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A Tyee Series

Landlords See a High Price to Cheap Rent

Let costs rise without rents keeping pace? That's how you make a housing crunch, say targets of 'renoviction' protests. Third in a Tyee reader funded series.

By Jackie Wong, 10 Aug 2011, TheTyee.ca

Lamp at The Sealfield Apartments

For years, tenants at The Seafield fought with landlords Gordon and Nelson before the building was sold in 2011. Photo by Marlis Funk.

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Also in this series:
Renovictions and the Quest for Affordable Rentals in Vancouver

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[Editor's Note: As many as half the households in the city of Vancouver, and thousands more across Metro, rent rather than own their accommodation. But for some, freedom from a mortgage comes with mounting insecurity over whether they'll face eviction. Meanwhile, finding an affordable place to call home can mean a nail-biting search. In yesterday's installment of our latest reader-funded Tyee Fellowship series, journalist Jackie Wong heard from tenants who blame the crisis in Vancouver rental housing on grasping landlords. In this report, she hears from landlords -- and gets a different take on the situation.]


A vintage road bike leans against the wall outside the Gastown headquarters of Gordon Nelson Inc. (GNI). The office door is inscribed with "Internet Gaming Partners," the name of the online gaming company brothers-in-law Jason Gordon and Chris Nelson own in addition to their namesake rental property management firm.

Gordon, 39, is dressed in black tie evening wear -- a holdover from last night's festivities at the father-daughter dance he attended with his young daughter, Lucy, who accompanies us on the interview.

Nelson, 35, wears a navy pea coat, jeans, and thick-framed glasses befitting the young business scene that dominates Water Street on weekdays. He leads us out into the morning sun and we walk to a nearby Starbucks, where Nelson buys a matcha latte for his brother-in-law, hot chocolate for his niece, and Earl Grey tea for me. When Gordon becomes agitated later in our conversation, Lucy reaches over to pat his arm.

Over previous months I've heard several of the two entrepreneurs' former tenants describe their rental management style in harshly critical terms. In person, they're cordial, passionate, and eager to share their side of the story.

Gordon made his first real estate investment at age 24. With his sister he purchased a strata unit on Robson Street for $170,900 in 1995. Six years later he and his wife purchased their first building. "We do other things, too, public markets, and we're involved in the Internet gambling company," Gordon says. "But for the most part, we kept buying real estate."

Gordon and Nelson met when both were employed at the Royal Bank of Canada. Then Nelson married Gordon's sister. Now doing business together as Gordon Nelson Inc., the two own five apartment buildings in the West End and Kitsilano. They also manage Ocean Village Beach Resort in Tofino. (Disclosure: The pair have advertised the Tofino property on The Tyee and have donated to Tides Canada, a foundation that managed readers' donations to fund this series.)

They seem to enjoy their work. "I provide houses to people," Gordon says. "Homes. Nice, stylish homes. I absolutely love the West End. I think it's one of the coolest neighborhoods in the world."


Most of the time, he insists, the business is "very low-risk," with few conflicts. "People need a place to live and they generally like what we provide," he says. "They pay us and we look after people, give 'em good service."

A 'war' over renovation

Then there's The Seafield, a 14-unit walkup on Pendrell Street whose tenants have lately given me an earful. Gordon calls their experience an exception. "In the case of the one building," he says, "everything's been turned on its head."



The brothers–in-law sold the Pendrell Street property late in February, after the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) ruled in favour of tenants seeking to cancel eviction orders GNI had issued. In a press release announcing the sale, GNI claimed the decision prevented the company from investing in overdue safety and environmental upgrades to the aging structure.

"The long, loud battle at 1436 Pendrell Street on the surface appears to be ambitious young owners trying to ring [sic] every last dollar out of hard done by tenants," the release read. "In reality it is about why there have been almost no rental apartments built in the West End for a generation. The rental stock is primarily old buildings that inefficiently spew carbon into the atmosphere and have floor plans designed for a population 1/20th of Vancouver today."

Over a green tea latte, Gordon describes the pair's 31-month tenure of The Seafield as a frustrating, ultimately futile effort to refurbish the 80-year-old structure amid "war-like conditions."

'Mutual agreement' to end tenancies


The long dispute at The Seafield hasn't fazed the partners. "It's sharpened us, if anything," Gordon says. "We learned the tenancy act. We learned about judicial reviews, how that operates. We've learned somewhat how to navigate the political, how to work with media. So that experience probably has some merit to it."



And the pair pride themselves on having acquired and renovated two other buildings without incident while the disputes at The Seafield wore on. At buildings on Burnaby Street in the West End and Kitsilano's Cornwall Avenue, Gordon says, "We mutually agreed to end tenancies with 50 people in total. Twenty-nine units. We gave them lots of time. We gave them compensation. No trouble whatsoever. And that's after the mess at The Seafield."

In fact, Gordon and his brother-in-law would like to get deeper into real estate, with more daring, high-density projects. But, they complain, layers of resistance from governments and citizens stand in the way.  "It's so frustrating," Nelson says. "We would like to build more ambitious rental projects, but it is difficult for a number of reasons." Vancouver's development policies, provincial caps on rent increases and neighbourhood groups who resist rezoning applications and higher-density high-rise units, all come in for his criticism.

And he doesn't think reforms being pushed by provincial New Democrats will help. "They're all about rent control, rent control, rent control," Nelson says. Like his partner he thinks supply and demand should determine rents, without any government cap on increases. "The long-term viability of Vancouver is to get rid of [rent controls] so that you can let the market dictate what the price is," Nelson says.

British Columbia's current formula for capping annual allowable rent increases was introduced in 2002 by B.C. Housing Minister Rich Coleman. For 2011 it allows a rent increase of 2.3 per cent. At that rate, tenants paying $1,200 a month for a Vancouver apartment can expect a maximum hike to $1,227.60 monthly.

And that's where Nelson and Gordon say the trouble lies. They say rents in older buildings have been capped so long that permitted levels no longer cover building maintenance, let alone the cost of bringing near century-old properties up to 21st century standards for energy use and convenience.

At The Seafield, Nelson and Gordon tackled the economic dilemma from two angles. GNI attempted to evict some tenants, renovate vacated suites and re-rent them at uncapped higher monthly rates. They also tried to raise rents for continuing tenants, invoking provisions in the Residential Tenancy Act's "geographic area clause" that allow landlords to raise rents to match other nearby units. Tenants denounced both tactics to the RTB (as reported in my previous story in this series, here). It was losing that decision that prompted GNI to wave a white flag in the "war" at The Seafield.

But while the brothers-in-law backed away from that battle, they say the long-term losers will be Vancouver's renters.

"Rent control, preventing us from renovating, or keeping rents artificially low, is the exact opposite of what the city needs for long-term viability of the rental supply," Nelson says. "In the short term they work, in terms of keeping rents low for a certain group of lucky tenants. But over the medium to long term, it actually hurts the housing supply."



Vancouver: New York 2.0



Asked whether such market-driven rentals could meet the need for affordable housing, Gordon unapologetically compared Vancouver to a young New York City -- a magnet for competitive talent, but also a place that weeds out the less successful. 

"Vancouver's an amazingly dynamic, creative city," he says. "The best and the brightest [come] here so they're right in the absolute heart -- with recreation, the financial district, the creative community."

Not everyone makes it in the creative city. "It's tough, but that's just the way it is," says Gordon. "People keep moving here and in many cases people aren't going to survive." But those who do, he says, prosper. "As taxes have dropped in the last 10 years, individuals have a lot more disposable income, allowing them to, in theory, pay more rent. And that happens."



As Gordon and Nelson see it, The Seafield's tenants wanted a "free lunch" from their landlords. "And we called them out on it," Gordon says.

Door to The Seafield Apartments

The Seafield. Photo by Marlis Funk.

"I think it's greed," Nelson adds, "for them to think they should not pay fairly for their goods and services, or that they shouldn't allow us to renovate our building that we spent millions of dollars to buy. They're the greedy ones."



Landlords as unsung hero



Gordon applauds Hollyburn Properties, another Vancouver rental company that's been at the centre of controversy. Hollyburn owns 47 buildings in the city, where dozens of renters have complained to reporters about their eviction experiences.

"They provide a lot of good, clean, safe, environmentally friendly accommodation in nice parts of the world," Gordon says of the much-maligned company. "They don't get credit for that, ever."



Clearly, Hollyburn CEO Paul Sander has been left smarting by his portrayal in the media. "Paul was portrayed horribly and absolutely incorrectly last year," his executive assistant told me in the course of the month I spent trying to arrange an interview with Sander. "He's not interested in going down that road again."



Hollyburn's newly hired communications manager, a veteran of the RCMP and TransLink public affairs departments, did send me a statement he said was from Sander. In it, Hollyburn's CEO dismissed disputes at three West End apartments whose tenants successfully disputed eviction orders as "old issues."


"Hollyburn Properties has always gone to great lengths to have good landlord-tenant relations," Sander wrote, "but with 10,000 tenants, issues will occasionally crop up. If 20 people complain, that's about two-tenths of one per cent of our tenant base."



BEHIND THE BUSINESSES

GNI



Jason Gordon and Chris Nelson founded Gordon Nelson Inc. in 2006, five years after Gordon and his wife founded J. Gordon Enterprises, a company that purchased and renovated a 25-suite rental building in the West End.



Nelson and Gordon previously worked together at the Royal Bank of Canada and through Bodog Entertainment, a now-defunct online gaming company and mixed-martial arts promoter.



GNI gives financial contributions to the Single Mothers initiatives of the YMCA, Global Action Canada Ministries, Linwood House Ministries, The Salvation Army, Tides Canada Foundation, Vancouver Fruit Tree Society, West End Cleanup Program, Prince Rupert Municipal Golf Course, and the Vancouver School Board.



Hollyburn



Paul Sander's father Stephen founded Hollyburn Properties in 1972 while he was still working as a schoolteacher. Born in a refugee camp in India and named Sukhwant Singh, Stephen changed his name after immigrating to Canada in 1960 for a job teaching physical education in Nova Scotia. 



In India, Sander spent seven years living on the streets of Delhi, herding cows for $8 a month and sleeping with the animals, according to an April 1990 Seattle Times article profiling his philanthropic donations.



In the early '90s, Sander founded a charitable trust called the Consciousness International Foundation, for which he planned to use $170 million in rental income from 23 apartment buildings to finance development projects in third-world countries. The plan was to distribute about $5 million a year. According to the Vancouver Sun, the foundation folded in 2002, with little evidence of Sander's plans coming to fruition.



Hollyburn Properties now owns 47 buildings in Vancouver, three in Calgary and eight in Toronto.

Annual rents too low



And Sander echoed Nelson and Gordon's conclusion that B.C.'s cap on annual rent hikes handcuff landlords' abilities to maintain and improve the rental stock they own. 



"Although land, building materials, labour and other costs continue to rise, rents are not allowed to keep pace. That means many renters are paying below market value for their apartments," Sander wrote. 



"With rental apartments not an attractive investment option, there has been little or no rental building construction in Vancouver in recent decades. Most of our buildings, like the entire rental stock in B.C., are at least 40 years old."



"This is a business, and there needs to be a return on investment," Sander continued. "What business can afford to spend large amounts of capital to improve a building if it can’t raise rents to recover some of those costs?"



In Sander's view, affordable housing is the government's domain, not the private sector's, and Hollyburn has partnerships with Covenant House and RainCity Housing to provide housing for at-risk youth and people who have been vulnerably housed.


Pushing subsidized housing on to private investors


It's hard to argue with people who'd like to be able to stay in homes where they've become settled. But it's equally hard to argue that private investors should pay to renovate Vancouver's many apartment buildings in need of updating without their getting anything in return.


Yet the line between government-subsidized social housing and the private rental market often gets lost in the public's mind, says Marg Gordon.

The former Port Coquitlam city councillor has seen both sides, spending a decade as member services coordinator for the BC Non-Profit Housing Association before becoming executive director of the BC Apartment Owners and Managers Association (BCAOMA) in 2008. Its 1,200 members collectively accommodate over 100,000 rental households across B.C.



Like GNI and Hollyburn, both of which are BCAOMA members, the former go-to contact for non-profit rentals now advocates for letting the marketplace control rents.

"Nobody likes to hear this," she says, "but it's the truth. Rent controls are actually hurting the very people they were put in place to help.

"The private rental market has to make enough money to pay their bills and to earn a living. They can't do it with 2.3 per cent [the annual allowable rent increase mandated by the provincial government]." Gordon supports a review of the B.C. Residential Tenancy Act and tax reform to give more incentive to rental housing developers.

To a large extent, it's a call to go back to the future. Before 1986, targeted tax incentives spurred the construction of private market rentals as well as non-profit and co-op housing. Some 21,540 new rental housing units were built in Vancouver in a little over a decade. Over the last quarter century however, a succession of federal governments has withdrawn most of those incentives.

"Before they were taken away," Gordon says, "rental buildings afforded really sound investments and one of the very few tax planning opportunities." Without them now, she adds, "It doesn't offer that. This private side of the market is really hamstrung."

And while some landlord tactics may draw fire, so long as maintenance and upgrade costs continue to outrun rents, it's hard to see where the private sector will be motivated to build the roughly 6,000 new rental units that Metro Vancouver's planners say we need every year to accommodate all those hoping to make it in the next New York.



Next: A look inside B.C.'s Residential Tenancy Branch, as told by a former employee. [Tyee]

Jackie Wong is a Vancouver freelance writer.

27 Comments:

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  • beeshive

    28 weeks ago

    This is journalism?

    This isn't journalism. This is not what I expected from the Tyee. Shame on you!

  • 1world

    28 weeks ago

    Third Way

    This article seems to imply that there are only two options - either updated houses with tenants who can hardly afford them, or lucky tenants with victimized owners. But in Europe many of these problems are mitigated by a more balanced housing stock which includes a large segment of non-profit and co-operative housing in which the residents are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of their own premises. See http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/133/europe.html "Unlike California and many other parts of our nation where the lack of affordable housing is a continuing crisis, low-cost housing in the U.K. and Netherlands is available to people who need it, when they need it."

  • alive

    28 weeks ago

    Why specify greedy landlords?

    So, if an investor wants a decent profit from a rental unit, then he is greedy?

    Whereas any other investment he might choose is fair game?

    What about investors who buy up certain commodities and hold them up for ransom by not releasing them on the market for months, in order to drive the prices up?

    The problem here, lies in the concept that land can be owned!

    Get to the root of a problem, instead of tackling the symptoms.

  • Lila

    28 weeks ago

    Feds Need to Pony Up

    You've gently hinted at the historical problem with affordable housing--the Feds have been quietly withdrawing since the 1980's and the provinces and local governments do not have the tax base and/or the political will to pick up the tab. With the commodity turnaround in Saskatchewan, we face radical rent and property increases.

  • OhCanada

    28 weeks ago

    Greed and exploitation at its max

    Gordon, Nelson – they are nuts and call the renters greedy is just sheer ignorance.

    "thinks supply and demand should determine rents" – living in an affordable place is NOT about supply and demand – it is about basic human needs and rights. Homeless people are more expensive for a society on a long run but why would I expect guys like Gordon and Nelson understand that.

    "Rent control, preventing us from renovating, or keeping rents artificially low, is the exact opposite of what the city needs for long-term viability of the rental supply" – really? From whose point of view? The ‘investors’? Rent control is a must – so that greedy bastards will not exploit others.

    "Vancouver compared to a young New York City -- a magnet for competitive talent, but also a place that weeds out the less successful".
    A very ignorant comment by an obviously a ‘got rich quick’ guy. How do you determine the ‘less successful’ ones? I guess they are the ones who are unable to afford $1,200 for a monthly rent – more than half their earnings? Which is the majority of people in Vancouver.

    "As taxes have dropped in the last 10 years, individuals have a lot more disposable income, allowing them to, in theory, pay more rent. And that happens."

    Huh? Where does this guy live? Taxes dropped for the rich but not for the middle and lower class. And with HST life and paying for necessary items became lot more expensive.

    "The private rental market has to make enough money to pay their bills and to earn a living. They can't do it with 2.3 per cent."
    Let’s take that one step further – many of us in the public sector haven’t got a salary increase of 2.3 per cent in the last 5 years even though many of us work hard. I guess we should just consider moving under the bridge when we’ll be unable to pay our rent.

    Capitalism = greed and exploitation.
    What a future for our children. If you can’t make it then you are going to be weeded out by some ‘investor’.

    Human rights and basic human needs are totally ignored. Unbelievable.

  • terminalcitygirl

    28 weeks ago

    No sympathy from me...

    Did they really compare Van to New York? Give me a break. And the argument that some people just don't make it in the creative city?! Ugh, I almost spit my coffee through my nose. What a bunch of elitist pablum. All housing should be non-profit. It's not like people have a choice whether they need it/ want it or not, it's fundamental for survival. Go knock yourselves out on the stock market. It's nice that they made a donation to the Tides Foundation though.

  • flowmass

    28 weeks ago

    Rent control

    Just asking.
    Between 1983 and 1994, there were no 'rent controls' in British Columbia. Yet there was still very little rental housing built in British Columbia.
    How come?

  • Jerry Munro

    28 weeks ago

    Capitalism R.I.P....

    And you allow the cost of living to continue to rise, and the profit expectations greed of the ruling class, while restricting the rights of the working class/consumer to collectively bargain wage increases to keep it abreast, and/or otherwise through "services cuts and tax share increases", diminish the economic pie share of this same working class majority... you have such an economic collapse as this, and open class warfare return to capitalism. London, Greece, France, Italy and elsewhere across capitalism, is but the early warning of this... and more to come. No peace for the working class, and there is no peace for the ruling class and those who serve and get a piece of their action. End the rule time of capitalism, in all its sectoral and other manifestations, and create a real co-operative democracy across all society, as opposed to a brutal "competitive" economic and political bullshit democracy. It's past time this social and economic arrangement was laid to rest in its grave.

    There is no sympathy from me either.

  • reality_check

    28 weeks ago

    How do those people become landlords?

    I hate to be critical, but one wonders how a person who is a teacher can found an operation while he was working as a teacher just after 10 years of teaching. In 1972, the OPEC crisis started a downturn in the economy. I know in 1972, properties were cheaper than today --and might have devalued by the OPEC crisis, but so was the salary that teachers were making. I know the baby boomers were passing by. In any case, we are led to believe that in 10 years someone is able to accumulate enough of a downpayment to buy rental properties. If one comes from a refugee camp, one would need to have university degrees to teach (at least now). How did that happen? Do they universities in refugee camps? Then, his son went to India to earned $8 a month and then now he is a landlord. Okay! Maybe dad made loads of money, somehow. But, why would he let his son work for $8 a month in India. Something does not add up. Then, he sets up some kind of charity? And where is the money that it looks like he had? I would like those people to indicate how their rags-to-riches occurred.

    I smell some funny business or some funny story. Am I the only one here thinking that these stories needs a little bit more scrutiny.

    "Paul Sander's father Stephen founded Hollyburn Properties in 1972 while he was still working as a schoolteacher.
    Born in a refugee camp in India and named Sukhwant Singh, Stephen changed his name after immigrating to Canada in 1960 for a job teaching physical education in Nova Scotia."

    Ditto for the other people. Can bank employees get to be that rich? How do they do it? I would like to know.



  • A Voice

    28 weeks ago

    "They provide a lot of good,

    "They provide a lot of good, clean, safe, environmentally friendly accommodation in nice parts of the world," Gordon says of the much-maligned company. "They don't get credit for that, ever."

    Of course they dont, they dont do it out of the goodness of their heart, only how much profit they can weasel out of the tenants.

    "Although land, building materials, labour and other costs continue to rise, rents are not allowed to keep pace. That means many renters are paying below market value for their apartments," Sander wrote. 



    Maybe investing in over priced property that is the Vancouver market isnt the best investment to be trying to make money from. Investors contiunually drive up property prices in Vancouver, and then expect the average joe to have to pay for it. I say good on the tenents for standing up to this shmuck. [OFFENSIVE COMMENTS REMOVED.]

  • Sta

    28 weeks ago

    Nice try, landlords, but undermarket rents are the exception

    Marginal rent increases are there to protect all renters, not just low-income ones. Most of us pay market-value rent, plus are subjected to annual rent increases (in fact, BC Housing is forecast to increase the annual allowable rent increase to nearly four percent come January). Long-term tenants who've maintained low rents are actually exceptions to the norm, although landlords seem to always argue this exception.

    Those who choose to invest in rental income properties must do just that: invest. Building owners have been so conditioned to believe real estate automatically equals vast wealth. But if you don't have the cash flow for maintenance and upkeep (not to mention the ability to follow the law and respect tenants' rights) maybe you shouldn't be in business. Although, come rent day, I'll bet more building owners profit than not that month.

    On the other hand, renters must bear in mind that as soon as you sign that rental contract, you've entered a business contract, not just a new home. It's easy to forget sometimes, when the home is so personal and we become so emotionally attached to our living spaces that someone is profiting from the place where we lay our heads.

    PS: You can't compare Vancouver to New York. While NYC rents are likely far higher, so are salaries on average. Vancouver has one of the greatest disparities between salary and high cost of living of any "expensive" city in the world. And no, small fluxuations in taxes do not create more "disposable income" for the majority of us.

  • OhCanada

    28 weeks ago

    I would also like to know ...

    ... why are these landlords allowed to set up charities and obvisouly get tax benefit for it while at the same time 'offering' - like I really have a choice - overpriced holes called appartments to those who can hardly get buy on a decent salary.

    How the hell something like this can happen?

    Here it is black and white:
    "Sander founded a charitable trust called the Consciousness International Foundation, for which he planned to use $170 million in rental income from 23 apartment buildings to finance development projects in third-world countries."

    Did he ask the 23 buildings tenants if they want to contribute while he is gauging them for money? It is not his money - it is the tenants who rent. So do they get tax benefits for their charity? $170 million - gee that's a lot of money - so what are these landlords complaining about?

    "Rent controls are actually hurting the very people they were put in place to help". How so? How are they hurting the people? With no rent control we would have half of vancouver living on the streets while these money sharks stuff their pockets with money. Get real! Rent control is a must!

    Something is dead wrong if this is allowed while many are unable to find affordable housing. I agree with reality_check - something smells fishy.

  • gdean11

    28 weeks ago

    As a landlord

    I would simply never buy a building in Vancouver, it makes no sense financially. I own in Northern BC and have great tenants, who pay fair rents which allow us to keep our buildings to a good standard - everyone wins and we have never had to evict a tenant.

    Compare the price escalation of rents to building sales over the last 10 years in Vancouver and you will see the problem, the cost to buy can rise much faster than the rents can keep pace. When the housing sales price is high, so goes the cost of construction services for maintenance.

    I read this article and I couldn't agree more. I hear the frustrations of the tenants, and I can certainly understand their side too - it isn't their fault that Vancouver has become so expensive.

    However, if something doesn't change, landlords will continue to abandon Vancouver and the existing stock will fall further and further into decline, pushing up rental demand, and eventually prices.

    Even if you control the rents, a Landlord's freedom to not invest in your city means that you cannot control the market.

  • Rhea

    28 weeks ago

    Shades of grey

    "As a landlord I would simply never buy a building in Vancouver, it makes no sense financially."

    One of the major problems facing ANYONE renting or owning property in Vancouver is the fact that rampant, uncontrolled land speculation has been allowed to drive up property values to ridiculously unsustainable levels. This has been going on since 1986. If you're paying several million for an older building in need of repairs and your rental income doesn't cover it, that's a bad investment. If the whole town is full of bad investments, there's little incentive to build more of them, and it adds to the problem as existing rental stock degrades into unlivability and unaffordability.

    If tax incentives for building and maintaining rental properties were reinstated, you would likely see a large increase in rental stock. I'd also like to see MAJOR restrictions on offshore real estate speculators - to wit, if you don't pay *income* taxes in BC or Canada (not property taxes, actual income taxes), you don't get to buy here. Peter Ladner wrote about this in the BIV, and was promptly crucified by all the little Bob Rennie clones like Cam Good and the real estate association, but he had a good point. China does this, as do Australia, Brazil, other Canadian provinces and a number of other countries, so the cries of "racist" ring a little hollow.

    While my sympathies in a lot of cases are for tenants who face renovictions, the landlords I know don't generally go into this with the idea that they are going to screw over as many people as possible. There are a lot of shades of gray in this situation, and it's responsible of the Tyee to at least try to present both sides of the debate.

    Stereotyping all landlords as greedy, heartless pigs and all tenants as victimized and poverty-stricken doesn't add anything the debate, it just inflames the rhetoric.

  • fishy wishy

    28 weeks ago

    A sprinkle of social darwinism on your latte?

    Vancouver as a young New York City where not everyone makes it in the creative city: "It's tough, but that's just the way it is . . . People keep moving here and in many cases people aren't going to survive." While not without its flaws, New York has rent stabilization. Shame that wasn't mentioned in the comparison.

    "I absolutely love the West End. I think it's one of the coolest neighborhoods in the world." Agreed, but one of the reasons the West End is cool is due to diversity. This includes diversity of incomes.

    Whether you perceive landlords as greedy SOBs or victims of tenants who unreasonably resist rent increases, the problem is not going to get any better if rents continue to eat up a greater percentage of tenant incomes year after year. (Determining a generic set percentage of pre-tax income as an acceptable percentage to spend on rent is somewhat problematic. A person making $70,000 and spending 50% of pretax income on rent would be paying high rent by market standards, but still have enough to live on. A person making $20,000 and spending 50% of pretax income on rent, would be paying relatively low rent, but be forced to make painful choices and put little money into the local economy - assuming there still is one).

    If this continues Vancouver may indeed look a lot more like New York . . . but circa the late 1800s.

  • Blake

    28 weeks ago

    I agree with Rhea,

    I agree with Rhea, speculation is the root cause of this problem. And though I guess I must excuse Gordon and Nelson for their bigotry and ignorance, after all they are in the real estate business, should they not have the basic understanding of business that if you are blaming your customers for your problems something is seriously wrong with your plan. The numbers are not adding up for them because the numbers don't add up no mater how you look at it. Vancouver people can't afford Vancouver housing, renting or buying. This has become the biggest joke in this city, and it's idiots like G + N who for some reason don't get the joke. They just think Vancouver needs more rich people and then everything will be okay. Again, the problem is the big white fat elephant in the room, Capitalism...

  • yulop

    28 weeks ago

    Greedy & Ignorant Speculators

    Did they even read the rental laws before getting in on this business?!

    And they think the rents are too cheap in Vancouver?? Give me a freaking break. What planet do they live on?

  • Poms

    28 weeks ago

    Greedy?

    BC law allows landlords to apply to the Residential Tenancy Branch if they want to raise rents more than the amount specified by regulation. Fair rents are then determined by a neutral third party, a Dispute Resolution Officer, taking into account current market conditions, landlord expenses, and the like.

    All landlords have access to this process, which allows landlords to receive a return on their investments while protecting tenants from gross unfairness. If landlords spent less time complaining about rent controls and more time accessing this fairly straightforward process, they wouldn't have a problem getting the money they need to keep their buildings upgraded. Instead, they're demanding a completely unnecessary change to the law -- apparently it's somehow oppressive to have to be bothered with a hearing, and they should just be able to raise rents at will.

    As for Gordon Nelson: well, they tried to get the rents raised through this process and they lost. Why? Because they demanded more money than was fair, far more than what is paid for comparable units in the West End, far more than they would need to do the work that they wanted to do. That they're now whining to the media about the "greedy" tenants when it was their own avarice that did them in is a little much. It's all sour grapes and slander from a couple of wannabe social Darwinists who are still smarting because they got their asses handed to them by people they clearly see as their inferiors.

    As for those other tenants with whom they claim to have reached "amicable" agreements to move out: West End tenants know very well that Gordon Nelson spared no effort in trying to force tenants out of the Seafield. Most people don't want to spend two years in and out of tribunals and court, fighting bogus eviction notices and ridiculous rent increases, just so that they can stay in a building with a hostile landlord. It's no wonder they took the buyouts and moved. It's pretty telling that this is something these guys are proud of.

    If anyone ever wondered why a lot of people hate landlords, this interview is all the explanation they need.

  • frank2

    28 weeks ago

    It's just wrong to engage in

    It's just wrong to engage in the finger pointing to greedy tenants and landlords.

    What's required is more coherent analysis and policy on how to supply affordable housing when costs are rising more than incomes for the majority of people, and also to provide some degree of sustainability for landlords and tenants.

    Clearly, government has a larger role to play in defining the problem and policies, and in helping to find the solutions. The abandonment of housing by the Federal Government under the Liberals almost 20 years ago is now having its predictable results.

  • ASKBiblitz.com

    28 weeks ago

    Once again, Tyee's comments are better than the scribe's notes!

    As usual, readers learn far more from the commentators than the EDITED FOR INSULTS AND CHARACTER ATTACKS DIRECTED TOWARDS THE WRITER. research. One is again underwhelmed, altho she might learn a few things by trying to answer some of the questions readers have so helpfully raised.

    Journalism 101 - Just b/c a person says it doesn't make it so. Just b/c ONE person says it doesn't mean that one person is reflective of the industry. Work harder. Ask more people in the same circs. Forget the window dressing. Just the facts, ma'am.

  • alive

    28 weeks ago

    Tyee paid for this?

    ASKBiblitz.com ----- I had the same reaction when I first saw this series; imagine paying $5000 for what amounts to an invitation for the readers to actually write about the subject!

    Not blaming the writer; if Tyee is that desperate to get something to print, I'd jump at it too.

    Perhaps this series might convince the editor to simply make space available on current topics, and forget about the editorializing lead in stories?

  • sailorkris

    28 weeks ago

    New YorK??

    Why would Vancouver want to be New York??

  • sailorkris

    28 weeks ago

    New YorK??

    This is just more s**t based on an insne assumption that endless growth is actually possible.

  • wendy s.

    28 weeks ago

    Cooperatives to correct shortage of rental apartment buildings

    We need a national housing policy that makes it possible for rental apartment buildings to become co-operatives at a time that some owners of rental properties are dissatisfied that they can’t make the immediate, gambling-type returns on their investment that they have hoped for. Housing is so basic to one’s life. It shouldn’t be the speculative business that it has become in Vancouver. Citizens who work here should be able to afford to live here. We need the return of the 1970s tax incentives and mortgage arrangements that encouraged the development of both non-profit and equity housing cooperatives so we can have stable communities in the city based on long-term tenancies.
    It is time to recognize the MONOPOLY aspect of letting the market determine rents. With 47 Vancouver apartment buildings owned by Hollyburn, there is at least one of their buildings on most streets in the West End. Have a look. This is a main reason why geographic rent increases must never be allowed. Monopolies are restricted in other types of businesses and certainly must banned on something as essential to all people as housing. Let the Hollyburns and GNIs of the city find other commodities to invest in that aren’t so central to people’s lives.

  • David Beers

    27 weeks ago

    Administrator

    alive

    Reported journalism, which involves the real work of arranging interviews and collecting informed opinions from various points of view and putting them on the record, costs money to produce and those who do it deserve to be paid -- a fact that is less and less understood in the age of seemingly freebie internet 'content'. Of course, those who post snide comments empty of information under an alias because they are afraid (unlike the journalists) to reveal their identities don't deserve to earn a nickel -- though we at The Tyee spend a good deal of money to make this space, free of charge, for a wide range of commenters' views.

  • renpic

    27 weeks ago

    on the greedy renters

    Wow, for Nelson to call renters 'greedy' is pretty brazen. But, hey, they can get away with it, right? They are saying here that, as businessmen, they have to prioritize the bottom line (ROI). They are being honest, because they can afford to be honest, because essentially THEY (owners in general) own US (renters in general). They have the power, plain and simple.

    What they don't realize is that, for the most part, rent increases do not always (often?) equate with renovations. There are plenty of instances of raised rent without associated increases in services or improvements in products.

    Maybe they have managed some of their situations 'well'. Maybe this company in particular isn't the worst. But landlords DO raise rents frequently WITHOUT offering anything in return to their tenants. This is a fact.

    And as for Gordon's comments about leaving if you can't 'survive' here? Well, we can't leave because we are stuck paying so much money (and trying to survive on a low minimum wage, in many cases) that we can't afford to quit our (crappy) jobs for a month while we relocate to another city.

    THIS IS THE PROBLEM.

    If you don't want us here (those who can't 'survive') I personally would be fine with this offer: buy me a one way plane ticket out, pay for my moving expenses, compensate me a month's wages, and then raise the rent here all you want.

    I personally don't want to try to 'survive' here anymore, but I (and alot of peopel I know) are finding it difficult to leave for just this reason, even though we want to leave.

  • meisterfish

    27 weeks ago

    Boo-Hoo.

    Boo-Hoo.

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