VACANCY CONTROL NOW

Vacancy control is a form of rent control that limits how much a landlord can increase the rent when one tenant moves out and another moves in. Currently in British Columbia, rent increases are only regulated within existing tenancies. This provides BC landlords with significant financial incentive to evict their tenants and contributes to the extremely high cost of rent. Vacancy control would help end evictions for profit, increase housing stability for tenants, and preserve affordable housing stock in BC.

Thanks to lobbying from the development industry, mainstream discourse about rent control is plagued with myths and misinformation. Below are some of the most common questions we hear about vacancy control…

This is perhaps the most common rent control myth proliferated by the development industry, but housing is not a commodity like any other – thinking about the housing market from a simple supply-and-demand framework just doesn’t work. Research finds no correlation between the presence of vacancy control and the rate of new rental construction. Other factors like taxation policies, interest rates, and the profitability of other forms of investment are far more influential to investors’ decisions to fund rental housing.

This assumes that landlords are motivated to actively improve the quality of housing they provide in order to maximize profits. Unfortunately, even without vacancy control, most renters (67%) report their basic maintenance needs are not being met. Again, research fails to find a correlation between rent control and building maintenance. If anything, we see the opposite: institutional landlords are most likely to engage in profit-seeking behaviours that erode housing conditions, and tenants in rent-controlled units are more likely to be proactive when it comes to maintenance [source].

Statistical research shows us that landlords who rent out a portion of their only-owned property make up only a small fraction of our rental housing market. Vacancy control is not a silver bullet, but could be paired with government initiatives to ensure these landlords can stay afloat. But, not only is more of our housing being bought up by corporations, many individual landlords own several residential investment properties and making large amounts of profit. Research suggests that the profitability of our housing market is already high enough that, even with the introduction of vacancy control, major divestment from the rental market is very unlikely.