Squamish renter Cory Donner is angry and frustrated with the rental situation in the district and wants something done about it.
Donner, a single father, was sent an email in April from property management company Century 21 that rent for his Brackendale duplex would be going up either 21 per cent or 32 per cent starting in August, when his fixed-term lease was set to be renegotiated.
The email said he could start paying $2,500 per month, up from $1,900 a month, or if he gave post-dated cheques for the year, he could pay $2,300 a month.
The Squamish Chief has been provided a copy of all documents Donner references. The rationale he was given for the increase is “that is what the market is demanding,” Donner said.
He feels the increases are not affordable or fair.“I paid my rent every month. We were great tenants,” Donner said. “I think we should have more protection.”
Donner’s boss offered him temporary, but affordable rental housing that was available one month before his lease was up, so he took it.
He has been charged by his landlord with July’s rent for leaving his lease one month early and is going into dispute resolution with the Residential Tenancy Branch.
The owner of Donner’s rental suite declined to comment for this story.
Danielle Dobson, with Century 21, said she can’t speak about specific renters for privacy reasons, but said in general rent increases through her company have been reasonable, despite the common perception among renters. “It is 100 per cent not common to have a $500 increase,” she said.
Between January and Aug. 11, the company has imposed 24 rent or lease increases, she said. Out of those, only three increases were between 10-13 per cent;
seven were between five-10 per cent; 14 were between one and five per cent.
“First of all, it totally protects the tenant against all these owners that are wanting to sell their properties in this high sale market, because they are there for that term and that is it… Legally, they can stay right to the end.”
Dobson said her role is also to protect the homeowner’s investment, which the fixed-term lease does. Her company advices its clients to only offer fixed-term leases, she said. “When a tenant is on a month-to-month lease it is very difficult to get rid of problematic tenants,” she said. “It costs the owners tons of money and they lose months of rent and there’s a lot of cases like that. Whereas with the fixed term it just gives the owners something to get rid of these [problem] tenants.”
Dobson said that her company has refused to raise rents by outrageous amounts when landlords have suggested it. She said there have been cases when quality tenants were not given any increases at all. “We are trying to keep the rental increases reasonable,” she said.
Donnor disagrees the Squamish situation is reasonable and has approached Sea to Sky MLA Jordan Sturdy explaining his case and asking for more protection for renters, he said.
Sturdy told The Squamish Chief one solution to Squamish’s rental woes is more supply. “It is a supply and demand issue,” he said, adding capping rental increases wouldn’t work. “What happens when there are limits on rent increases is what you see in other jurisdictions… people just don’t invest and they don’t make it available so the quality of the accommodation deteriorates, nobody goes into the business because it is just not worth being in the business. Ultimately, it just drives your rental stock down. “
Sturdy said outside of property management companies that may prefer fixed-term leases, he assumes many landlords throughout Squamish’s rental pool do longer term leases because most homeowners want to find good long-term tenants. “A good tenant is a very valuable tenant, frankly,” he said. “You don’t want to be advertising, you don’t want the uncertainty of not knowing who the tenant is going to be.”
Sturdy said the provincial government prefers not to focus on building social housing, which can have a stigma attached, he said, but to instead support renters who are integrated throughout the community.
“There’s a whole variety of different programs that are in place,” he said. “In Squamish, for example, there are almost 500 households that receive monthly support, of some sort.”
About 200 seniors in the community also receive household support, Sturdy said.
Adriana Smith of the Squamish Tenants’ Information Network told The Squamish Chief that while rent increases like what Donner received don’t seem fair, they are legal. “We know the problem, but we’ve heard it over and over. A solution is what we’re looking for. And that will require legislation made far beyond the reach of our local government,” she said.
Smith said the members of the network, which started with the goal of making changes to the housing situation in Squamish, have all but disbanded. “We realized that it is far too big for us. To continue a group that wants to work for change, but can’t really do that because we are all surviving, is beyond what we can take on at this time,” she said.
“We don’t feel as though we’d make a lick of difference.”
**Please note this story has been corrected since it was first posted to reflect that Donner is going into dispute resolution with his landlord, not with Century 21.
