“With lost jobs and lost wages due to COVID-19, many tenants are worried they can’t make the rent.”
Such a statement, made by BC’s premier John Horgan just a week before April rent day, could have been an introduction to provide much reassurance and a solid plan for renters who are reeling under the economic havoc created by the worsening pandemic, and who’d been left totally in the dark as to whether there would be any relief forthcoming.
But these words were immediately followed by, “It’s a challenging time for landlords, too.” Perhaps no one should have been surprised. These two brief sentences perfectly encapsulate the BC New Democratic Party’s attitude to the long provincial housing crisis that has been thrown into overdrive by the global pandemic. Put another way by housing minister Selena Robinson, “As a government, we are here for tenants, and we are here for landlords.”
What do these words of inclusion mean, when it comes to policy? If you’re a renter in the province with Canada’s highest cost of living, desperately little.
On March 25, the government of BC announced its housing relief plans for the COVID-19 pandemic and for the economic chaos that is spreading alongside the virus itself. These new policies, to last for the duration of the provincial state of emergency, include:
- a $500-per-unit monthly subsidy to the landlords of qualifying tenants
- a ban on evictions, except “to protect health and safety or to prevent undue damage to the property”
- a rent freeze (ban on rent increases)
It should barely need to be said that these and the government’s other minor measures are nowhere near enough. Housing activists in Vancouver, as well as Socialist Alternative, have been calling for a rent freeze since 2017. The evictions ban, while welcome as a very small step, only came as a result of public outcry and only a full six days after Ontario’s right-wing Doug Ford government announced the same thing.
Why did it take the government so long to act, not even saying in advance that help was coming? Renters everywhere were left to sweat and worry, unsure if they would face eviction in the midst of this pandemic.
In the face of demands for a temporary halt to rent payments, however, Horgan and company have barely budged. Their action (the most painfully inadequate part of the overall plan) is to provide a $500 per month rent subsidy for certain renters who meet certain criteria and who apply through an online form that has not yet appeared. This money will go directly to the landlord through BC Housing, not to the tenant, leaving huge potential for a landlord to simply pocket this money and provide little or no relief to their tenant. And of course, the amount itself is pitifully small – BC’s average rent in 2019 was $1,682 per month, and the city of Vancouver averaged $2,915 for a two-bedroom home that year.
Horgan made a verbal pledge during the announcement that “no one’s going to lose their home.” But will any of the thousands of homeless people in BC gain a home? Any mention of a plan to alleviate the province’s long-standing homelessness emergency was absent from the speeches. People who are homeless and unable to self-isolate are far more susceptible both to infection by COVID-19 and to serious damage or death from it. Though some municipal governments are opening community centres to those needing a bed, the province is once again proving not to be up to the task.
Working-class and middle-class homeowners face major financial uncertainty as well. With unemployment set to truly soar, Horgan said he was “calling on banks and financial institutions to work with mortgage-holders to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can to get through this difficult time” – a lot of words to say, “pray the bank doesn’t take your home.”
Since forming BC’s government in 2017, the NDP has tried to play the “honest broker” approach to the conflict between renters and landlords. They showed this by half-bowing to a public campaign against the planned 4.5% allowable rent hike they announced in autumn of that year, lowering it to 2.5%. But this is, at long last, not the time for half-measures when it comes to protecting the homes of working-class people, in BC or anywhere. The BC NDP is taking a stand, and it is not with the working-class renters and homeowners who oh-so-narrowly brought them to power.
Just in case you thought that they were finding success in currying favour with the big property-owners: LandlordBC is singing doomsday laments on behalf of the wealthy property management companies that fund this powerful landlord lobby. CEO David Hutniak said that the eviction ban “is wide-open to potential abuse” and will certainly oppose any new initiatives.
As with any industry lobby, LandlordBC tries to make the littlest of its kind into the face of its campaign, stating that “two-thirds of landlords in Metro Vancouver are mom-and-pop situations.” But these two-thirds own a small minority of the rental units – as with any industry, the big eat the small. We in the socialist movement must draw distinctions and drive wedges between the different kinds of landlords: there is a lot that separates a retiree who renovates and rents out her basement and a property company that owns hundreds of apartment towers around the world. At the same time, we must remember that on an individual basis, small landlords can be just as ruthless as the biggest. But these small-timers can be politically de-fanged, especially through cancelling mortgage payments for the length of the crisis – the big banks, which have made huge profits for years, can afford the hit.
The BC government has to act now to prevent massive economic hardships from raining down on April 1, and potential pandemonium when rent is due again – after a full month of unemployment for some – on May 1.
Some unions such as the BC Government Employees’ Union are making calls for rent suspensions. Socialist Alternative has immediate demands for the housing crisis in the time of COVID–19, ones which would make a major and necessary difference:
- waive rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the crisis—don’t just stick tenants and working-class homeowners with a huge bill to come due when the pandemic is over
- make the rent freeze permanent – landlords and developers have had it too good for too long, making BC the most expensive province in the country
- house all the homeless – put near-empty hotels and/or the tens of thousands of vacant housing units in BC to use
These are the bare minimum that are necessary to ensure that this new and terrible turn in BC’s housing crisis does not deliver up thousands of new victims into displacement, penury, or the jaws of death.
Unions, tenants’ groups/unions, Socialist Alternative, and the working class in general can take action, even in COVID-19:
- Sign COPE’s on-line petition demanding action to house all the homeless
- Write letters to newspapers and MLAs demanding the actions outlined above (find your MLA here)
- Prepare to publicly shame any landlord who attacks tenants
- Many people will not be able to pay their rent, they need support and protection
- Prepare for a rent strike
And we have to ensure that these reforms are not the end of the road. We must build upon them, and build workers’ and renters’ strength, to win a society where today’s rampant inequality is a thing banished to the past alongside the COVID-19 pandemic – which should be the last pandemic we allow to get anywhere near this bad. And this socialist society will be one where a good home is the absolute right of all.
