Developers are using relocation services to pressure Metrotown-area tenants out of their rental properties early, an anti-poverty group is alleging.
Murray Martin, with the group ACORN, said his organization started noticing a lot of tenants moving out of buildings where development proposals haven’t been finalized, including locations where Burnaby city council put a hold on public hearings for re-zoning.
“The problem with this, No. 1, is it’s in the middle of a housing crisis and you’ve got hundreds of units sitting vacant,” Martin said.
ACORN highlights three cases of tenants moving out even though the city has put development applications on hold, in a report the organization released on Monday. Martin said they represent what is increasingly becoming a pattern.
Martin said that in the past, they wouldn’t see tenants leaving a building until development proposals had passed third reading at city council, when developers would have authority to evict renters for construction.
For ACORN, the vacancies are becoming a bigger issue in Burnaby, where it has counted 769 rental units lost to so-called demovictions with another 893 in the process of redevelopment.
Siwar Ben Anes and her husband, Lotfi Fetoui, are among the tenants in a building on Maywood Street, one of the three highlighted by ACORN, who are looking for new accommodations because the new developer-owner’s plans are to redevelop the site.
Ben Anes is concerned because the move isn’t their decision and they don’t know if they will find another place close to a neighbourhood they are comfortable in with their 19-month-old daughter.
“I like this area because [I can find] everything around me,” she said, including a library, parks and family services.
The family hasn’t been handed an eviction notice, but her husband, Fetoui, said the owner has informed them its plans are to start redeveloping by April 2019.
“It’s stressful,” Fetoui said, “we don’t know exactly what will be the next place [and] if it’s here or far.”
Fetoui said rents for listings forwarded for their attention are in the range of $1,500 a month for a one-bedroom suite, considerably more than the $900 they pay now.
Fetoui, an accountant who works in downtown Vancouver, said a two-bedroom suite would be beyond their reach.
Martin said developers shouldn’t be allowed to tell tenants they have to be out of a property, until after they’ve received approval for redevelopment.
