Four things that happened at City Hall this week you might’ve missed

What happened: It was a busy week at City Hall, with lots more action than what we were able to cover in this week’s main stories. To help you keep up to speed, here are a few other notable happenings, particularly around tenant rights and priorities, from this week. 

Green Councillor Pete Fry, as a liaison to the Renters Advisory Committee (RAC), introduced several motions on RAC’s behalf for council consideration. 

• RAC members come from a broad spectrum of professions and backgrounds, including people from the development industry, tenant relocation workers, renters, families, and pet owners, Fry said. 

Expanding tenant protections: Fry, on behalf of RAC, introduced a very significant motion to have staff consider a city-wide expansion of the significant renter protections included in the Broadway Plan. 

The motion was defeated 5-4, with ABC councillors and Mayor Ken Sim voting against getting more information from staff on tenant protections. 

• Coun. Mike Klassen quoted from a BC landlord advocate who said tenant protections would hurt their ability to build new housing, while Coun. Lenny Zhou argued the city is already doing enough for renters. 

Staff are already working on a general report about the effectiveness of the city’s tenancy protections, to be delivered to council next year. 

The motion also sought to close other loopholes in the current Broadway Plan protections, one of which Fry explained to Vancity Lookout in this article from last month.

Building health standards: Did you know Vancouver’s bylaw governing health, safety, and maintenance standards for occupied buildings doesn’t specifically address or enforce issues around mould, air quality, and water damage? 

Fry successfully moved a motion to have staff report back on ways to include standards and remedies for those types of building issues in city bylaws. 

• Last week, Vancity Lookout reported on a building in the West End where tenants have been enduring significant water leaks and mould. Fry highlighted the case of another building in the West End where tenants were suffering from bad air quality, as reported by the Vancouver Sun.    

No ‘no-pets’ rentals: Another successful motion introduced by Fry was a series of measures to eliminate no-pet requirements in rental buildings and enhance protection for renters with pets. 

• That included creating a formal request that the province (which has jurisdiction over the Tenancy Act) eliminate no-pet clauses, have city staff look at expanding rental protections for tenants with pets, and for city council to encourage new rental buildings to be pet-friendly. 

Fry’s motion points out that no-pets clauses are already banned in Ontario. Council already voted to end no-pets clauses in 2020 but can’t enforce that without changes to provincial law. 

• A lack of affordable pet-friendly housing is the primary reason people surrender their animals, according to the SPCA.

SRO conversion: In one more renter-related story, city council approved the conversion of a Granville Street single-room occupancy (SRO) hotel. The building’s been vacant since 2015 and was deemed uninhabitable. Council approved a new 67-room commercial hotel for the site.

• Turning an uninhabitable building in a struggling downtown commercial area into a new hotel sounds like a win, right?

But the rub, at least for Fry, comes at the price tag, specifically the cost that’s supposed to disincentivize building owners from buying a derelict SRO building, or letting a building fall into disrepair, and then redeveloping it. 

Under a city bylaw intended to protect SRO stock from being redeveloped – as SRO’s are often the cheapest housing of last resort for people at risk of homelessness – the city could have charged the developer as much as $22.2 million. 

• However, in this case council approved a $1.1 million payout instead after staff concluded the project wouldn’t be feasible if the bylaw cost were higher.  

“We could start seeing people buying up SROs with the intention to cut a sweet deal with the City of Vancouver, and that our current bylaws really don’t mean much of anything,” Fry said, according to City News.