Pet rental advocacy group sets sights on rental housing review in BC

Community meeting are being held across the province this moth that will help form ideas around tackling the rental crisis.

Pets OK BC, an advocacy group aiming to create more affordable pet friendly housing, is planning on making an appearance, and are asking their supporters to do the same.

After a year and a half of advocacy, they feel that the meetings with the Rental Housing Task Force may be their last chance to be heard.

“We’re definitely, finally, looking forward to an opportunity to meet with representatives from the provincial government who are actually going to take this issue seriously,” says Eliot Galán, Pets OK BC co-founder and organizer.

They’re main ask from the meetings will be to remove pet rental restrictions in B.C. that are “unreasonable.” Galán says that they aren’t looking to hog the spotlight, and there are lots of people being affected in different ways.

“This is an intersectional issue. All kinds of people are suffering because of no pets policies,” he says, adding that their supporters come from “all walks of life” including people experiencing homelessness, and people stuck in unsafe and unaffordable housing.

Galán says that new measure put in place by the BC NDP will likely help the housing market, but cautions that just relying on new supply is not the answer.

“New supply is almost always unaffordable to most people, particularly those with median wages or below, and I cannot stress that point enough,” he says. “Landlord BC will always say new supply is the answer, and well of course it is from their standpoint because they want more profits, and new supply is how they get more profits.”

Pets OK BC is advocating for improvement in the existing housing stock, with measure like vacancy control, rent control, and allowing people to have pets unless there’s a sufficient reason not to.

“We always include the word affordability in our advocacy because if you can bring your pets but it’s not affordable, then what’s the point?” Galán states. “Or if it’s affordable and you cant bring your pets, what's the point? We need them together. We need affordable, pet-friendly housing.”

Many Balmoral tenants facing eviction have pets, and are being told by the City that they will need to give up their pets indefinitely to find shelter.

A post shared by Pets OK BC (@petsokbc) on Jun 4, 2017 at 10:45pm PDT

Kelowna’s community meeting is set to take place on Tuesday at the Okanagan College Centre for Learning Atrium from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Meetings will also take place in Nelson, Terrace, Prince George, Salt Spring Island, Victoria, Burnaby, Vancouver, and Surrey through the rest of June.

All of the feedback collected from the consultations with communities and stakeholders will be presented to Premier John Horgan and Housing Minister Selina Robinson in Fall 2018.