Keir Nicholl, a longtime Vancouver renter who has been living in a three-storey walk-up in Mount Pleasant for 16 years, is fighting to keep his long-term lease after his landlord gave notice in May that a live-in caregiver will move into his unit at the end of August.
That is legal, but tenants in the 12-unit building near Broadway and Clark are protesting the move, saying it highlights the encroachment of short-term rental units, especially by operators who own or manage numerous properties.
Nicholl told a Residential Tenancy Board hearing Thursday that a live-in caregiver could easily use two other units in the building that recently became vacant. There are also two units advertised as short-term rentals on Airbnb.
Earlier in the week, residents in the building formed what they called the China Creek Tenants Collective to protest Nicholl’s eviction and send a letter to the landlord. They were joined by members of the Vancouver Tenants Union.
“It’s being run like a business and less with a feeling of community,” said Nicholl. “We see people coming in for the Airbnbs on security cameras, coming in with luggage, taking cabs.”
Nicholl, who works part time and mostly is dependent on disability benefits, pays the lowest rent in the building at $800 a month since he has been living there the longest. Four years ago, the landlord issued eviction notices to all the tenants except for two, including Nicholl.
“I can’t just move, and I don’t have the resources to pick up and go somewhere else,” he said. “I don’t want to be forced into poverty and homelessness.”
The average long-term rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver is now more than $3,000, according to the latest report from Rentals.ca.
Sydney Ball of the Vancouver Tenants Union said that everything points to the landlord wanting to kick out Nicholl so they can make more money. She expects that his unit and the ones already vacant will be advertised on Airbnb as short-term rentals.
“The one-bedroom is making over $5,000 a month [on Airbnb]. It’s quite extreme. Why wouldn’t they if they can make that much money?” said Ball. “But it’s unfair and unnecessary.”
The landlord in this case is Deecorp Properties, and the manager of the two existing Airbnb listings is Artin Properties, which oversees more than 170 short-term rentals in Metro Vancouver, Squamish, Whistler and Victoria, according to its website.
The watchdog organization Inside Airbnb, which tracks data and monitors the impact of Airbnb on communities, estimates that Artin manages 112 properties in the City of Vancouver. Level Hotels and Suites has the next highest number of properties at 40, and there are about 10 other companies or owners who each have between 25 and 30 properties in Vancouver listed on Airbnb.
Artin is currently advertising 18 short-term rental listings in three buildings in the Mount Pleasant area that are owned by Deecorp, a Vancouver commercial real estate company that reports assets over $300 million.
Neither company replied to a request for comment.
Green Party city councillor Pete Fry says understanding the impact of these owners and managers with multiple listings will involve looking beyond the listings on Airbnb.
“There’s a fallacy to just pin this on Airbnb because there is a whole continuum of short-term rentals that are operating on all sorts of platforms, including ones like WeChat (a Chinese-language messaging app) and others in English. There’s a whole new kind of short-term accommodation market with things that we would never catch.”
In May, Fry proposed to council that city staff look at reporting methods for undocumented empty homes by examining connections between short-term rental owners or managers who have a high number of listings. The amendment to a motion was opposed by all ABC party councillors and was not carried.
“We see these hosts often own multiple properties that they rent all year round. They couldn’t possibly be anything but an empty home if you’re renting it out all year round or for more than six months at a time,” said Fry.
