Supportive housing operators call for weapons ban and changes to the Residential Tenancy Act

Supportive housing operators are asking the province to change the Residential Tenancy Act rules that they say make it difficult to evict violent clients.

Supportive housing operators throughout B.C. are calling on the province to give them the tools necessary to keep their clients and staff safe.

Carolina Ibarra is the CEO of Pacifica Housing and says changes need to be made to the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA) to allow for easier evictions of problem tenants within supportive housing residential buildings.

“We have a problem and it’s fixable,” said Ibarra. “The problem is that we are unable to remove people who are a safety risk from our sites.”

Supportive housing falls under the RTA, meaning evicting someone who is found to be a risk to others within a building is complicated and sometimes next to impossible. Operators want the province to make changes to the regulatory framework of the RTA that would treat supportive housing differently than standard rental properties.

“We need to immediately enact an enforceable weapons ban in supportive housing,” said Ibarra.

That would give police agencies the power to remove an individual who is in violation of the rules.

“What other employer has to go to the Residential Tenancy Branch when there are weapons or violence in their workplaces – to wait weeks, months, or maybe never to get that threat removed?” said Micheal Vonn, with PHS Community Services Society.

This call for change was prompted by the discovery of a deceased male on April 26 at a Pacifica Housing building in Saanich.

“There was an incident at one of our supportive housing sites that resulted in what police are calling a suspected homicide,” said Ibarra.

The man was 34-year-old Keith Scott. His death is now the subject of a major crime investigation.

“The most gutting part of this is that we feel that this could have been prevented,” said the Pacifica Housing CEO.

“Absolutely there should be no weapons in supportive housing sites,” said Ravi Kahlon, B.C.’s minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs.

Kahlon says it’s the job of the police to enforce the already-in-place “no weapons rule” within supportive housing. Operators argue if and when those rules are broken, they do not have the tools they need to evict the individual.

Doug King is the executive director of the Together Against Poverty Society. He disagrees with those supportive housing operators.

“We don’t think the answer is to be exempt from the Residential Tenancy Act and to take away the rights of everyone living in those buildings,” said King.

He says he is sympathetic to the situation that supportive housing operators say they have found themselves in, but does not believe eviction is the way to go. He suggests a different solution to the problem.

“We need to talk about ratios of staff to clients and residents in supportive housing sites. Right now, it’s far too low,” said King.

The non-profits say under the current structure they are expected to operate under the same rules as any other regular landlord, but due to their client base, that is not what they are.

“We’re not. We never have been and we never will be,” said Vonn.