NWTU pushing to limit “No Fault” Evictions

If you are a tenant who has experienced or been threatened with a "Landlord Use" eviction and want to share your story with news reporters let us know. It's always requested to have someone with lived experience if possible and adds a lot of weight to the story.

Since starting our monthly public meetings last year, a big concern of many tenants has been the use and abuse of "Landlord Use" evictions, particularly for "Family Member" or "Caretaker" use.

With these evictions bad-faith landlords typically target the longest-term tenant paying the lowest rent which blatantly shows their financial incentive to evict tenants solely to maximize their profit.  In some cases, tenants told us that these evictions would be used in bad-faith multiple times in one building or used as a threat to extract illegal rent increases of hundreds of dollars.  https://globalnews.ca/news/9865519/housing-advocates-rally-over-fraudulent-landlord-use-evictions-in-new-westminster/

Lately there are clear signs that changes to the "Landlord Use" eviction laws may be coming in the next few weeks. (B.C. throne speech promises protection from evictions, new law against protests at schools) https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/bc-throne-speech-promises-protection-from-evictions-new-law-against-protests-at-schools

When tenants face these abuses we often hear from them directly through our email, public meetings and social media.  From this experience, we felt that the current proposals for change put forward by different tenant advocacy organizations would likely not go far enough to deter abusive landlords.  So we set out to do our own media work and advocate a solution that would stop most "Landlord Use" evictions.

Our proposal, that was worked out in consultation with New West City Councillor Jaime McEvoy and with members at previous NWTU public meetings is the following: “Landlords renting out two or more units (apartments etc.) are not eligible to use the ‘landlord use for family’ or ‘caretaker’ provisions to evict tenants in good standing. Landlords renting out two or more units will have to wait until a unit vacancy occurs through natural market turnover."

We feel that fully restricting this use, especially in apartment buildings, would prevent the bullying of long-term tenants and the coercion for illegal rent increases we see with such frequency.

We'll continue to push for support for these changes at the local and provincial level and will keep you updated on our efforts.  

Media and Resources on No Fault Evictions

Listen to NWTU organizer David Hendry on the CKNW 980 Mike Smyth show talk about the issue.  https://dcs.megaphone.fm/CORU9592677732.mp3?key=9fb54eab747ed44fde015fedc02dd1f1&request_event_id=fa7b29a0-9448-4185-a8dc-5205cac29944&source=3

NWTU Opinion in the New Westminster Record: https://www.newwestrecord.ca/local-news/opinion-a-possible-solution-to-bcs-rental-law-loopholes-8405988