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Selina Robinson says there’s only one way to eat an elephant.

But first, some quick background: While much of B.C. — especially Metro Vancouver — has struggled with an ongoing housing crisis, the number of calls to the province’s renter protection agency, the Residential Tenancy Branch, has shot up more than 20 per cent during the past two years.

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At the same time, the branch has experienced high staff turnover, job vacancies and complaints about service standards, as reported last week in a pair of columns in The Vancouver Sun.

Then with last week’s provincial budget update, the new B.C. NDP government followed through on their pledges of increased RTB support, with $7 million in additional funding over three years.

In the next fiscal year, when a $3 million bump brings the branch’s funding to $11.6 million (compared with $8.4 million in the Liberals’ last budget earlier this year, a $200,000 reduction from the previous fiscal year), according to the ministry, it will represent the branch’s largest budget in at least a decade.