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Allan Fernandez knows his building\u2019s days are numbered. Others like his in Burnaby have already been bulldozed to chips, replaced by glass towers that rival downtown Vancouver\u2019s in height.<\/p>\n
Fernandez lives in the heart of Burnaby, near the Metropolis supermall and the Metrotower office complex, a three-minute walk from the Metrotown SkyTrain station and bus loop.<\/p>\n
His building on Dow Avenue is a three-storey walk-up with a wooden frame, and it turns 60 next year. It\u2019s been sold four times<\/a> since he moved there in 2013, and a rezoning application<\/a> is under way.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s be honest with ourselves: it\u2019s not the best looking,\u201d said Fernandez. \u201cBut the people who live here, they\u2019re priced out of everywhere else. It\u2019s the United Nations of Burnaby.\u201d<\/p>\n Fernandez is from the Philippines, and the neighbours in his building are from all over: Japan, India, Ukraine, South Korea. They live in a diversity of family configurations, too. Fernandez, for example, lives with his mother, wife and two young children, and is also sending money to the Philippines to support his father and cousin who lost their jobs due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n Fernandez\u2019s story is a regional story.<\/p>\n In Metro Vancouver, rapid transit projects pair well with politicians\u2019 green goals for growth<\/a>.<\/p>\n The push for a \u201csustainable region\u201d that reduces car reliance is good for the economy too: new tracks spark development. A ride on any one of Metro Vancouver\u2019s rapid transit lines will show a forest of towers sprouting up alongside the train.<\/p>\n But that new density has been replacing old rental buildings that are home to vulnerable communities who depend on transit for work.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all in the name of sustainable growth, but do trains really need to cause this much pain for renters?<\/p>\n The municipalities of Metro Vancouver have clued into this. With this kind of renter displacement increasingly common, some have been updating policies<\/a> to help renters \u2014 a mix of everything from requiring landlords to offer cash compensation to offering renters a unit in the redeveloped building.<\/p>\n But rather than let each city decide the landlord-renter playing field on a piecemeal basis that could also change with municipal elections, housing advocates are wondering whether it\u2019s time to tweak the province\u2019s Residential Tenancy Act itself.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would embolden cities to say, \u2018We don\u2019t have to tiptoe around this,\u2019\u201d said Robert Patterson, a legal advocate at B.C.\u2019s Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre.<\/p>\n One potential solution to mass displacement would be to require landlords to allow tenants to return to a comparable unit in the redeveloped building, at the same or similar rent they were paying before. (Patterson points to Section 51.2 of the tenancy act<\/a> as the place for this potential amendment.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe landlord shouldn\u2019t be allowed to end a tenancy just because they want to do a renovation or redevelopment,\u201d said Patterson. \u201cThey should be allowed to use their property and still have their profit, but in a way that the tenants can still have affordable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n Craig E. Jones, the geography Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia who helped raise the alarm<\/a> on Burnaby\u2019s \u201cdemovictions\u201d in 2015, also pointed to the failure of the tenancy act to address this increasing problem in a recent paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jones worries that displacement will only get worse as new track is laid. The upcoming Broadway subway, for example, will be passing through the region\u2019s largest concentration of rental buildings. There is also a new SkyTrain planned for Surrey, a top destination for government-assisted refugees because of its affordable rental housing.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause there is a tendency to locate stations in areas of least resistance, disaster can follow when those areas are occupied by vulnerable renter households who most need access to rapid transit,\u201d wrote Jones in his paper. Fernandez, for example, was able to shave eight hours a week from his commute after moving from South Surrey to Metrotown near the SkyTrain. His rent for a two-bedroom is $1,080 a month, much lower than the region\u2019s average of $1,750, but he says the building is poorly maintained.<\/p>\n But Fernandez \u2014 who\u2019s been organizing tenants with the Red Braid Alliance and personally lives in a redevelopment hotspot with his family \u2014 isn\u2019t against the growth that\u2019s been causing this displacement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all appreciate we\u2019ve got to build up,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the way they\u2019re doing it, they\u2019re uprooting people\u2019s lives. I appreciate these buildings need to be torn down. They\u2019re old.\u2026 But why are we the ones being stepped on in the name of progress?\u201d<\/p>\n Census data<\/a> back up these concerns: low-income residents are concentrated along Metro Vancouver\u2019s transit corridors.<\/p>\n Aside from renters, small business communities are also at risk. Development pressures related to the Broadway subway could push out the mom-and-pop businesses serving meals to health workers in Vancouver\u2019s medical corridor. The proposed tower near the Joyce-Collingwood SkyTrain station could disrupt the region\u2019s Little Manila<\/a>, displacing about half of the area\u2019s Filipino businesses.<\/p>\n As cities continue to roll out their densification plans for transit-adjacent areas, the pain has already been felt.<\/p>\n Burnaby had a net loss of 1,136 rental units between 2009 and 2019, the worst in the region, according to the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corp<\/a>. Coquitlam follows next, with a net loss of 734 rental units in the same period.<\/p>\n