Karen Sawatzky chaired the City of Vancouver’s Renters Advisory Committee for three-and-a-half years. The committee formed in late 2014, through a motion from then-Coun. Andrea Reimer, and began meeting in April of 2015 to advise council and increase awareness of renters' issues.
Like other non-statutory advisory committees, it disbanded after the end of the previous council’s term in October of 2018. Once the current council decides which advisory committees it wants to have, a call for applications will be put out.
In the meantime, the Courier talked to Sawatzky, a life-long renter, about what she feels the committee accomplished over its tenure and what she thinks about the future for renters in Vancouver.
Karen Sawatzky, the former chair of the city’s Renters Advisory Committee, hopes to see more purpose-built rental housing constructed. Photo Dan Toulgoet
You’ve described yourself as a lifelong renter. Is that because you prefer renting or because you, too, have been priced out of the market?
Priced out. There were times in my life when I came close to being able to buy when I was married and had a two-income household. Through various circumstances that never worked out, so I can’t afford to buy.
What are the main goals you feel the renters committee accomplished over its term?
One of the things I feel best about is putting a lot of pressure in various ways, through our various functions, [on government] and to start ongoing meetings with staff to put a focus on building more purpose-built rental housing.
We need purpose-built, long-term, secure rental housing. Secondary suites don’t cut it. They’re important, but they don’t cut it as something to rely on. Rented condos don’t cut it either.
Putting that point across, and also saying that in order to have enough rental housing to fix the vacancy rate, we need to be able to build rental housing in a lot more areas than are currently allowed — drawing attention to the inequities of land use in the city and saying apartments are a totally legitimate and valid form of housing just like any other form of housing.
To make special rules, and to have all these special requirements about apartment buildings that are not applied to detached houses, is a form of discrimination against renters. We were always trying to convey those messages. The previous council really had a priority on rental housing. They expressed that in documents before the Renters Advisory Committee was created. But what we brought to it was to really say that the vacancy rate is a serious issue and a lot of that is under [council’s] control. [Council has] the power to address this by making it easier and more possible to build rental housing everywhere... [to make it] so apartments can be built all over the city instead of just a tiny portion of the city. [Our message] was reflected in the Making Room initiative that the last council brought forward.
What did you find most frustrating about the debate in the last few years about how to improve renters’ lives?
The lack of recognition of how desperately needed more secure, purpose-built rental housing is. We have a shortage of something, as reflected in the vacancy rate, that people say is a human right. Still, we have all these arguments about whether or not apartments can be built in certain places, and put all these conditions on how they should look. There’s a contradiction there between saying housing is a human right, which I completely agree that it is, and yet saying you can’t build the housing there or there or there. Or that [a proposed building] shades my back yard, or it needs to have this pitch of roof or I don’t like the tiles — and making it go through this long rezoning process, with a design review, and everything. And they wonder why it takes so long to address the shortage.
What did you find most encouraging?
That a lot more people got active in talking about [renters’ issues]. That the focus was beginning to shift… I don’t know whether it’s still shifted under the new political climate that we’re in now. But over the last couple years, thanks to lots of different groups, we’ve seen a shift towards recognizing the need for purpose-built rental housing and that we need to do everything that we can to make policy changes to get it built.
What do you think about advocacy groups such as the Vancouver Tenants Union? Do you think their members’ advocacy has helped speed up progress for renters’ rights?
Yeah. We need all different types of renter advocacy groups. The Vancouver Tenants Union tends to focus on existing rental housing and on efforts to change the regulations that affect rental housing. That’s good and that’s needed because regulations are important, but we also need renters groups that focus on pushing for more rental housing to address the shortage.
Do you think the recently released recommendations by the B.C. Rental Housing Task Force struck the right balance between the interests of renters and landlords?
There are a lot of good recommendations in that report. For myself, personally — I’m not speaking on behalf of the [former] renters advisory committee on this issue — but I think it was the correct decision not to [recommend to] implement vacancy control because we need more rental housing. That would have had a negative effect on the creation of more rental housing. I know a lot of renter advocacy groups are very disappointed in that decision but I think it was the correct one.
Regulations are important — very important, but all the regulations in the world are not going to solve a shortage. That is one of the roots of the problem that renters have — a lack of rental housing. With the best regulations and the best enforcement, renters are still going to be at the mercy of landlords if there’s such a scarcity of housing.
In terms of the coming year, are there any new initiatives you hope will happen to improve the situation for renters in Vancouver?
I hope the city finds a way to meet its own rental unit targets, but I can’t say I’m optimistic about that, given all the effort that is now going to have to go into the city plan and also just looking at what this council has said and done so far on housing.
I think the last council was aware that, in order to meet its own targets, it was going to have to change things internally — and that’s part of why it launched Making Room and tried to speed up permitting etc. This council does not seem particularly interested in Making Room or expanding the area where apartment buildings can be built without going through a long and expensive rezoning process — at least not until a new city planis in place that has that as a goal, which I’m not at all sure will be the outcome of the plan, four or so years down the road.
I’m also not sure the majority of new council backs the new housing strategy that was approved in 2017, including its unit targets — that would be an interesting thing to hear from all of them. Of course, the mayor campaigned on exceeding those targets — if or how that will be possible given the new make-up of council and their priorities is not clear. But I hope they do find a way to meet those targets and also that renters participate extensively and deeply in the citywide plan process.
Is the future bright for renters in Vancouver?
I’m not feeling very optimistic, myself, about the future for renters in Vancouver. But renters need to keep working and pushing all levels of government to change things so that renters can stay and continue to live in Vancouver and continue to make contributions to Vancouver that they do, including to our economy, but also to all of our institutions and communities. Renters need to keep fighting. I’m not feeling super optimistic but I think the changes the provincial government has made in the last couple years — I feel good about those, but at other levels I don’t feel so optimistic.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
