By Steve Hubrecht
An Invermere councillor’s attempt to get the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) to support changing the B.C. Residential Tenancy Act was thoroughly quashed during last week’s convention in the Lower Mainland.
Councillor Gerry Taft put forward a motion asking the provincial government to provide grants and subsidies for “small landlords” (who own three or fewer properties) and to develop a process allowing rent rates artificially capped by the Act to be gradually raised to market rental rates.
Several discussions at Invermere council meetings throughout the spring hit on the topic of the decline of long-term rentals in Invermere.
Taft, and several other fellow councillors, feel that recent changes to the Act mean it now favours renters over property owners to such a degree that it is resulting in fewer long-term rentals in Invermere due to overwhelming bureaucratic headaches that can come with being a landlord to long-term renters.
However, UBCM representatives as a whole were of a much different mind, defeating Taft’s resolution by a wide margin.
“It was not received well at all. It was soundly defeated,” Taft told the Pioneer, the evening after his motion was voted down. He noted he only had two minutes to make his case before the resolution was voted on, and “I don’t know if the other delegates perhaps really understood what I was trying to get at. But at any rate, they did not see it my way.”
There are more than 2,000 local government representatives at the UCBM conventions. Votes are taken by delegates on the floor holding up their voting cards. This makes exact counts impossible, so if the number of cards being held up in favour of or against any given resolution appears even a little close, electronic voting is undertaken to be more certain.
But delegates’ response to Taft’s motion was a clear ‘no.’ “They definitely did not need it (electronic voting),” he said. “I knew my motion was contentious, I knew there would be opposition, but I am surprised there was not more support. I thought it would be a tight vote.”
One factor that Taft feels that contributed to the swift demise of his resolution was that many UBCM delegates are from urban centres.
“In urban centres, a lot of times, you’re talking about real estate trusts, pension funds, very large nonprofit entities and other professional management companies that are the landlords. But in small towns such as Invermere, that’s not the case. It’s usually someone that owns just one rental house (in addition to a principal residence) or a landlord who is just renting out a suite in their basement,” he said. “There’s some nuance there, a difference between being a professional management rental company and being ‘mom-and-pop’ landlords.”
(Getty Images)
Taft said that difference can be big when it comes to dealing with problematic tenants, for instance: in such a scenario, large real estate management corporations are well equipped to handle the legal complications and can also easily hire lawyers, while mom and pop landlords often can’t afford that, and so can easily get caught in the bureaucratic and legal tangles of the Act.
In Taft’s job as a realtor, he’s seen exactly that happen to small-time landlords in Invermere, and the negative experience has made these landlords vow to sell their homes or only rent them on a short-term basis.
“We’re losing long-term rentals in Invermere a lot faster than people realize, especially single family homes,” said Taft. He noted that the population of the district has grown rapidly in the past 10 years and that many former long-term rental homes have been sold. Often the buyers are new residents moving to Invermere. In this situation “it’s great that we are getting more full-time residents. But at the same time we are losing long-term rental homes and they are very unlikely to become long-term rentals again any time soon.”
Taft pointed out that home building costs have shot dramatically up since the COVID-19 pandemic, and said that given that rise “I’m skeptical we can build enough affordable homes to make a meaningful difference. It’s very expensive and it takes a long time to build even, say, five units of affordable housing. And during that same time, 20 single family homes that have always been long-term rentals in Invermere have been sold and are no longer long-term rentals. So the overall situation is worse than before.”
Although the UBCM convention vetoed Taft’s resolution, that was just one avenue to attempt changing the Tenancy Act, said Taft. Other options include lobbying provincial officials and writing letters. Taft said “I think it’s a topic still worth pursuing.”
Invermere’s pending STR regulation bylaw could help deal with the current lack of long-term rentals and affordable housing, but won’t be enough to completely resolve the situation, said Taft.
“Yes, short-term rentals have an impact on the housing crunch. But part of the reason homeowners choose to do STRs is that the B.C. Residential Tenancy Act is so complicated. The two issues are connected and I don’t know if you’ll ever solve one without solving the other,” he said.
