A housing advocacy group was unable to convince Richmond’s planning committee to increase zoning for more market rental units at a proposed development near Capstan Way.
However, the committee voted to ban restrictions on rentals at the proposed Polygon development at Garden City and Cambie roads — although it will be up to city council to make a final decision on the issue next week.
On Tuesday, the planning committee voted to have a covenant for unrestricted rentals on all of the units, in perpetuity, registered on the development’s title with the land title office. The committee also voted that rentals would not be age-restricted.
This means future stratas wouldn’t be able to vote to restrict rentals.
But John Roston, co-ordinator of the Richmond Housing Advocacy Group, said the move was “ridiculous” and compared the covenant to passing a bylaw saying that “everybody has the right to ride a bicycle.”
While the covenant would allow all condo owners to rent out their units if they wanted, Roston pointed out that in B.C., owner-developers can file a rental disclosure statement to allow rentals in strata units for a specified period of time, for example, 100 years.
Rather, Roston said that only through zoning can the city be assured that a minimum percentage of the units will be rented.
In total, Polygon has proposed 156 affordable or low-market rental units, 120 market rental and 1,014 strata units for sale in the planned development.
Currently, the city requires 10 per cent of units in new developments be designated for market rental.
Roston and the advocacy group, however, had wanted to see 65 per cent of the development zoned for market rental to help make Richmond more affordable.
“Why has council been requiring market rental housing in new developments if it’s the same as (renting) strata condos?”
What the city is doing, Roston added, is “creating an army of amateur landlords.”
He explained that condo owners who rent out their properties would also have higher maintenance costs – and therefore higher rents – than market rental properties, where rents are 20 to 25 per cent lower and under the care of a management company.
“From the point of view of the market rental landlord…they want the tenant to stay for as long as possible, because that minimizes their turnover costs,” he added.
Condo owners, on the other hand, are interested in “ensuring that the tenant has a very short lease. And from the tenants’ point of view, as far as they know, the unit could be sold at any time and they could get kicked out.”
The committee also made a referral back to staff, to look at applying the covenant policy to all future developments in the city, to require them to not have any restrictions on rentals in perpetuity.
The Polygon application will now go to city council.
