Vancouver family out thousands after city’s heat pump rebate runs out

A Vancouver man says he’s on the hook for $4,000 he initially thought he’d be getting back as part of a municipal heat pump rebate program.

Given the rebates on offer, Miles Tautscher says his family decided to have the heat pump installed.

However, he tells CityNews several days after the installation was complete on May 3, the City of Vancouver updated its website to say the program was fully subscribed. In other words, it was out of money.

“I was really disappointed. I budget, I have a family. We have to provide food, we pay our mortgage, and when we’re told that we’re not going to get a $4,000 rebate — I mean, $4,000 is not a small amount of money,” Tautscher told CityNews.

Tautscher says his family contacted a vendor in the spring to “avoid the rush” that likely would come in the warmer months.

“We thought we were being proactive and when we talked to our HVAC vendor, they went over all the rebates … the federal, the provincial, and the municipal rebates that were available to us. They took care of all the rebate applications and everything was going smoothly until a few weeks ago when we got an email saying the City of Vancouver rebate was no longer available,” he explained.

The installation cost about $28,000 in total, he says. Of that, he says he qualified for about $15,000 of that back through the various rebates.

Miles Tautscher’s family installed a heat pump at their home in Vancouver after learning about the various rebates available. However, he says they’re now on the hook for $4,000 he initially thought they’d be getting back as part of a municipal program because the city said it was “fully subscribed.” (Monika Gul, CityNews Image)

While the Tautschers did get some of that money back, the sum that they didn’t isn’t to be overlooked.

“We’re fortunate enough that it doesn’t necessarily break the bank but I do worry about other families that maybe would have really relied on this $4,000 rebate and were just told, ‘sorry, the install has already happened, there’s nothing you can do, we’re just not giving you that money.’ Other families obviously budget for these larger home renovations, these larger home upgrades. Families with kids who are working paycheck to paycheck who are told, ‘Sorry, you’re $4,000 out of luck,’ I can’t imagine how they’re coping with this,” he said.

City of Vancouver rebates ‘subject to availability and are not guaranteed’

The City of Vancouver says it intends to provide top-ups to all applications that met the program requirements and were received before the program closed on May 15.

It notes this process may take several weeks to complete — but it could not provide clarity on Tautscher’s situation.

“The City of Vancouver’s municipal heat pump and electric service upgrade top-up rebates are unfortunately subject to availability and are not guaranteed,” the city said in an email to CityNews.

“On January 16, 2023, CleanBC updated Vancouver’s rebate top-up webpage on BetterHomesBC.ca to indicate Vancouver’s rebate top-ups were ‘nearly fully subscribed.’ Between that date and May 15, 2023, a high volume of applications were received and City of Vancouver funds were exhausted.”

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The statement goes on to explain that in early February, the industry was “notified that Vancouver top-up rebate amounts would be changing” as of April 1.

It was on May 10 that the CleanBC website was updated to indicate Vancouver’s rebate top-ups were “fully subscribed,” with the city saying contractors were notified “soon after.”

“If Miles Tautscher’s application was submitted after May 15, 2023, they would not be eligible for a City of Vancouver top-up, although they would likely still be able to receive a rebate from the provincial and federal government, which can be up to $11,000 for space-heating heat pumps,” the email continued.

“City staff endeavor to be responsive to Vancouver residents and provide contractors with timely information, while working with partners to deliver rebates and technical support. Due to surging demand for heat pumps, we were only able to allocate a certain amount of additional funds to provide top-ups to applicants that were received on or before May 15, 2023.”

Saying he was surprised by the update, the Vancouver man says he contacted his vendor who was “blindsided as well.”

He says he feels the timeframe for the various rebates was tight to begin with.

“As far as what could have been done better, the city could have told us that there were limited funds, limited rebates available. Maybe it needs to be done not on a first-come-first-served basis, because like I said, in order to ever received the rebate, everybody, presumably, they would have had to get it in those first few weeks in April … Maybe it needs to be done more on financial need. But I think just overall, more transparency. If they had told us it was more of a lottery system or that there were limited rebates available, then we would have had that information, we maybe would have budgeted differently, we maybe would have gone in a different direction,” Tautscher said.

“But, all the information that we had when we did the install was that these were all but guaranteed rebates, which turns out was not the case.”