Jen St. Denis, the Tyee, March 11 (includes comments from BCNPHA CEO Jill Atkey)
Between 2016 and 2018, I wrote a lot of stories about renters who were facing eviction from the homes they’d rented for decades. There was the 60-year-old woman who had been living in her car in North Vancouver for a year, the 79-year-old Costco worker who was facing homelessness in Coquitlam, and the 69-year-old actor who signed a move-out agreement while he was struggling with a serious head injury and his wife was in hospital.
People often cried on the phone as I interviewed them, terrified they would become homeless or have to move far away from the community they’d lived in for years. Some were experiencing serious health issues from the fear of losing their housing.
Back in 2016, soaring home prices impacted the rental market. That year, Metro Vancouver home prices jumped 32 per cent while rents saw a 6.4 per cent increase — the highest ever recorded by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Now, based on data pulled from rental listings posted on Craigslist, it looks like the region could again be about to experience another big jump in rents.