On April 2, 2024 the provincial government introduced Bill 14 – 2024: Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act, 2024.[1] Bill 14 introduces a number of changes to British Columbia’s Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act and the Residential Tenancy Act. The proposed changes in Bill 14 were not all addressed in the press release and backgrounder accompanying the introduction of the legislation[2], and all proposed changes are summarized below.

According to the provincial government, the amendments in Bill 14 will:

• Require landlords to use a web portal to generate a notice to evict a tenant for personal use;
• Prohibit personal occupancy evictions in purpose-built rental buildings with five or more units, with the exception of stratified buildings with individual owners;
• Increase the amount of notice a landlord must give a tenant when ending a tenancy for personal occupancy;
• Increase the amount of time a landlord must occupy a rental unit after ending a tenancy for personal occupancy from six months to 12 months;
• Increase the amount of time a tenant has to dispute a notice to end tenancy from 15 days to 30 days;
• Prescribe increased amounts of compensation for evicting long-term tenants for landlord use;
• Prohibit eviction for the conversion of rental units to specific non-residential uses;
• Prohibit rent increases for additional occupants who are minors, and make it an offence to do so;
• Limit rent increases for additional occupants;
• Make a clear prohibition for a landlord to give frivolous notices to end tenancy;
• Allow for more flexibility in addressing cases where there is a problematic tenancy and prescribing more clear guidelines for ending tenancy with justified cause; and
• Increase administrative monetary penalties to improve deterrence from contravening the Residential Tenancy Act.

Each proposed change is addressed in greater detail below with reference to the text of Bill 14 and commentary.

Require landlords to use a web portal to generate a notice to evict a tenant for personal use

Landlord-occupancy evictions have grown to be widely abused in British Columbia.[3], [4] In response to this issue, Bill 14 proposes a new system of generated notices to end tenancy in cases of landlord-use eviction which would be produced by the RTB prior to being issued to a tenant by a landlord. The stated rationale for this change is to educate landlords about the required conditions and risks of bad-faith evictions as well as to allow for post-eviction compliance audits and data collection by the Ministry of Housing on the frequency of these types of eviction. This change falls short of similar changes made to the Act in 2021, which required landlords seeking to end a tenancy for renovations to apply under section 49.2 for a dispute resolution to do so.

It remains to be seen how the new generated notice process will impose any additional obstacle to landlord-use evictions. Firstly, landlords are already made aware of the consequences for not occupying a unit as required under the Act on the existing RTB-32 already informs landlords of the good faith requirement to occupy the unit. Secondly, it is unclear who will be responsible for compliance audits, and what the consequences of such audits will be as the legislation would still require a tenant to apply for compensation under section 51(2) in instances of abuse. Finally, it is already well documented that landlord occupancy evictions are occurring at a disproportionate rate in British Columbia. There is no additional need for data-collection on this particular issue, but rather a need for concrete action on the ongoing abuse of landlord occupancy evictions. Such abuses could be curbed by introducing a system of vacancy control, or limited by introducing a landlord application system similar to the 2021 restrictions imposed on renovictions, which have been successful in drastically limiting the abuse of those provisions.

While eviction notice tracking is potentially a positive step, it would need to be extended to all forms of eviction notices in order to produce effective eviction data in British Columbia. The expansion of generated notices to all forms of eviction under the Act has the potential to provide a comprehensive dataset of evictions in British Columbia, including uncontested evictions – which are currently untracked.

Legislative Text:

See sections 53.2, 53.3, and 53.4

Prohibit personal occupancy evictions in purpose-built rental buildings with five or more units, with the exception of stratified buildings with individual owners

While a positive change, this proposed amendment likely has limited application. While there have been some documented abuses of landlord-occupancy evictions in larger purpose-built rental buildings in the media, landlord occupancy evictions are less likely to occur in larger buildings. Limiting application to purpose built rental buildings with five or more units excludes the majority of rental units in the province.

Legislative text:

49(6.1) Unless otherwise provided in the regulations, a landlord must not give notice to end tenancy in respect of a rental unit for a purpose referred to in subsection (3), (4) or (5) if the building in which the rental unit is located contains 5 or more rental units and

(a) is not strata-titled, or

(b) is strata-titled with all rental units owned by the same owner.

Increasing the amount of notice a landlord must give a tenant when ending a tenancy for personal occupancy

Section 49(2) will be amended to extend the default notice period for certain forms of no-fault eviction from 2 to 4 months. These evictions include those set out from sections 49(3) – (6) of the Act, and include landlord move-in, purchaser occupancy, the demolition of a rental unit, the conversion of a rental unit to another use, and the conversion of a rental property into a strata or housing cooperative. This change is welcome as it provides more time for tenants to find alternative housing in a competitive rental market, and may also reduce the risk for tenants of disputing a landlord-use eviction they suspect to be in bad faith.

Increasing the amount of time a landlord must occupy a rental unit after ending a tenancy for personal occupancy from six months to 12 months

While this change may be an additional deterrent to bad faith evictions, it still requires the initiative of a tenant to seek enforcement. To date, potential penalties under section 51(2) of the Act – not proposed for change under Bill 14 – have failed to deter widespread use of the landlord occupancy provision of the Act.

Legislative text:

51(2)(b) the rental unit, except in respect of the purpose specified in section 49 (6) (a), has been used for that stated purpose, beginning within a reasonable period after the effective date of the notice, for at least the following period of time, as applicable:
(i) if a period is not prescribed under subparagraph (ii), 12 months;
(ii) a prescribed period, which prescribed period must be at least 6 months. 

Increasing the amount of time a tenant has to dispute a notice to end tenancy from 15 days to 30 days

This is a welcome change, as tenants under the RTA experience some of the most restrictive and punitive dispute deadlines of any legislation in the province. While recognizing the importance of this change, dispute deadlines are arguably less relevant to tenants when considering whether to contest an eviction than the consequences of losing at arbitration. The potential for a 48-hour order to vacate deters many tenants from applying for dispute resolution in the first instance. The extension of a 48-hour notice to vacate to one month may be more effective in empowering tenants to dispute evictions they suspect to be in bad faith.

Legislative text:

(8) A tenant may dispute a notice given under this section by making an application for dispute resolution within the following period, as applicable:
(a) if a period is not prescribed under paragraph (b), 30 days after the date the tenant receives the notice;
(b) a prescribed period after the date the tenant receives the notice, which prescribed period must not be earlier than 15 days after the date the tenant receives the notice.

Prescribe increased amounts of compensation for evicting long-term tenants for landlord use

Bill 14 amends section 51.4 of the RTA to provide compensation in a prescribed amount to be determined by the RTB rather than the previous amount of 1 month in rent. While it remains to be seen what compensation amounts will be set by regulation, they can be expected to increase from the existing inadequate amount. This is a welcome development, as 1 month of rent fails to reflect the increasingly high cost of losing a rent-controlled unit in British Columbia.

Legislative text:

See Section 51.4

Prohibit eviction for the conversion of rental units to specific non-residential uses

Bill 14 doesn’t explicitly rule out the conversion of units to non-residential units, but will allow the RTB to set out specific prescribed uses which are ineligible for such conversions. The press release issued in conjunction with Bill 14 suggests that short-term rental accommodation and storage uses could be potential prescribed uses which would be disallowed under this provision.

Legislative text:

49 (6) is amended by repealing paragraph (f) and substituting the following: (f) unless the use is prescribed, convert the rental unit to a use other than a rental unit.

Prohibiting rent increases for additional occupants who are minors, and making it an offence to do so

Bill 14 will prohibit rent increases for additional occupants who are minors, covering situations in which a child moves into a rental unit or a family has a baby. This is a positive and long overdue change and has recently received repeated media attention. Unfortunately, Bill 14 contemplates no changes to the unilateral power of landlords to determine the number of occupants they deem “suitable” for a unit, which can limit the ability of partners hoping to cohabit and start a family from doing so in the first place.

Legislative text:

22.1 If a tenancy agreement includes a term that the rent varies with the number of occupants, the landlord must not increase the rent based on the number of occupants due to the addition of any of the following occupants: 
(a) an occupant who is a minor; 
(b) an occupant who, when the tenancy agreement was entered into, was a minor and an occupant but is no longer a minor.

Limit rent increases for additional occupants

Section 22.2 proposes to limit rent increases charged as a result of additional occupants in a unit to amounts determined by RTB regulation. These amounts are yet to be determined, and it is unclear whether this will be limited to a prescribed figure or a percentage of the existing rental cost of a unit. As noted above, Bill 14 contemplates no changes to the unilateral power of landlords to determine the number of occupants they deem “suitable” for a unit at the outset of a tenancy, which may limit the applicability of this change. Additionally, it is unclear what effect these changes will have for roommates, who continue to face the collective termination of their tenancy when a single tenant gives notice to move out.

Legislative text:

22.2 If a tenancy agreement includes a term that the rent varies with the number of occupants, the landlord must not impose a rent variance in an amount that is more than the amount calculated under the regulations.

Making a clear prohibition for a landlord to give frivolous notices to end tenancy

The proposed language in Bill 14 does not prevent the actual issuance of frivolous notices to end tenancy. Most landlords reasonably believe the claims they make to be merited, and even where such notices are given in bad faith, it is still up to the tenant to dispute the frivolous notice. It is unclear what penalties, if any, will be levied against a landlord determined to have issued a frivolous notice. While not contemplated in Bill 14, the expansion of the newly introduced generated notice system to all types of notice to end tenancy could have the effect of identifying patterns of frivolous notices issued by particular landlords.

Legislative text: 

37.1 A landlord must not give the tenant notice to end tenancy unless, when the notice is given, in respect of the purpose set out in the notice,
(a) the relevant requirements or circumstances applied, or
(b) the landlord had a reasonable belief that the relevant requirements or circumstances applied.

Allowing for more flexibility in addressing cases where there is a problematic tenancy and prescribing more clear guidelines for ending tenancy with justified cause

Without any definition of “problematic tenancy” it is difficult to understand the content, rationale, and necessity of this proposed change. There are already significant tools in the Act which allow landlords to evict tenants on the basis of contraventions of the Act. There is no proscribed language addressing this point in Bill 14, though the Backgrounder to the legislation suggests that the RTB will be clarifying its policy guideline concerning for-cause evictions.

Increasing administrative monetary penalties to improve deterrence from contravening the Residential Tenancy Act

Bill 14 proposes to amend sections 84.1 and 87.4 of the RTA to allow the RTB to set penalties by regulation, which will be no longer limited to $5,000. Section 97 will allow the RTB to incorporate penalty considerations in relation to different sections of the act, subsequent orders and offences, and individuals and corporations. These changes will be of little effect without enforcement capacity – the RTB Compliance and Enforcement Unit (CEU), which as of 2021 had only issued 10 fines since being established in 2019. [5] With CEU staff was doubled from 5 to 10 full time positions in 2022, we are hoping to see increased use of penalties to form a meaningful deterrent to abuses of the Act.

Legislative text:

See Sections 84.1, 87.4, 95, and 96

[1] https://www.leg.bc.ca/parliamentary-business/legislation-debates-proceedings/42nd-parliament/5th-session/bills/first-reading/gov14-1

[2] https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024HOUS0017-000461

[3] https://admin.firstunited.ca/app/uploads/2023/11/First-United_BCs-Eviction-Crisis_Evidence-Impacts-and-Solutions-for-Justice.pdf

[4] https://housingresearch.ubc.ca/sites/default/files/2023-06/estimating_no-fault_evictions_in_canada_junefinal2023_0.pdf

[5] https://www.biv.com/news/real-estate/rent-enforcer-rarely-needs-get-tough-landlords-tenants-8264358