If you are renting an apartment or a house in BC, your rent and rights as a tenant are most likely regulated by the Residential Tenancy Act. The Residential Tenancy Act in BC protects renters from unlawful rent increases and evictions, provides a guideline for the regulation of residential rents and offers tenants more bargaining power and a reasonable course of action in a conflict between them and their landlords. Traditionally, landlords hold a disproportional amount of power in the relationship between landlords and tenants as it is difficult to bargain with anyone who controls a resource necessary to your survival, and the process of moving is costly and time-consuming. Most tenants cannot get up and leave if their living conditions are substandard. Even when landlords are in the wrong, it can be challenging for tenants to go through the legal process of having their rights enforced as the process can be expensive; one of the aims of the Residential Tenancy Act is to offer a cheaper resolution to residential tenancy disputes.  

The Residential Tenancy Act protects the tenant from being taken advantage of. Therefore, it can come as a nasty shock to a tenant who finds out that their living accommodation is not covered by the Act. Those who rent a room from an educational institution, like a university, those who rent a room and share a kitchen with the property owner, those who rent from a tenant with whom they live and those who don’t sign a lease are not protected by the Residential Tenancy Act. I found myself in this situation while renting a room in the same house as the property owner. I was in my third year of undergraduate studies at the University of Victoria, and I was renting a room within a 20-minute walking distance of the campus. In September 2022, my landlord informed me that they would need to increase my rent from $850 to $1,100 by the end of November. They told me that the cause of my rent increase was because their mortgage premium had just gone up, and they had two sons who would soon be starting university. They needed the savings to be able to support them during their education. I was incredibly lucky to have the place that I was living in as, at this time, university students were sleeping in their cars, showing up at homelessness shelters or making over two-hour computes to school every day while living with their parents. However, an almost 30% increase in my rent was not something I had not budgeted for; in comparison, the optional rent increases for those covered by the Residential Tenancy Act were limited to 1.5% in 2022. I had a grandmother who had passed away the year before and left me some inheritance, and parents with the means to support me financially so I was able to cover the rent increase, but others in my situation are not as fortunate. This means that those who do not have generational wealth will be barred from accessing housing within the vicinity of their university while attending that institution, adding to the other disadvantages that they already face.  

The effectiveness of the Residential Tenancy Act to increase the reliability of the housing it covers is measurable. The law has also been linked to a 25% decrease in the rate of substandard rental housing. There was a 2.2 percentage point decrease in tenants occupying properties in need of major repairs, while rent prices have not been seen increasing. These changes cannot be chalked up to an exodus of incompetent landlords as there has been no major change in the ownership of rental properties and, therefore, must be attributed to the law itself. Today, the Residential Tenancy Act plays a crucial role in regulating mandatory contractual terms of rented housing in a way that can be enforced without a price tag that tenants cannot afford to pay. So why not extend the Act to those renting just a room from another tenant or without a lease?

University dorms are exempt from the Residential Tenancy Act, but the interests of universities usually align with their students. However, universities in British Columbia do not have enough housing to meet the demand. This leads to many young first-time renters desperately scrambling to find accommodation in their price range. Many students, particularly international students, are unaware of their rights as renters and do not know how to ask for a formal lease agreement or sign a lease to rent a room, not knowing that they could lose the roof over their heads at any moment. While groups like the Alliance of BC Students advocate for the government and schools to provide more housing and compensate for some of the costs of renting in the current housing market, there must also be more protection for renters once they have obtained housing. A way to do that would be to extend the Residential Tenancy Act to cover room rentals that share a kitchen with the property owner, as they are a common form of housing amongst students. 

Covering room rentals that share a kitchen with the property owner with the Residential Tenancy Act would mean that these types of intimate rental arrangements would have clearer defined expectations for the tenant and the landlord, creating an environment of more open communication. It would also mean that the tenant could not be evicted with no notice and without grounds for eviction. An issue with having these types of room rentals not covered by the Residential Tenancy Act is that they tend to be the cheapest rentals by far while the housing market is doing well but will quickly skyrocket in price when the housing market takes a hit. Covering room rentals with a shared kitchen would change the pricing of the room rental market and have it fall into line with other rental properties on the market that are also covered by the Residential Tenancy Act instead of following the whims of the landlords. Lastly, it would allow tenants of a room with a shared kitchen access to the Residential Tenancy Branch, meaning there was a course of action and support for them if there was ever an issue with their housing or landlord. Currently, those types of legal issues are usually settled through Small Claims Court.

Another type of tenant that has no course of action but Small Claims Court, the Civil Resolution Tribunal, or the BC Supreme Court is an occupant/roommate. That is a tenant who rents from another tenant who has a lease with the landlord. When a tenant does not have a lease with the landlord and instead has an agreement with another tenant that has the landlord’s permission to rent part of their property, they are not protected by the Residential Tenancy Act while the tenant they are renting from is. It is common for these types of agreements to be entered into by a head tenant who rents out bedrooms to roommates in a shared house. 

This was the type of arrangement my friend had while completing her undergraduate degree. She and her friend rented the basement of a house from the tenant of the home. They shared a front door and laundry room, but their kitchen and common areas were separate. This type of arrangement is very similar to subletting, “or when a tenant temporarily moves out of their rental unit and rents their unit to another tenant until they return,” but subtenants are covered by the Residential Tenancy Act. Either way, the difference between an occupant/roommate, a subtenant and a traditional tenant is not enough to justify leaving one not protected by the Residential Tenancy Act. It seems arbitrary to draw the line of who has access to resources like the Residential Tenancy Branch based on whether or not a tenant is renting from another tenant or a landlord, keeping in mind that none of these arrangements are made without the consent of the property owner. Not having occupants/roommates included in the Residential Tenancy Act leaves these renters vulnerable to poor living conditions and no voice in disputes, adding more strain to the already abundant Small Claims Court, Civil Resolution Tribunal, or BC Supreme Court. Including them in the Residential Tenancy Act, we could see a similar increase in housing standards as has been measured in rental housing covered by the Residential Tenancy Act. 

The two examples already given where the Residential Tenancy Act can be extended to cover more living conditions in BC have all been rental accommodation where the tenant has signed a formal lease. However, according to Manpreet Kaur, the Alliance of BC Students’ chair, international students are vulnerable to rental scams; some end up living in cramped situations where five to six other students share a suite. The students then get stuck in these housing conditions without a way to advocate for themselves because they do not sign a formal lease agreement and are, therefore, not protected under the Residential Tenancy Act. To allow people who do not have a formal lease agreement but are nonetheless renters in BC access to resources to demand better living conditions, the BC Residential Tenancy Act could extend the definition of what is considered a lease. Making verbal agreements with proof of rent payments and enough evidence of a lease will protect vulnerable individuals like international students and those who do not have English as a first language under the Residential Tenancy Act and make sure that no renters in BC suffer in poor living conditions with a path to safe housing.

For those hesitant to make verbal agreements legally binding, they already are under Canadian federal law. According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Code assures that “[a] contract is a legal agreement. It can be a written or verbal agreement. The right to enter into a contract on equal terms covers all steps in the contract, including the offer, acceptance, price or even rejection of a contract. The Code covers all types of contracts.” This means that the issue is not that the agreements made verbally between the landlord and tenant are not considered a legal agreement in the eyes of the law but that tenant rights guaranteed by the Residential Tenancy Act are not given because of the form of the contract. It will never be advisable to enter a lease on a simple verbal agreement because signed leases are easier to reference and authenticate, and I do not think that BC should advocate for those types of agreements. However, if an individual were to find themselves in a situation where they have a dispute with their landlord, and they have no formal lease, they should have an avenue other than the court system to solve their dispute. With modern banking, providing proof of monthly rent payments should not be overly complicated. If a tenant is transferring a consistent amount of funds from one account to another on a monthly basis, it should serve as proof of the verbal agreement between the tenant and the landlord as it shows a price and acceptance of that contract. Tenants who can provide that proof should be given equal protection under the Residential Tenancy Act. They should also benefit from the decrease in the need for major repairs of rental units and the better housing standards that come with the Residential Tenancy Act and be protected from unreasonable rental increases. 

The rental market in BC has some major issues, and these changes to the Residential Tenancy Act will not solve all of them, but they will add more protection to first-time renters, those that logically should be covered by the Residential Tenancy Act and those vulnerable to rental scams. If the BC government wants to make higher education more accessible to everyone of any financial background, one of the best ways they can do that is to make housing more affordable, safer, and consistent. Housing is not a luxury; it is a right.