VANCOUVER—Metro Vancouver’s tight rental market, high rent rates and new changes to B.C.’s rent laws have spurred a Coquitlam personal injury law firm to start focusing on renters.

David O’Neill, a lawyer with Spraggs Law in Coquitlam, said that in May 2018, the provincial government changed some of the requirements and penalties when it comes to evictions, giving tenants more power to fight attempts to end their tenancies.

But many renters find the Residential Tenancy Branch dispute system complicated, and are not aware of their rights.

That’s led O’Neill to expand his practice to include residential tenancy law, he announced Monday.

“With the (low) vacancy rate, you’ve been hearing news stories over the past two or three years about these improper evictions,” O’Neill said.

“The tools to fight this have been put into place, but people haven’t really been using them.”

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Rent increases are capped at around two per cent a year in British Columbia, but when tenants move out, landlords can raise the rent by an unlimited amount for the next tenant. Starting in 2016, rents shot up in the Metro Vancouver area following a real estate bubble that pushed home prices up by as much as 40 per cent.

There is now a significant gap between what longtime renters pay, and market rent rates.

Some of the new tools available to renters include a guidance issued by the provincial government to the Residential Tenancy Branch after a B.C. Supreme Court case. That case affirmed that RTB arbitrators should consider whether tenants really need to move out permanently to complete a renovation, and should take into account a tenant’s willingness to vacate their unit temporarily to accommodate the work.

If tenants are evicted for a renovation, landlords must also offer tenants the right of first refusal to re-rent the suite. Many landlords offer tenants the option to move back into renovated suites, but at much higher rent rates that what they were previously paying. O’Neill said the law is actually unclear on whether landlords can raise the rent in that situation.

Tenants who are evicted for a renovation must now be given four months notice and one month rent as compensation, O’Neill said, while penalties for improper eviction are now greater.

For instance, if a landlord evicts a tenant to house a family member, but the tenant is able to prove the landlord simply re-listed the unit at a higher rent, the tenant could be awarded 12 month’s rent instead of the previous two month’s rent.

New Westminster and Port Coquitlam recently passed tough new bylaws that use city business licencing powers to stop renovictions. City staff in New Westminster estimated that over 300 tenants have been evicted over the past two years because of the practice.

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O’Neill said that because his firm uses an online tool to encourage initial inquiries, he’s seen interest from renters from across the province, not just in high-priced Metro Vancouver. That was a surprise, O’Neill said, but it highlights that housing is a struggle across the province.

“What we’ve been finding is a lot of these more remote locations are using it, because they don’t have access to lawyers in those remote locations,” O’Neill said.

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