Capital Daily

Victoria’s Rental Prices Are Driving ‘Creative’ Alternatives

Episode Summary

We speak to a man who plans to pay to pitch a tent in someone else’s backyard instead of paying Victoria rental prices.

Episode Notes

We speak to a man who plans to pay to pitch a tent in someone else’s backyard instead of paying Victoria rental prices.   

Get more stories like this in your inbox every morning by subscribing to our daily newsletter at CapitalDaily.ca 

And subscribe to us on our socials! 

Twitter @CapitalDailyVic  

Instagram @CapitalDaily  

Facebook @CapitalDailyVic

Episode Transcription

Disclaimer: These interviews have been edited for clarity and length. 

Jackie: Hi, my name is Jackie Lamport. Today is Thursday, June 10. Welcome to the Capital Daily Podcast. As Victoria rental prices continue to push people out of the city, creative solutions to housing are on the rise. We speak to someone about their idea to camp in a backyard and look at the impact these kinds of solutions have on housing and quality of life in British Columbia's capital. The Facebook group Victoria rentals is where many folks find housing options in the city and surrounding areas. The posts found on the page range from people looking for roommates offering rooms to looking for units. But one recent post sparked a conversation about the common frustration with prices in the city. Guillermo Coleman posted looking for a backyard to pitch his tent instead of paying the market prices. In the post, he said he has a full-time job. But given that he would spend most of his time at work instead of in an apartment. He said he would rather save his money toward his next trip than pay the market prices in Victoria. The post received nearly 130 comments before being removed from the page. Guillermo said he believes that it is because of bylaws that prohibit what he's looking for. The comments overwhelmingly supported the idea. The top comment read, "Great way to take a stand. I can't count how many rentals I've turned down due to the ridiculous cost and low quality." Another person offered their couch up because they also agreed that rent prices are too unaffordable. This is just one creative solution to housing, albeit decently extreme. It is far from abnormal in a province where van life and car camping are increasingly popular. But not everyone is willing to get creative. Some people just leave. In February, capital daily published a story where we spoke to Uvic students who say rental prices are driving them away from the city. As students graduate, they are moving away to find more affordable housing. Victoria 2020 vital signs report 82% of survey respondents disagreed that young adults have access to affordable housing. Moving away is something that has become even more common because of the pandemic with students learning online and not needing to be physically present. They have taken to leaving the city, driving the vacancy rate in Victoria up to 2.5%. Last summer, the highest it has been since 2013. And the rates closer to you, Vic and Camosun were particularly high at 3.3%. But even with rising vacancy rates during the pandemic, rental rates in the city have still gone up. In a report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. It was found that rental prices in the region increased 3.3% from 2019 to 2020 for an average cost of $1,185 per month for a one-bedroom. According to the report, which came out in late January, the rates rose faster than inflation and the provincially allowable rent increase. Again, this is despite a pandemic and increases prior to the pandemic were even more steep. And according to monthly data from rentals.ca. The going rental price for a one-bedroom rental for May averages at $1,640 per month. This is up month over month, as is all of British Columbia, despite average prices in Canada as a whole decreasing. In this episode, we'll speak to Emily Rogers from Together Against Poverty Society about the prices and transmissivity and how creative and drastic solutions impact the quality of life in the city. But before we get to that, we speak to Guillermo Coleman, the renter who posted his creative solution of tenting in someone's backyard. 

Jackie: Guillermo, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Guillermo: Happy to be here.

Jackie: I first want to ask, is the most serious? 

Guillermo: Initially, it was done as a bit of a joke. But then, I sat down and started calculating how much time I would be spending during the day during the week. And I couldn't justify spending average rent prices because I wasn't going to be home all day. I have a full-time job and weekends planned. I like rock climbing. So, I'm going to be out all day, and I'm trying to get creative in terms of what I can do. 

Jackie: Were you at first looking at rentals, and then that's when you decided, "This is too much for me?" 

Guillermo: Yeah, and it's a bit of a chaotic market. It seems like houses go very quickly. 

Jackie: Can I ask where you're coming from?

Guillermo: Sure, I'm from Ontario and am currently living in Hamilton. 

Jackie: Okay, so that's quite expensive as well but more affordable than Victoria, seemingly? 

Guillermo: It's actually about the same. One of the reasons I chose to go to Victoria is because there are mountains there. I used to live in Squamish and lived out of my car for a bit. And I'm a rock climber. There's a lot of folks that do that there. And a lot of folks that live out of their vans, and we get along great. And Squamish is definitely a place to go if you're camping out a lot. But it just so happens that I found this job in Victoria. And there aren't that many campsites in Victoria, at least not in the immediate vicinity. It's interesting, because like an hour away, there's a bunch of free spots. 

Jackie: Can I ask what job you got?

Guillermo: So I actually have two jobs, you could say. So I'm currently writing as much as I can. I'm working on my first book, but I wouldn't say I'm an author yet. 

Jackie: If you're writing, you're a writer.

Guillermo: So I spent quite a bit of time writing. And as a way to offset the amount of time that I spent sitting, I am hoping for a more physical type job. So this is a bit of a labour job. It's not like what I used to do. I used to be an engineer, a software engineer. I was making a lot of money, and I could easily afford rent, but I'm kind of choosing to go down this more artistic path. I'm slowly going towards the starving artist lifestyle. 

Jackie: If the work that you did get wasn't in Victoria, would you even consider living here, given the rent prices?

Guillermo: If the work wasn't in Victoria, I would still consider living there.

Jackie: Would you do the same kind of rental situation? 

Guillermo: Probably. I'm not a stranger to it. When I was in Squamish, we'd camp out for months at a time. Sometimes in the car. 

Jackie: I feel like a lot of people, young people, specifically, are kind of hitting this point where the prices that you pay, and the money that you're making, doesn't make the lifestyle attractive to do the classic, have your full-time job live in the city and pay the full rent and whatnot. Is that something that you, at one point, realized that style of life, versus just kind of roughing it and doing what I want instead of participating in all that? Was that what kind of turned you on to this lifestyle, and do you see that among other people?

Guillermo: When I was an engineer, I burned myself out from overworking. And I was living in downtown Toronto. I started to realize that I was hardly ever home, working to pay this rent, and so I thought, "Why am I paying for something where I'm not even spending the majority of my time?" If I don't like living it and I'm not paying for it, then I won't work as much. That was the initial sort of mentality. And actually, I've tried different lifestyles in the past two or three years. Last year, I was working at a farm, and the exchange was for me to live for free and for some work over there. And that was great. It was calm, quiet, and I was physically moving a lot. I really enjoyed that. Right now, I'm in a house, and I spent a lot of time sitting down, and it seems like my body just doesn't enjoy that type of thing. I feel kind of, and maybe it's just the act of writing for long hours; it's uncomfortable. So I'm really just trying to set up a lifestyle for myself to be a little more active. If I can commute and get a 30-minute bike ride, that'd be beneficial for me because of the exercise. And I'm trying to be strategic as well, so I'm open to campsites, for example, that are an hour away. Because I could use the bus and if I'm going to be on the bus, that's a good chunk of time that I could spend writing.

Jackie: I think a lot of people who are listening to this, there are probably two groups of people. One is saying, "Wow, this sounds amazing. I totally want to do this. I wish I could do that." And two others saying, "Well, that's not sustainable. What about your savings? What about your future? What about when you can't live that kind of lifestyle physically anymore?" What would you say to the people who are thinking that? 

Guillermo: My brother grills me on this a lot. He's like, 'You should invest in a house cause prices just keep going up and up. You can just sell it; eventually, you'll make money like that." I do agree, in some ways, it's an interesting mentality to have for sure if you have the skills. Now that I'm thinking about it, the best thing you can do is to make a house, and if you have the skills, you can get a presentation for it because you can just sell it for a ridiculous price. But anyway, on the sustainability part. It depends on what you value. If you're someone that wants to, for example, start a family, you really can't avoid getting a house, and keeping your children safe, and having a nice place for you and your spouse to live in. But if you're someone free, and by free, I mean you don't have any responsibilities like a kid or even having a partner is a bit of responsibility, because you have to decide how you guys are going to live together. I guess it just depends on what you value. If you're someone that enjoys freedom, then more power to you, because maybe it's just me personally, but I find that the fewer things I have, the less kind of baggage I seem to carry around. So one of the reasons I actually opted for this option is because I gave away my car to my mom. I was just getting tired of the van life, so to speak. I was like, playing Tetris in my car a lot, moving my things around. And I really enjoyed that time spent, but when I got rid of my car, it was such a liberating feeling for me. There's so much less stress to worry about. I used to do my own repairs, but even then, it was still kind of expensive. I guess it just depends on what you identify with your values and what you identify with yourself. If you like having a car, then there are a few extra things to think about, like the repairs, the insurance. That's only a car; for a house, that's even more. And to me, that's mental. Paying your mortgage and all the things you have to juggle. I really value having space to think. Because again, I'm a bit of a writer, I'm a travelling writer; I guess you could say now. So I just like to think about what is important to me. 

Jackie: If the market was more affordable, would you at all consider while you're in Victoria, living in an apartment?

Guillermo: For sure. I mean, winter is gonna come. Just because I'm doing this now doesn't mean circumstances don't won't change later. I'll get something by the time the snow comes. 

Jackie: You don't get much snow here, so that could be a while. Well, I wish you the best of luck. Thank you so much for joining the podcast. 

Guillermo: Oh, thanks. It's been fun. 

Jackie: And now we speak to Emily Rogers from Together Against Poverty Society. Emily, thank you for joining the podcast. 

Emily: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. 

Jackie: Awesome. You have been working with renters for years. We just spoke to somebody who had the creative solution of camping in somebody's backyard to save on rent money. What are some of the creative solutions that you've seen?

Emily: I think it's all over the place. And I kind of wonder a little bit about the framing of creative solutions. It is absolutely creative. I don't know if that is the solution. It's a creative way to meet your needs in a really unjust situation. So, for example, like right now, we're working with a couple of women, they're in their 60s, and they're sharing a 400 square foot bachelor unit. Is that creative? Yes, they're making it work. I'm sure there's lots of creativity that goes into sharing that kind of space so intimately with someone, and they're friends. They're not. They didn't plan on living together, it has come about because of the accessibility of the housing market, and they've chosen to do this. I don't think it would be their first choice by any stretch of the imagination. So yes, there's lots of ingenuity in that. Yeah, I just wish that that wasn't the case.

Jackie: What are some of the potential drawbacks when these solutions become more prevalent?

Emily: There's a couple of things. So, for instance, when we're talking about sharing space, food security can be a thing if there's insufficient fridge space to keep larger quantities, food or freezer space. Especially if you're living in a tent, food insecurity can be a real big problem. Also, something that I think people don't often think about is that you might not have tenancy rights in some of these sorts of creative solutions. Because if you share a bathroom or kitchen with your landlord, you're not considered to have a tenancy under the residential tenancy act. So what that means is, according to the law, you don't have the protections that the Act provides, the landlord doesn't have to give you any notice, they can just kick you out, they can raise the rent by whatever they want. You are a guest, essentially, and if they decide, at some point, that you're trespassing, that can turn into a really tricky situation very quickly.

Jackie: So these solutions aren't viable long term then? 

Emily: I don't think so. No, absolutely not, which is why I keep speaking and looking towards more systemic solutions that address some of the root causes and change the system a little so that people aren't forced to rearrange their lives so drastically in order to meet a basic need, which is housing.

Jackie: There are also some "creative solutions" from developers. I was actually just reading about a proposal that would serve as communal living, where prices would be about 30% below market, but tenants would share bathrooms and kitchens. What do you think of these kinds of solutions?

Emily: I think there's a place on the housing spectrum for that kind of thing where I don't think it's new. Like, I saw rows, which are single residency occupancy. I think I have that right. But something along those lines, so rows anyway have been part of the housing spectrum for a really long time. And traditionally, they've been more accessible for people with lower incomes, but in Vancouver, especially, we're seeing those SROs (Single Room Occupancy) gentrified quite quickly. It's happening in Victoria, too. So I think there's a place for these kinds of solutions, for sure. On the housing spectrum, I don't think it's one size fits all. Obviously, that wouldn't work well for someone with a family, or it just wouldn't work well for many folks for many different reasons. I think if we can have a spectrum of housing available, that's awesome.

Jackie: How have you seen the rental market in Victoria change?

Emily: It's been wild, truly, and not in a good way.

I started as a tenant advocate about five years ago, and I think when I started, it was really just like beginning to take off, and I didn't really even realize it as a new advocate how quickly things were changing. But you know, when we look back six years or so, we can see in the data that things have changed really drastically regarding how the housing market has functioned and how it's doing. And one of the stats that I would like to demonstrate is the gap between the rent for vacant units and occupied units. So you know, when you see the average rent, that figure takes into account all units in the region or in Victoria. So what I'm interested in talking about more is how much it would cost to get housing now. So then we're just looking at vacant units. And it's about 20%. More. So I don't know if I'm explaining this as simply as I could. But essentially, six years ago, the difference between an occupied unit and a vacant unit was 39 bucks. So basically, you could move and find something around the same price. Now, the average difference is 356 bucks. So that's a really big gap between the average price of what people are currently living in and the average of what's on the market. And I think this is important to talk about because it causes three main problems that I can see. First of all, the average, like the price that you need to get into the housing market, or the income that you need to get in the housing market, is way higher now. So that's a problem just for accessibility. Secondly, it means that landlords have a huge incentive to kick out people that have been there for a long time because they can make so much more if they just rerent it; flipping the unit automatically gets them $350 more without having to do a single thing. That means that housing insecurity is so much more. It's so much more prevalent because landlords have that financial incentive right in front of them. And that creates a really large power differential between the landlord and the tenant in which the tenant is much more likely to accept substandard living conditions or harassment and abuse because they know that they can't afford to go anywhere else. And the landlord also knows that. So the power differential is just so much more magnified and leads to a lot of the tenancy issues that we see today.

Jackie: Yeah, I was actually gonna ask about that, like the moving penalty, right, even when you're moving laterally and end up paying more. We do have a unique situation right now where the provinces repay plans for rent that wasn't paid during the early pandemic that ends in July. Are you expecting to see this become a much bigger issue come summertime?

Emily: I expect it will continue to worsen unless vacancy control is brought in. Honestly, that is the one thing that I can see. That will just stop the bleeding but will it make things more affordable? Overall, no, probably not. But it will address some of the problems, and especially it will take away the financial incentive for landlords to kick out people. And that's the main thing that I'm really interested in stopping.

Jackie: Can you explain first how the vacancy rates affect the price? And then what can be done to control vacancy?  

Emily: Okay, so vacancy control as a concept means that the rent can go up when the unit is vacant. So the landlord can increase the rent by the allowable rent increase every year. But they can't do these massive price increases when the tenant turns over. So right now, what we're seeing is that rent is controlled during the same tenancy. But if that tenant moves out, for whatever reason, or if a landlord is successful at evicting that person, they can repost that at market rate, which can be, whatever, $500 more or $300 more. And that's really contributing to the proliferation of accessibility and affordability amongst the rental market. Vacancy rates are important to consider because that element of choice is important so that tenants aren't stuck in undesirable situations and can find something if, if necessary, or there are lots of reasons why someone would want to move. They don't have that option if the vacancy rate is low, which means that prices increase, and we see creative solutions, like ten cities. I know that there's been lots of conversation around tent cities in our community, and many people think that that's not the best way to meet housing needs. I would agree, and I think it is a creative solution. 

Jackie: So if a landlord was renting a unit at, say, $1300. Then say they evicted or successfully evicted the tenant; they could not be under a vacancy control. 

Emily: They could not post it for that $300 additional dollars; they would have to do the same price that they were renting for. And BC actually had this policy from 1974 to 1983. Currently, Quebec has it, and certain parts of Ontario have it to a lesser degree. So it's not a completely radical idea. Yeah, I know that sometimes. Yeah, I know that some developers are really concerned about that idea. They say that it will increase or it will affect the viability of development in BC. But when we actually look at the data, there was no correlation between private investment in rental housing and vacancy control from 1974 to 1983. When we look at that period, compared to after vacancy control was repealed, there's no significant correlation between that policy and investment in rental housing.

Jackie: Do you know anyone working full-time jobs and still struggling to pay their rent? 

Emily: Yeah, 100%. I think you can just walk down any street or sit at any dinner table and have that conversation. I was just looking today at data on how many hours someone would need to work at minimum wage in order to afford a one-bedroom or two-bedroom in Victoria. And I was getting about 84 hours for one-bedroom a week and 112 hours a week for two bedrooms. So triple a normal workweek. That tells you a lot right there. 

Jackie: And we have one of the highest minimum wages across the country. 

Emily I'm sort of lost for words because it's just so stark, and it's so obvious to me why that's a problem. Lots of people are working their butts off and still aren't able to make ends meet. And honestly, too, it shouldn't. It shouldn't matter what your employment status is. Housing is a human right. So I totally understand why that's part of the conversation. And I just want to bring it back to the fundamental fact that housing is a human right. What are some of the solutions that you think could mitigate the problem? There's a bunch of things that we can do. So, we absolutely need more supply. We need the right type of supply, though. Because right now, the type of supply that we're getting is out of reach. It's unhelpful in a lot of ways because it's just too expensive. The West Shore has the highest average rent compared to everywhere in the region because of all the new units out there. I hear a lot about supply and demand, and even with all those new units out there, they're all coming online at like $1500 for a one-bedroom or $1600. So they actually have the highest rent in the region. And so it's the type of supply, we need public housing, we need social housing, we need co-op housing, we need a spectrum of housing, like you suggested, sort of with that. SRO (Single Room Occupancy) concept, I think that that has a place to and we need housing for families. We need two and three bedrooms that are affordable and accessible for families, especially single-parent families. So yeah, I think that there's, there's, it's, um, we need a diversity of tactics to address this problem. I think all levels of government have a role to play. Fundamentally, I think we just need to shift the conversation away from housing as a commodity to housing as a human right. The conversation around housing is so tied up in capitalist economics. And I think that has a role that definitely has a place in the conversation. But we also need just to get back to fundamental human dignity.

Jackie: As vacancy rates went up during the pandemic and we expected to see rents decline, but it only inclined, and we're almost in that post-pandemic time now. Are we going to see any impact on the rental market skyrocketing? Is that expected?

Emily: I'm not sure I'm not a forecaster when it comes to housing. So it's difficult for me to speculate. I think it's very reasonable to assume that that might be an outcome, I would not be surprised at all if that's what we see something that I noticed during the pandemic, which hasn't really figured out where this falls in the whole ecosystem, but I noticed that a lot of rental buildings are offering incentives for people to sign on. So like free cable-free rent for like a few months, sort of thing. But the contract that someone's locked into is still at a very high rate. So it's interesting that the monthly rate articulated in the contract is still staying very high. But there are these other incentives that sweeten the deal, which I think is happening instead of the price going down.

Jackie: Well, thank you for your work on all this. Yeah, it's gonna continue to be a huge issue across the province, no doubt. And thank you for clearing some of this information up. 

Emily: You're so welcome. 

Jackie: To read more about housing in Victoria, you can visit the housing section at capitaldaily.ca, and there you will find the articles that I mentioned earlier in the podcast.