Call to Action: Support Vacancy Control in Vancouver’s SRO Hotels

Housing
Written By Guest User

On November 16, 2021, Vancouver city council is set to vote on one of the most important issues in the Downtown Eastside (DTES): protecting tenants of Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs) from homelessness by implementing vacancy control. Now is the time to turn up the pressure and make your voice heard. Support tenants in the DTES by sending an email to the Mayor, Council and key government officials using the template below!


BACKGROUND

There are 4,000 tenants living in 100 privately-owned Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs), which are a last resort before homelessness for many residents in the Downtown Eastside and Downtown Core. The SRO Collaborative estimates that about ⅓ of the tenants in these hotels are Indigenous.  

But rising rents in these previously low-rent rooms are driving these tenants with only $375/month for rent through Income Assistance into shelters, tent cities and onto the streets. According to the city, average rents in SROs have increased a staggering 16% (from $483 to $561!!) over the last four years. The SRO Collaborative reports that most rooms are now renting for $600 or $750/month and some are converting from $375 to $1,100/month! This is happening because when a tenant moves out or is evicted, the law allows slumlords to jack the rent as high as they want, destroying the affordable housing stock, one unit at a time.

The good news is that, with your help, this is all about to change! We’re fighting to protect SRO tenants from homelessness through vacancy control, which ties rent to the unit, rather than to the tenant. If vacancy control is in place, landlords will no longer be able to hike up the rent when a tenant moves out. This removes the financial incentive for slumlords to evict tenants into homelessness.

After years of grassroots pressure, we are glad to see the City of Vancouver will be voting on a bylaw to tie rent control to units in SRO Hotels.

In December, 2019, Vancouver City Council passed Councillor Swanson’s motion unanimously in favour of tying rent increases to the unit in SROs. In September, 2020, Council unanimously supported staff’s recommendations to send staff off to develop a made-in-Vancouver mechanism for enforcing vacancy control. This coming fall, city staff will bring back options and council will finally be voting on this ground breaking bylaw that will be the most important thing that this council can do in their whole term to slow the inflows into homelessnsess.

The slumlords will NOT like this and they are organizing against us. Their profits are directly threatened when our most vulnerable community members are being pushed into homelessness. They will fight with all they have to avoid the implementation of vacancy control, but there is good news: we greatly outnumber them. Now it’s time to out-organize them and we do this, we can win.

In order to get across the finish line, we need your help! To support tenants in the DTES and put pressure on City Council, we need you to do 2 crucial things:

  1. Write a letter: If it didn’t work, we wouldn’t ask! As simple as it is, letter writing is an incredibly effective tool, and we have a template below to help you get started:

  2. Share and tell your friends! The only way we win is if we build this movement together! By making sure our friends are also speaking at council and writing letters, we will make our collective voice heard much louder than by getting involved alone.

If you need help preparing to write letters or speak at city hall please contact: dtes.sro.collab@gmail.com

Email/Letter Template: 

Instructions:

  • COPY the email below and paste into your email software.

  • BE SURE TO ADD YOUR OWN SUBJECT LINES AND WORDS TO AVOID EMAIL FILTERS.

  • Add a sentence to introduce yourself, and mention that you live in Vancouver!

  • Because city councillors don’t read all their letters, it is even better to write your own letter, keep it short, state you want full vacancy control and put your best arguments close to the top.


TO:  Kennedy.Stewart@vancouver.ca, Jean.swanson@vancouver.ca, christine.boyle@vancouver.ca, adriane.carr@vancouver.ca, pete.fry@vancouver.ca, michael.wiebe@vancouver.ca, rebecca.bligh@vancouver.ca, melissa.degenova@vancouver.ca, lisa.dominato@vancouver.ca, colleen.hardwick@vancouver.ca, sarah.kirby-yung@vancouver.ca, paul.mochrie@vancouver.ca, sandra.singh@vancouver.ca,

allison.dunnet@vancouver.ca, ag.minister@gov.bc.ca

CC:  dtes.sro.collab@gmail.com

Dear Mayor Stewart and Vancouver City Council,

First of all, I want to thank you for unanimously approving motions in December 2019 and September 2020 asking staff to investigate how to protect tenants of Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs). I understand that by the end of 2021, City staff will be presenting Council with options for a municipal vacancy control mechanism. I strongly urge you to prevent the increase of homelessness by voting in favour of vacancy control in all SROs.

It is widely understood that SROs are a last resort before homelessness. Rising rents mean that many of these units are being lost, directly contributing to homelessness and tent cities. Furthermore, building replacement social housing would cost governments approximately $500,000 for each lost unit. And while replacement housing is the long term goal, the housing system cannot currently cope with the rapid loss of the remaining 4,000 affordable SRO units. Before replacement with new housing, we need protection for the existing units and tenants. Voting in favour of vacancy control is the cheapest and fastest way to prevent homelessness now.

Homelessness during a pandemic, opioid crisis, and climate emergency is a death sentence to many. Please act with the appropriate urgency to protect low-income tenants in SROs from homelessness and prevent the homelessness crisis from worsening. It is also crucial to consider that approximately one third of SRO tenants are Indigenous. Advancing reconciliation includes preventing unnecessary homelessness for these tenants.

The top issue concerning Vancouverites according to the city's recent survey is homelessness and housing affordability. No doubt, this will be the number one issue that will determine the legacy of this council.

I urge you to prevent an increase in homelessness by supporting vacancy control in all SROs, with the following in mind:

  • Do not delay: don’t give landlords a window to rapidly evict tenants into homelessness

  • Ensure there are no loopholes: end the economic incentive to evict vulnerable tenants into homelessness

  • Implement proactive monitoring and education

  • Implement sufficient penalties to discourage violations

  • Do not believe landlords who say they won't be able to make repairs, especially because they can now apply to the RTB for a 3% rent increase

Implementing vacancy control in the SROs to prevent more homelessness and stop the loss of this last resort stock of housing is a popular, cheap and effective action that demonstrates your commitment to improving housing conditions and preventing homelessness for all Vancouverites. We cannot afford to lose any more units of housing and we need to do everything we can to stop homelesssness. Thank you so much for taking this important step to protect vulnerable tenants in our city.

Sincerely,

 YOUR NAME

TO READ MORE CLICK THIS LINK TO VIEW AN INFORMATIVE GOOGLE DOCUMENT.

EXTRA TIPS for Letter Writing:  

Use any of the following in support of your argument:

Timing and urgency

  • Some landlords are trying to speed up evictions before this policy comes in to place

  • For example, a whole floor has been emptied out in the Vogue hotel

  • Please ensure that landlords are not given a window to evict vulnerable tenants while this policy is being implemented

Slow the high turnover of tenants

  • The annual turnover rate of tenants in SRO hotels is 40-50%, which is more than double the rate across the rest of the city. This allows landlords to increase the rent for more often. This crucial housing stock needs extra attention to stop rents from skyrocketing out of reach of DTES residents.

  • Without rent control, landlords have an incentive to have high tenant turnover so they can increase rent between tenancies. This leads to a high number of evictions, particularly for low-income and low-rent paying tenants

Slow speculative investment

  • Rising rents have turned SRO hotels into a hot commodity. Between 2010 and 2019, over 1/3 of privately owned SROs (39 buildings) sold on the private market. 7 of these buildings sold more than once.

  • Following sale to a new owner, rents increase at avg. annual rate of 6 x faster than buildings that were not sold (12% vs 2%)

  • The average rate of increase in rent of 12% percent in buildings that change hands means we will lose a great deal of housing in the delay to implement, calling for a moratorium on sale of private buildings.

Homelessness

  • The increase in homelessness, how horrible it is to live on the street, and the government’s duty to provide housing for the most vulnerable

  • These units are the “last resort” or “end of the line” before homelessness. Allowing their gentrification will amplify the homelessness crisis.

  • Emphasize the dangers of living on the street during the opioid crisis, the pandemic, as well as the increasing effects of climate change (homeless population drastically affected by last summer’s heat dome!!)

SRO tenants are a vulnerable populations / Reconciliation

  • Many of the SRO tenants are Indigenous and this is part of reconciliation and is not just a housing rights issue but a racial justice issue.

  • Of the 3,700-5,000 low-income SRO tenants living in privately owned rooms, approximately

  • 1/3rd are Indigenous tenants

  • 80-90% received a form of income assistance

  • Many have multiple disabilities

  • Many are old age pensioners

  • A growing number are older adults 50-65 who cannot work but do not yet qualify for old age pension, and have only $375 for rent

  • As gentrification accelerates and rent in SROs quickly approaches 100% of the welfare rate, anyone who relies on that social assistance for rent will soon have insufficient funds to pay for even these most basic of places to live.

  • Gentrification is hurting the most vulnerable populations among us, and reconciliation demands we act to protect low-income renters.

Building conditions

  • To increase tenant turnover and make more profits, landlords neglect repairs or harass tenants until their living conditions are unbearable. They also take advantage of tenants asking for repairs by using this as a justification for a renoviction.

  • They’ll say: this will create a disincentive to build new purpose-built rental. We say: it creates an incentive to build new units that can be rented at the market rate, because they’ll be the only units at that rate.

  • A new RTA amendment allows landlords to apply to the RTB for a 3% additional rent increase to cover the cost of repairs and renovations - see Additional Rent Increase for Capital Expenditures (ARI-C).

Cost of program

  • The cost to build one single unit of social housing is now approximately $500,000. Every affordable room we save is worth that, and we are looking at preserving 4,000 rooms in SROs with this new policy.

  • We can cut down on rent control enforcement costs by utilizing Downtown Eastside tenant support organizations such as the SRO Collaborative, instead of city staff, to monitor and report violations.

  • We can use funds currently being used up by the Vancouver Police Department to pay for rent control enforcement and implementation.

Bigger picture

  • This is one part of a broader housing strategy which governments are failing at. Rent control is not the only solution we’re fighting for, massive public investment in social and low-income housing to flood the market is another key solution. Also raise the welfare rates.

  • We do not expect this single policy will solve these problems but it is a crucial emergency step. All levels of government need to act to solve the homelessness and housing crisis, including this one

MORE INFO ON THE DEMANDS:

Do not delay: Don’t give landlords a window to rapidly evict tenants into homelessness

It is important to proceed immediately. Over the past two years, Vancouver has been losing low-income SRO buildings at a rate of 2-3 per year with rents rising far above the welfare shelter allowance. Given that SROs are housing of “last resort”, this loss of affordable units has contributed directly to homelessness in our city.

Furthermore, in anticipation of vacancy control, some landlords have been using the status quo system to unfairly increase rents. For example, tenants are being pushed out of the Vogue Hotel on Granville Street right now with rents increasing to $750/month, which is double the social assistance housing allowance. Please don’t give landlords a larger window to undermine affordability and evict tenants into homelessness before vacancy control is in place.

No loopholes: End the economic incentive to evict vulnerable tenants into homelessness

In terms of vacancy control options, it is crucial to ensure that there are no loopholes that landlords can use to undermine the goals of the policy.

First, there should be no allowable rent increase between tenancies (0%), because one main purpose of the policy is to disincentivize evictions, not to reward landlords for evicting tenants. Limiting rent increases to within tenancies will incentivize landlords to improve conditions for current tenants, thus leading to lower turnover and therefore preventing an increase of homelessness. Currently, the annual turnover rate in SROs is an astounding 40-50%!

Second, there should be no relaxation process on vacant rooms to fund capital investments. A landlord can apply through the RTB for an extraordinary rent increase within a tenancy to fund capital investments. But landlords should be discouraged from ending tenancies, not rewarded for emptying out rooms whenever possible. Rather, landlords should be incentivized to keep tenancies in place during major renovations, and to find alternative accommodations for the duration of renovations when necessary.

Proactive monitoring and education

The vast majority of SRO tenants face many barriers and vulnerabilities, such that navigating a complaint-based system can be extremely challenging if not impossible. A more proactive approach to monitor vacancy control and slow evictions is crucial. The City should make collection of rent rolls a part of business license renewals, and there should be resources for spot inspections to monitor violations.

Furthermore, SRO tenants do not have their own mailboxes, and those that do receive mail get it through their landlord. Therefore, please make sure that vacancy control education measures are taken, including clear information posted inside each building and by direct tenant outreach.

These monitoring and education measures could also be carried out with or by Downtown Eastside tenant support organizations.

Sufficient penalties to discourage violations

To discourage non-compliance by landlords, there should be significant penalties for landlords who raise rents between tenancies. Fines should be sufficiently higher than the profits landlords would anticipate through violation. For example, an illegal $200 monthly rent increase could translate into an additional $2,400 profit per year, or $60,000 over the length of a 25 year mortgage. The fine should therefore exceed this amount.

Should the fines go unpaid, the city should put unpaid fines on the landlords’ tax rolls and eventually move to expropriate the landlord’s property should the rents continue to not be lowered nor the fines paid.

Since Feb 2019, the City of New Westminster has been successfully using this method to significantly slow the loss of affordable rental units in that municipality. The BC Court of Appeal recently upheld the municipality’s right to control rents using the Business License bylaw.

Furthermore, if a landlord is found to have been charging a tenant an illegal rent amount for a period of time, they should repay the tenant all the monies that were taken illegally above the allowable amount.

Don’t believe landlords who say “the sky will fall” and they won’t be able to make repairs

Some SRO owners and, in particular, building managers, are in favour of vacancy control. However, because many of the current owners bought these properties as speculative investments, they have personal financial incentive to oppose any measure that could reduce their profits. Flimsy arguments are often used by landlords, which can be easily countered:

  • “I will stop doing repairs”: SRO landlords hardly do any repairs anyways, and many refuse to do them even under legal order from the city. Conditions are so deplorable and criminal that they have horrified the official representatives from the United Nations. The city should continue working with the community and other levels of government to create programs for repairs, as they have in the past (i.e. RRAP).

  • “I will make less profit”: No one should make such windfall profits by forcing vulnerable tenants into homelessnes.

Versions of vacancy control are in place in Manitoba, PEI, and were in place in BC in the 1970s and 80s. The sky didn’t fall then, and it won’t now

ALSO, for more details check out our additional sources below:

Other Sources

  • Background documents relating to the coming vacancy control bylaw:

  • Letters of regarding the coming vacancy control bylaw:

  • Read the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative’s email to City Council here (hyperlink coming soon)

  • Read Councilor Jean Swanson’s articles on vacancy control:

  • News articles:

  • Other letters to Council from key supporters of vacancy control:

  • What landlords are saying

Key Findings of city staff’s SRO Report to Council (2020)

  • In 1993 there were 1,770 SRO units renting for $375 or less

  • Today there are 77

  • $375 is the amount of welfare assistance expected to be sent on shelter

  • The report recommends implementing vacancy control

  • When buildings are sold, the average rent increase is 12%

  • Rent is going up 4% across all SROs

  • Amending the SRO bylaw to bring tenant protections in line with the TRPP

  • Staff also recommend a whopping $1billion budget for a gradual transition of all privately owned SRO Hotels into social housing or housing agreements, in order to stop the loss of units to gentrified “micro-suites”. This is great news and it can’t happen soon enough!

Guest User
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