Expanded Vancouver tenant rights denied to avoid impacting new rental housing | Daily Hive

Vancouver City Council rejects calls for expanded city-wide tenant protections to avoid hindering new rental housing supply

Residential towers in downtown Vancouver's West End neighbourhood. (Matthew James Ferguson/Shutterstock)

A growing debate over the protections for existing renters in redevelopment projects is highlighting a fundamental tension in housing policy: how to balance the urgent need for a significant surge in new rental housing with the risk of displacing existing tenants.

It is very much a chicken-or-egg situation — or a question of how much short-term pain can be tolerated for the potential of immense long-term gain — and it strikes at the core of one of the most complex dilemmas in addressing Vancouver’s housing affordability and supply challenges.

On Monday, in a 5-4 vote, Vancouver City Council rejected a request by the City of Vancouver’s Renters Advisor Committee — a volunteer-based body that directly advises City Council — to expand the same protections that exist for renters within the City’s Broadway Plan to all areas of the city.

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The motion proposed by the committee would have directed City staff to explore the creation of new city-wide protections of right-of-first refusal for existing tenants to return to the new building at their current rent or a 20 per cent discount on city-wide average market rents, providing tenants with the option to receive a temporary rent top-up as a monthly payment during construction of the new building or as a lump-sum payment, and providing returning tenants with new units that are an appropriate size for their household.

These same protections under the Broadway Plan were previously regarded as the strongest tenant protection policies in Canada, when a previous makeup of City Council approved the Broadway Plan in June 2022 with these associated enhanced renter protections. Another key reason for implementing stronger protections at the time was that the Broadway Plan area contains 25% of Vancouver’s secured purpose-built rental housing supply.

Currently, the temporary rent top-up and discounted right-of-first-refusal rents are not available in most other areas of Vancouver. There are some exceptions: In June 2024, the same enhanced tenant protections offered by the Broadway Plan were expanded to all provincially legislated Transit-Oriented Areas of Vancouver (SkyTrain stations and select bus exchanges) and apartment zoning within the Grandview-Woodland Community Plan.

The committee’s motion also called on City staff to consider creating a new formula that calculates how much additional density is needed to cover the cost of affordable replacement rental homes, and the eligibility of various tenant benefits under various City policies.

Those opposed to the motion entailed ABC councillors Lenny Zhou, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Lisa Dominato, and Mike Klassen, as well as Mayor Ken Sim, while those in favour entailed independent councillor Rebecca Bligh, Green councillor Pete Fry, COPE councillor Sean Orr, and OneCity councillor Lucy Maloney.

Fry emphasized that he was bringing the motion forward on behalf of the committee, where he serves as City Council’s liaison.

“The reality is market rents aren’t working for a lot of folks. And when we’re talking about existing tenancies that are potentially being targeted for redevelopment and coming in at new market rates, and indeed, if in fact, there is this happening outside of the scope of the Broadway Plan, I think it is prudent of us to consider it,” said Fry during the deliberations.

“Because I can tell you that the impacts on the West End of Vancouver, and I know that members of the Renters Advisory Committee do live in the West End, and are experiencing those pressures on family size units. They’re experiencing those pressures with REITs coming in and buying high-cap, low-yield buildings with the expressed purpose of clearing up the tenants, cleaning up the buildings, and charging higher rents. So those are real pressures on existing renters in the city of Vancouver.”

Maloney added, “People are incredibly concerned about tenant protections, and I think it’s a matter of fairness to extend rental protections enjoyed by some areas of the city across the entire city.”

Approved rental projects struggling under weight of enhanced tenant protections

But other members of City Council focused on the importance of taking a broader, big-picture view of the potential implications — particularly how this could impact the viability of new rental housing projects that serve to greatly increase the overall housing supply.

Bligh said she respects the committee’s advocacy group, but suggested “they’re bringing a very single-focus lens to what could be very significant changes in destabilizing an already destabilized rental housing supply.”

“The solution to this [housing crisis], of course, is secured rental housing across our city. That really is where tenants have the best protections. And so the faster we can get to building that kind of housing, the better it is for every tenant and every renter in our city,” she continued, adding that “focusing long term is getting that housing built.”

Over the many years, analysts and researchers have often stated that escalating rents have been driven by a lack of adequate competition in the market, with a growing population of renters competing for a limited pool of secured purpose-built rental housing — following decades of under-building. This is further exacerbated by the ongoing downturn in the strata condominium market, as investor-owned strata properties previously accounted for a major portion of new rental housing supply, albeit unsecured. All of this has been reflected by the persistently tight vacancy rate.

Bligh also clarified that her support for the committee’s motion was not an endorsement of expanded city-wide renter protections, but rather a step toward having City staff report back on the potential benefits and impacts.

While this City Council has already approved dozens of rezoning applications under the prescriptions and stipulations of the Broadway Plan, creating a combined total of thousands of new secured purpose-built rental homes, it remains to be seen whether these projects will actually be built due to growing costs and other factors.

During City Council’s deliberations, it was noted that the added costs associated with the enhanced tenant protections under the Broadway Plan pose challenges to the financial viability of these projects. Bligh described these challenges as effectively acting as a “pace of change” policy.

“We know that it’s slowing down development in the Broadway Plan, because it is much tougher to be able to pencil out and get the construction financing for these projects to actually break ground,” she continued.

Regarding the number of approved new rental homes to date, Klassen also stated, “those are just the numbers, but the fact is that right now, by all accounts, our market for building housing is teetering on a bit of a brink because things are not getting built because of the market.”

Both Bligh and Klassen warned that due to deteriorating market conditions, there could be a large drop in the number of new homes beginning construction in 2025.

“There’s nothing being built… The vast majority of these are getting approvals. Those are going to be sitting on the sidelines for many years. It’s just that the economics don’t work. It’s a combination of things. The Broadway Plan’s tenant relocation policy is a key driver of that… I think the most important thing that we can do to protect renters in our city is to make sure that we build more secured rental housing,” said Klassen.

It was also noted in the meeting that City staff are expected to report back in 2026 on their data-based findings on the performance of the existing Tenant Relocation and Protection Policy, and potential recommended changes.

While City Council rejected the committee’s motion calling for expanded tenant protections city-wide, they unanimously endorsed two related initiatives during the same meeting: the committee’s separate motion directing City staff to explore expanding pet-friendly tenant protections and increasing the share of new purpose-built rental buildings that allow pets, and Fry’s member motion instructing staff to report back on potential policy changes to improve building maintenance in cases involving mould, indoor air quality, and water damage — including measures to better inform tenants of their rights, health and safety standards, and avenues for recourse.

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