Street walk-up for about 10 years, and parking was always $25 per month. But in 2022, he said the building manager raised it to $75 per month. A year after that, it was raised to $85.

“A lot of people ended up saying, like ‘hey, I’m going to move my car outside,'” Pitcher said.

In certain scenarios, raising parking fees by however much a landlord sees fit is completely legal.

BC’s Ministry of Housing tells Daily Hive parking fees are only controlled provincially if they’re included in the tenancy agreement. If that’s the case, they’re governed by the rent increase cap for continuing tenancies.

But tenants who are given separate parking agreements are not protected by the Residential Tenancy Act.

“If a rental agreement between a landlord and tenant states that the rent includes parking spot(s) or storage locker(s), then the Residential Tenancy Act would apply. That means that the landlord is still only permitted to increase the rent once in a 12-month period, from the last increase or when the rent was initially set, and is subject to the annual rent increase limit, which is set at 3.5% in 2024,” the Ministry said.

It added that tenants who believe they’re getting an illegal increase can contact the Residential Tenancy Branch.

Patterson said landlords typically argue that parking or storage is a separate agreement. But he said the Residential Tenancy Act includes parking as a service or facility the tenant gains access to by paying rent — and therefore should be covered under the act.

Within the last six months, TRAC helped one building win a dispute that prevented the landlord from raising a building’s parking fee.

“It’s very clear what the [landlord’s] objective is here. It’s not like the price of providing parking is going up,” Patterson said. “It’s pretty clear landlords want to increase the income they’re receiving from tenants.”