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Will the housing crisis finally make someone pay attention to renter issues?

July 11th, 2016 · 25 Comments

That’s what I’m wondering, as the bizarre Vancouver and Toronto real-estate frenzies mean that more people are staying in the rental market for longer — maybe forever.

The Globe is doing a series on renter issues. I kicked it off on Saturday with a look at the general picture across the land and a little bit of history about how we got here, along with the stories from a few renters, some going through hell, and some who’ve found a way to cope.

Canada has an unusually high home-ownership rate, at 69 per cent. At this point, it’s higher than the rate in the United States. And, although I know I’m just asking for a troll attack by daring to mention this fact, Vancouver has a high ownership rate compared to other cities.

I’ve often wondered if both of those are due, in part, to the fact that renters feel so unprotected. (My guess would be another big part is the fact that real estate in Vancouver has been the go-to investment vehicle for decades, seen as something that will gain value at better than stock-market or bank-interest rates.)

Housing researchers tell me it’s impossible to sort out all the factors that go into that high ownership rate, but I can’t help but think the tenuous situation for renters plays a part. As Ingrid Cheung said in my piece, she and her partner panicked when they thought they would have to move and scrambled to make an offer on their apartment when it was put up for sale.

The problem I see, too, with this issue is that a lot of people, even in the renter world, are probably doing okay. Like with homeowners, if you got a place many years ago and you’re not in danger of being kicked out, you’re probably paying way below market because your landlord was restricted to cost-of-living rent increases.

So it’s really the newcomers and those thrown unwillingly into the market who are feeling the most pain. Are they a big enough group to get some political attention? Well, feels like these days, anything could happen. Maybe Christy Clark will have a news conference next week announcing more money and more protections for renters.

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  • Lysenko’s Nemesis

    More protection for renters will only discourage people even more, from renting out space.

    The politics of Gregor’s empty-homes play is really only PR for his own constituency. The province wisely stayed out of it, as are all the other municipalities. If Gregor wants to play, let him. Imagine the size of Gregor’s new bureaucracy to try and squeeze something out of this.

    First, people will want to see exactly the wording defining ’empty’. Then, there will be a number of ways concocted to get around it.

    The lawyers are breaking out the champagne.

  • Alfred K

    I wonder as well…people make a grand assumption that those who own investment properties leave them empty just to be jerks. Has anyone thought about it from a landlord’s perspective? I firmly believe in rights for renters to prevent abuse, but at the same time think about it from an landlord’s perspective.

    Why would someone avoid renting a place out and give up on easy income? Maybe because the hassles and lack of protections that landlords face make it not worth the trouble.

    Like Lysenko says below, this whole “empty-homes play” feels more like PR around something that will have little impact.

  • A Taxpayer

    There are bad landlords and there are bad tenants but by continually tipping the balance towards trying to protect tenants from bad landlords they are also providing more protection for bad tenants so it should not come as any surprise that you are going to get fewer landlords. You have nailed it – restrictions on landlords and rental increases just makes the return on renting out a property not worth the risk for some property owners.

    Instead of more “protection” for tenants, why not look at removing the perceived obstacles for landlords. Letting the market fill the demand is a much better option than government trying to mandate a solution.

  • A Taxpayer

    Both sides are playing politics with the housing issue but the Liberals are just much better at it. No doubt Gregor is looking for some way to get out of this ridiculous proposal and find some way to blame the Liberals for its failure. Right now they don’t know how much the tax will be (so how much money it will raise), how to define “empty” and how to ensure compliance (and how much that will cost) but it is going to be in place for 2017. Not likely.

    Our City would be better served if we had a Mayor intent on solving problems instead of trying to get the NDP elected in the next provincial election.

  • Lysenko’s Nemesis

    Gregor likes it because it fits into one of his ulterior objectives. Expand the bureaucracy and all public workers. Tax more and direct funds into as much state controlled social housing as possible. Always use some of the funds for spending on other aspirational projects that further endears the base.

  • Brilliant

    Alfred K, offshore buyers generally don’t need the rental income. They are just parking the money out of China.

    The tricky about taxation is what do you do about someone who keeps a home empty except for 1-2 months of the year when the visit Vancouver?

  • Keith

    Frances, your numbers are probably Stats Canada, which are “Metro Vancouver” numbers covering a vast region. Home ownership in Vancouver is 48.5%, and rentership is very likely to be understated by any official numbers. No way local incomes support a majority of households as owners, it defies common sense and the real numbers support the reality.

    Stats/http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/09/24/Vancouver-Housing-Crisis-Stats/

  • Kirk

    Renting can be stressful due to the uncertainty nowadays. One school family I know is getting renovicted and is thus changing schools. Now, with one year leases and owners continuously changing hands, no one can ensure they won’t be changing schools all the time. And, with housing prices here, the next generation of families could be 90% renters.

  • Kenji

    What’s wrong with state controlled social housing other than that there isn’t enough of it? As for aspirational projects, do you mean bike lanes and subways? What, is there a giant statue of himself somewhere that I forgot about?

  • Lysenko’s Nemesis

    Yes Kenji, it was so successful in China, Russia and even Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Left’s not forget East Germany either. As soon a s the Berlin Wall came down millions were rushing across to the east to try and get into their social housing.

    Even the USA puts us to shame with thier fabulous social housing apartment projects in Brooklyn and the envious south side of Chicago.

    Even Toronto shows how to do it with Regent Park barricading their doors to the massive horde begging to be let in.

    As for so called pet projects, ask yourself this: Isn’t it better to take funds from absentee property owners to finance bike lanes than to spend money on housing people? It’s a no brainer!

  • Kenji

    State housing don’t gotta be a vertical slum like the banlieues of Paris. Group homes, that look like homes…with, uh, groups of people…are a thing. They fit into the community. Our community, not Czecho.

    My god the people who use hyperbole in these forums.

  • A Taxpayer

    The problems the City is creating is becoming far more troubling than bicycle lanes – these can eventually be removed. The approval of the zero emissions plan for new construction in the City by 2030 is much more serious as we will be locking in a generation of construction at higher costs to meet an artificial objective to solve an non existent problem.

    When challenged about the cost, staff simply said Vancouver is being far sighted and equated the green initiatives to the building of subways in New York in the 1880’s and said all cities will eventually follow Vancouver’s lead. This is green ideology run amok and is counter to the trends occurring in the developed economies. Everywhere there are bigger issues than trying to reduce the temperature of the planet by a fraction of a degree over the next 100 years. We have them here in Vancouver but Council would rather take on the green challenge because unlike dealing with real issues, they won’t be seen to fail fighting a fake one.

  • Lysenko’s Nemesis

    Vision Vancouver is making everything more expensive, all the time and then blaming the province for housing costs. The environment is a fashionable meme for the young and it fits with their abhorrence of energy corporations. They discourage economic growth by rejecting industry. Then they complain that wages in the service-sector resort are too low. Again, a stab at our democratic economic system. They have a massively enlarged communications department to sell these concepts because they know that the message delivered free to the media in sound-bites is what drives opinion.

    Like any government these days, they will only be voted out when there’s a viable sounding opposition, that plays the propaganda game better – and has their own version of Visions’ Red Guard disciples.

  • Chris Keam

    Hyperbole is the last refuge of the illogical.

  • Lysenko’s Nemesis

    Group home – Wikipedia
    A group home is a private residence for children or young people who cannot live with their families, or people with chronic disabilities who may be adults or seniors. Typically there are no more than six residents and there is at least one trained caregiver there 24 hours a day.

    Is this the correct definition what you’re thinking of, or something else? Perhaps you know of an example of a local social-housing group home.

    Or, is it this:
    http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/accessing-health-care/home-community-care/care-options-and-cost/group-homes

    or this:
    http://www.bchousing.org/Options

    How far should we go?

  • Jeff Leigh

    Absolutely, but it is pretty entertaining getting climate science denial, dismissal of environmentalism, and promotion of the Red Guard, all in the same thread.

  • A Taxpayer

    The only deniers are those alarmists who refuse to recognize the climate scam is over, done, kaput. Sure you will be able to attend some swishy conferences complete with 5 star hotels and fine dining and there will be a lot of politicians saying all the right things but there is not going to be a lot of action (Vancouver and Ontario excepted) Look how unsuccessful Kyoto was and that was during an economic boom.

    Now, the world economy is extremely fragile and western populations polarized between the out of touch elites (and yes, the David Suzuki and Leo DiCaprio types are very much part of the elite) and the poor shmoes that have to live in the real world and bear the cost. Brexit, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders are just some of the manifestations of this dissatisfaction.

    If you are at all attuned to what is happening around the world, you would be aware that addressing climate change is not high (nor should it be) on the agenda except for those that are benefiting financially from the climate scam.

  • Lysenko’s Nemesis

    Germany is finally facing reality and backing off from the scam. They’ll be paying for a long time though. The green hustlers have made out like bandits.

    http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/10/germany-votes-to-abandon-most-green-energy-subsidies/

    The rise in poverty is sad. All the militants say is that everyone who doesn’t ‘believe’ is a denier. Pretending that somehow the ‘science is settled’. Any scientist knows that science is never settled. The ideologues have tried to polarize a generation.

    http://tinyurl.com/zr7horr

  • A Taxpayer

    At least Germany has recognized the folly of opting for an unreliable energy source that costs more than a reliable source unlike Ontario that keeps plowing ahead. And who pays for this elitist folly?

    http://globalnews.ca/news/2796958/rural-ontarians-left-in-the-dark-as-electricity-bills-skyrocket/

  • Kenji

    You may not have heard this before, but running shoes are not only worn by runners.
    Similarly, a state run house need not only be a group home. The point I was trying to make was that a housing model that looks like a house more than a vertical slum is possible.
    How far should it go? That’s a political question. I have no idea.

  • Lysenko’s Nemesis

    Fair enough Kenji. I can be a bit abrasive. The type of structure I see you’re describing is rare in Vancouver.

    I don’t think what the city of Vancouver is doing will help renters one bit. Does anyone?

  • Kenji

    I refuse to accept any apology until you come to Bula beer night and then we clink glasses together as duly sworn members of the Bulacult.

    As for the topic, ain’t the city saying they’re going to suck tax monies from these immgrints and use it to build…something? I may have misheard this.

  • Kenji

    It is the ULTIMATE FINAL EXTREME LAST refuge OF ALL TIME

  • Lysenko’s Nemesis

    You may have heard that the city is hoping to tax these ‘immigrints’ (sic) and build social housing. Don’t bet on it. It’s hyperbole.

    The money spent deciding what is the definition of empty, then finding these empty properties, then double checking and proving somewhere is empty, then going through any appeal process after an owner has explained any absence, which could include family obligations due to illness or even illness of the owner, or a death in the family, or of the owner, etc., and then any legal proceedings necessary to obtain any taxes or fight any taxes, will be substantial.

    In fact, the City of Vancouver and its mayor Robertson claiming that taxing vacant homes will improve vacancy rates for rental housing, could well become a useful new definition of the word, ‘hyperbole’.

  • Cindy

    I agree, my contemporaries all of whom own investment properties. Few rent them out. Why bother with the headache when you can make vastly more money selling them after a few years.