B.C. increasing Rental Protection Fund’s inventory, scouting more land

More than 1,500 homes across B.C. are seeking consideration for a piece of a fund designed to protect the affordability of housing, according to a provincial announcement Tuesday.

B.C.’s $500 million dollar Rental Protection Fund attempts to curb renovictions and address a lack of housing for middle-class renters by allowing non-profits to secure older rental buildings in the province.

In an update given Tuesday at the Central Housing Conference in Vancouver, Katie Maslechko, CEO of the Rental Protection Fund, said this is a significant amount of progress for the fund, first announced by Premier David Eby in January.

“As of this week, we have over fifteen hundred homes, seeking consideration for funding for the rental protection fund. Well on our way to that two-thousand-unit goal,” said Maslechko.

On Tuesday, the premier emphasized relying on the private sector to deliver affordable housing is not the way forward. He said right now, B.C. is focusing on acquiring properties for the fund.

“We did an inventory of every property across the province that the province owns. We passed a law to require school boards to do an inventory of the properties that they own, and provide that information to government,” he said. “Health authorities, cities, everybody is looking…what land do we have.”

Maslechko said the most affordable housing that exists in the province is the housing B.C. already has. The fund provides one-time capital grants to non-profit housing organizations to buy affordable residential rental buildings, protecting the renters living there and safeguarding those rental units for the longer term.

“In just four months, since we launched applications at the end of June, we’ve already had 80 non-profit organizations launch their applications with us,” Maslechko said. “22 of which have already been pre-qualified and are advancing acquisitions.”

The province said the idea is for community non-profits to be able to work with tenants to make improvements or expand to house more people, while also protecting affordable housing.

“What this actually represents at scale, is over a billion dollars of new assets, that will move into the hands of the community housing sector. All for a fraction of the cost of building new,” Maslechko said.

The premier said taking inventory of provincially and municipally owned land will help tackle the housing crisis with 150,000 new British Columbians moving to the province this year alone.

“We need to build a lot of housing to respond to that,” Eby said.

The premier also reinforced tighter rules for short-term rentals — legislation introduced by his government to crack down on platforms like Airbnb — to free up space for more long-term rentals while vacancy rates dip.