Daryl: “many of the tenants in my building are seniors or recent immigrants. many of the tenants in my building have no idea about their rights.” “I went to the RTB to clarify what the tenants rights are after weeks of unbearable demolition noise”
Daryl had to talk to worksafe BC before tenants were told that there is asbestos in the building.
Councillor Kirby-Young asks what the city can do best within their jurisdiction and if we should wait for the Rental Housing Task force to make recommendations.
Alex pulls up a map of the density of renters in Vancouver and says that all these renters should be protected by the TRPP
Carol: “there is no reason to evict us there is nothing wrong with our homes. The city won’t even help us understand if we have the right to stay in our homes”
“You have any idea how quickly these heartless tactics can clear a building?”
“City staff needs to be empowered by you to enforce the rules that are already in place” “it’s bad enough that new rental towers going up will be a two or three times affordable rents”
“What landlordBC is saying is that landlords can afford us to stay there at current rents but at the same time they are able to leave suites vacant until they are able to clear the whole building”
“We’ve gotten threats from the UDI, when your landlord is the president of chair of, that they won’t build any more purpose built rental” John Stovall sits on the Urban Development Institute, a lobby org for developers and is renovicting 56 suites at Berkeley tower.
Carol responds to @kennedystewart’s question says that the renovations details are vague and it looks like “maybe they will replace the windows and it looks like they are putting a washer/dryer in my space”
“Typically a lot of the regular maintenance has been done by tenants in my building. I lived here with the old landlord when they replaced the water pipes replaced and we lived through it with no need for eviction”
“Old landlord apologized for having to raise our rent but we all understood that we had good rent and that was reasonable in that circumstance”
“The good actors are not going to be affected by this motion because they are not going to throw entire buildings on to the street for a coat of paint”
The NPA councilors are trying to spin this into good actors vs. bad actors but carol says “The motion is called Protecting Tenants From Renovictions and Aggressive Buyouts that’s what it’s for!”
Tenant At Berkeley “if this eviction goes through, 58 affordable units will be destroyed” important to note that the permit used by this is a Building Permit not a Development Permit and @swanson4council’s motion asks the city to expand tenant protection to cover Building Permits
VTU organizer Roger ✊: “over the course of 6 months my landlord replaced the balconies and no one had to leave. The he replaced the pipes and the largest inconvenience was a half day with no water”
“We need to see this motion as a complete package.” Roger pulls up a map of where the TRPP applies. So much of the map are places it does not apply meaning tenants there are not protected.
“Today all over Vancouver, in that white area we have land assemblies that are claiming whole blocks where tenants are given no protections when houses are sold under their feet”
“I want to return to a phrase that I’ve been hearing this week “unintended consequences” we Aren’t hearing the true meaning of this word, we are hearing a threat” “we can call the bluff of these developers”
Andrei: “As things stand the right to secure and affordable housing is not a right everyone is afforded, it’s a fluke that you are lucky to stumble into”
Andrei lives in a single home that is part of a land assembly “I don’t know what kind of building will replace my house when it comes but I do know that the current TRP will do nothing for me or the other 6 tenants who live in my building”
“I might be so lucky to be bulldozed over by market rental, but the truth is that I won’t be able to afford that”
“Sure that the millions of dollars my landlord will make on this sale will comfort them”
Debbie “I am sick and tired of the citizens of Vancouver being screwed over by developer greed. Yesterday I sat here and heard story after story of the bullying and tactics used by landlords to get people out of their homes”
Mel: “for the overwhelming amount of people who are renovicted there are no affordable housing alternatives” “many cities have passed similar legislation. Vancouver used to have vacancy control and Armageddon did not occur.”
“Tonight is your opportunity to show you are truly different”
“I’ve been a landlord for a long time previously.” @swanson4council asks if he would mind the passing of this motion if Mel was a landlord again “absolutely not, when I was a landlord I budgeted for maintenance”
“Your goal has to be to get prices low enough to get to a place where we can build co-ops” “good landlords are not going to take advantage of renovictions. You’ve got to pass the whole motion”
“Buyouts is something you wave in front of someone who is desperate. They give you $5000 that sounds like a fortune, that doesn’t pay for moving, the stress and it doesn’t afford the high rents”
“Buyouts aren’t a solution they are a tool to take advantage of people misfortune” 👌
Wiebe asks how you would budget as a landlord with vacancy control “the reality is that there’s no reason to jack up rent for the new tenants. Budgeting landlords have never needed that”
Eva: “we can look at models to make non-market housing possible.”
“Sometimes we choose to act and sometimes we need to act.”
Andre reads from BC Supreme Court case “where it is possible to carry out renovations without ending a tenancy there is no need for eviction under the corresponding section of the Residential Tenancy Act”
“Every(!) landlord that is using section 49 to evict tenants for renovations are abusing that section”
“At my building they have a resident lawyer. They can call me to ask questions and I can tell you they are still terrified. “ Andre asks people to put themselves in the shoes of those people without that resource or knowledge or language skills
“This motion is for landlords who are trying to use a loophole to evict people. That the city stage an intervention to prevent this”
“Ask the province day you want the jurisdiction and we’ll go to bat for you”
VTU Organizer Ben ✊ “We have good landlords in Montreal AND rent control” “the idea that someone who is sitting in millions of dollars need extra representation at this table!?”
“Developers are represented here today. It’s represented in how many people it takes to come here today to move these stagnant institutions. They are represented in money”
@derrickokeefe: “the unintended consequences of people losing their housing. The opioid crisis is not unrelated to the housing crisis. The consequences we should look at are ones that can’t be quantified. The human cost”
Reads @ccpa rental housing task force submission “governments have the power to shift construction from condos to affordable rentals” “the lack of vacancy control is creating bad landlords. It’s incentivizing bad landlords”
“Babies are being born in shelters”
Now @derrickokeefe answers questions to how New West City is moving to tell tenants about their rights in order to deal with renovictions and tracking sales of properties.
VTU member @DharmapalaSam “I don’t want to see more homeless people in this city. Why are me and my son sleeping in a house when over 2000 people are sleeping are the street” #StopRenovictions
“If I loose my house I’m going to be coming to this council and I’m going to be staying here” “renoviction is creating more homeless people in this city”
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