B.C. families increasingly denied housing because of having children: report

One of the biggest barriers for families to find safe and adequate housing in B.C. is finding a landlord who will accept children.

A new report released by First Call Child and Youth Advocacy Society (First Call), and funded by the Law Foundation, found that 37 per cent of parents polled said they were denied rental housing because they had children.

Other issues included unaffordability, overcrowding, waiting lists and discrimination.

“The increased cost of housing in recent years has put an increased burden on families, particularly those in poverty. It has given rogue landlords more of an opportunity to discriminate against families with children, to disregard the existing tenancy laws and violate their human rights,” Adrienne Montani, executive director of First Call said in the report.

The report has made five recommendations to better support children’s right to housing. These recommendations involve building, creating and protecting more affordable rental housing, increasing financial support for families to help pay for housing, improving housing services, improving regulation of private landlords and strengthening protections under the Human Rights Code.

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“Section 10(1) of the BC Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination in tenancy on the basis of age and family status, but defines age as 19 years or more,” the report states.

“By this definition, children are not protected from age discrimination with regards to housing. In section 10(2) the Code also specifically exempts prescribed classes of residential premises, which include strata properties, from these prohibitions.”

Before November 2022, strata corporations could pass a bylaw that restricted the age of someone who lived in a strata lot.

The B.C. government then amended that act to disallow strata corporations to pass bylaws that discriminated against children, except in 55+ seniors’ buildings.

However, when some strata corporations voted to amend their bylaws to convert their buildings to 55+, the B.C. government amended the Strata Property Act further to strengthen legacy exemptions for younger occupants of recently-converted 55+ buildings, including children of any age.