Law reform is an essential part of our Systems Change work to change structures and systems that keep people marginalized. We focus on provincial law reform to reduce evictions, increase tenant protections, and prevent homelessness.
Our law reform platforms include recommendations that improve conditions for tenants across BC. We’re currently advocating for rent stabilization the right to adequate cooling for tenants, prohibiting no pet clauses, and improving procedural fairness at the Residential Tenancy Branch.
Law Reform Platforms
September 2025:
Inclusion, Fairness & Stability: Advancing Solutions for the Right to Housing in BC was released in September 2025 and builds on our initial recommendations to the provincial government. The platform uses evidence-based research and data to make a case for diversity and inclusion in tenancies, procedural fairness at the RTB, and rent stabilization.
In it, we call on provincial leaders to:
- Amend the Residential Tenancy Act to prohibit pet bans in rental contracts.
- Amend the Residential Tenancy Act to confirm tenants’ right to install cooling equipment and prohibit clauses that restrict the use of cooling devices.
- Amend the Residential Tenancy Act to require landlords to apply to the RTB to evict a tenant, providing specific grounds for eviction and supporting evidence.
- Amend the RTB Rules of Procedure to require landlords to provide evidence first when they are seeking to evict a tenant, and allowing tenants enough time to review and respond to the evidence.
- Amend the RTB Rules of Procedure to confirm that adjournments will be provided to allow tenants adequate time to review and respond to landlords’ evidence.
- Amend the Residential Tenancy Act to replace unlimited rent increases between tenancies with selective vacancy control between tenancies in times of low vacancy, based on CMHC regional data.
February 2024:
Everyone Needs a Home: Solutions for Preventing Homelessness, Evictions, and Displacement is our first law reform platform that provides evidence-based recommendations drawing on research and statistical analysis, case law, legislation from multiple Canadian jurisdictions, Residential Tenancy Branch datasets, and the BC Eviction Mapping dataset (which has documented the mechanisms of eviction since mid-2022) for the Residential Tenancy Act.
In BC, hundreds of thousands of households rely on both rental housing and the law to provide a basic level of protection and stability. Tenants in British Columbia have faced dramatic increases in rent paired with the highest eviction rates in the country. The impacts on our most vulnerable neighbours cannot be overstated. Homelessness, community displacement, family separation, disconnection from work and necessary services, and a host of physical and mental health impacts follow eviction.
The Residential Tenancy Act has the potential to meet these challenges, but in order to do so, it must change. It must offer a concrete response to the risks posed by the commodification of housing and profiteering. Many of the core features of the Act are decades old and do not address present realities.
