In December 2019, Murray Martin said the City of Burnaby’s proposed tenant assistance policy – the product of months of work by Mayor Mike Hurley’s housing task force - will be “the best in Canada, by far.”
On Monday, Martin – a member of the housing task force - will be saying something far different.
The spokesperson for the housing advocacy group BC ACORN has organized a protest for Monday at 5:30 p.m. in front of Burnaby City Hall, saying that the city is watering down the proposed tenant assistance policy.
Martin wants Burnaby council to delay voting on the newly revised policy until stakeholders are consulted.
“The revised Tenant Assistance Policy is written with the financial interests of the developers as the main concern,” Martin said, in a news release. “There are massive rollbacks to the Tenant Assistance Policy adopted in December at the expense of the displaced tenants. If the council adopts these proposed changes by city staff, major parts of the Mayor’s Task Force on Housing proposals are being changed without consulting or considering tenants. Why did the city allow developers to rewrite the policy without consulting us on rollbacks? What was the point of the housing task force?”
A city staff report looks at removing its vacancy control requirements, which would have limited rent increases not only during tenancies, but between tenants. The proposed change resulted from concerns by developers that vacancy controls could limit developments, particularly since the B.C. government made its rent control rules more strict.
“Perhaps most importantly, the impact of vacancy-control on the ability of the development community … to secure development financing, thus leading to a low uptake of the available density, remains a concern,” planning and development director Ed Kozak wrote in a report.
Martin said recommended changes “gut” tenant protections.
“The staff report talks so much about so-called stakeholder engagement, when clearly they were only listening to developers for the final report,” Martin said. “We thought Burnaby City Hall had changed and that listened to tenants, clearly that is not the case.”
- With files from Dustin Godfrey
