There aren’t enough affordable rental housing options in BC.
Low vacancy rates mean landlords continue to raise rental costs, making renting more and more unaffordable.
Currently, 1 in 3 Canadian renters are worried about making next month’s rent. At the same time, rents keep going up higher. In 2021 alone, Vancouver rents increased by 14.2%.
A lack of affordable housing makes it hard to find a place to live and drives up the price of available housing. Those who can’t find a place to live, or can’t afford a home in an increasingly expensive market, end up living far away from their communities, in unsafe conditions or on the street.
People looking for a new place to live face skyrocketing rents across the province. Vancouver is currently ranked the least affordable city of the top 30 major cities in North America. The provincial minimum wage is significantly below a “livable wage” in many regions of BC.
The imbalanced housing market is also reflected in Vancouver’s high eviction rate. With such a low vacancy rate, landlords have the ability to charge extremely high rents when they get new tenants, so there’s a strong incentive to find ways to evict those who are paying less.
The BC government has spent four years claiming to make life easier for renters, but they’ve only made a dent - things have actually gotten more difficult in that time. That’s why we need multiple policy levers to cool the rental market.