It's no secret that renting in Vancouver is hard.
Costs are high and spaces are small. But there are other hurdles too.
Tenants and would-be renters face long lists of criteria and preferences that guard the entrance to housing like trolls.
Scrolling through Facebook and Craigslist postings there are plenty that include lengthy descriptions of an ideal tenant or roommate with rules about guests, age, gender, and cleaning habits.
In particular, one Facebook post required a prospective tenant and roommate to be at least 30 years old "willing and proactive about cleaning—including washing floors and the bathroom."
The post goes on to say, "I don’t want to have to explain how but I like to keep things up to an acceptable standard. Also sharing space means open and clear and frequent communication—not communicating via text messaging from behind your closed door."
More concerning, the 30-year-old roommate wouldn't be allowed to have a partner over "unless pre-arranged."
Lastly, because there is no extractor fan in the kitchen "cooking often with oil would not be great."
So are people reasonably or lawfully allowed to make these kinds of demands? It depends on whether the person writing the list is a landlord or a roommate in search of someone to share the rent.
What can a landlord legally ask of you?
"A lot of the things these landlords are doing are unreasonable and unlawful," says Vancouver lawyer Kyla Lee. "With the exception of communities that are age-restricted, landlords cannot prevent someone from renting based on age or gender, or any other immutable characteristic. This would amount to discrimination under human rights laws."
Similarly, landlords are not permitted to impose unreasonable limits on guests under the Residential Tenancy Act, however, Lee says that there are certain provisions landlords are allowed to make. For instance, if a guest stays overnight often enough they may become a de facto occupant of the unit. "This would give the landlord the power to give notice to end a tenancy," Lee explains.
On the other hand, there are cases in the Residential Tenancy Tribunal that deemed requiring guests "check in" infringed on privacy rights so Lee says that demanding a tenant pre-arrange guests would also likely violate that right.
The limits on cleaning and cooking with oil are arguably reasonable, provided that the standard is not over the top.
Landlords have a lot of power but they do not have the power to infringe on privacy rights, social lives, and food consumption but given that oil cooking without a fan can cause damage, that may also be a reasonable limitation according to Lee.
The same goes for cleanliness in the unit and requiring good communication about cleaning.
What kind of rules can roommates impose?
The situation gets slightly more complicated if the person creating these rules is a roommate.
Roommates can discriminate on gender for safety reasons, for instance, a woman not wanting to live with a male roommate, but Lee clarifies anything beyond that would be subject to human rights intervention.
"If there's a personal safety issue between roommates then that would not be something related to the tenancy and would just be an agreement. But such an agreement also would not really be enforceable," says Lee.
Furthermore, if the roommate is acting as a landlord by collecting rent or signing agreements and is not specifying preferences but instead creating rules that falls under subleasing and according to Lee may attract the protections of the Residential Tenancy Act as well.
"And though it's not legal advice, I would say that if an ad features demands that you view as unreasonable it's safe to assume that the living situation will be even worse so stay away," she adds.
