Housing minister says legislation to end fixed term lease loophole ‘imminent’

B.C.’s housing minister is pledging to end a controversial “loophole” in tenancy laws that critics say has been contributing to the housing crisis.

Housing advocates have long criticized fixed-term leases, tenancy contracts which usually specify a one-year term of occupancy.

Many such leases contain a “vacate clause,” which requires the tenant to either move out at the end of the term, or sign a new lease.

Critics charge that unscrupulous landlords have been using the leases to force desperate tenants to sign on to new leases with hikes in rent far in excess of what’s normally allowed under the province’s Residential Tenancy Act.

In its throne speech, the NDP government pledged to take action against the leases, and on Friday Housing Minister Selina Robinson said legislation is due soon.

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“We were looking at it, we just wanted to make sure we could do it in a timely manner, so I didn’t want to foreshadow that we were actually gong to be able to do it,” she said.

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“And I’m confident to be able to tell you today we’re doing it.”

Robinson wasn’t able to say exactly when legislation targeting the so-called loophole would be tabled, save to say that it was “imminent.”

The housing minister also took a shot at the previous BC Liberal government, which resisted reviewing the leases for several years.

“Some of the challenges we’ve heard from the previous government that this was ‘complicated legislation’ and so I took them at their word that it was complicated,” she said.

“And then we found that it was not as complicated as we were led to believe, and so we’ve had some time to make sure we can do the legislation in short order and that’s coming shortly.”

The move comes in the wake of the latest Metro Vancouver homeless count, which reported than half of the region’s homeless people said high rent was the reason they were on the streets.