Could New West set the domino for provincial air conditioner requirements for rentals?
Could New West set the domino for provincial air conditioner requirements for rentals?
The city is expected to deliberate local rules to make landlords responsible for indoor cooling. But if it fails, could it be the impetus for action by the province?
Hello, apologies for the dry spell between posts here. With some health issues on the mend and other assignments wrapping up, I’m aiming to get back to posting more frequently!
On a mercifully cool summer day, a handful of organizers with the New Westminster Tenants Union gathered near a local rental building.
They had a specific question in mind as they spoke local residents: did you get a notice warning you against using air conditioners? This was one of several buildings where the tenants’ union had heard such notices had been distributed, something that recently made regional news.
Answers were sparse and inconsistent—some said they never received a notice, while others did and weren’t particularly concerned and others still were concerned. The tenants’ union isn’t clear on the legality of barring tenants from using air conditioners, but with the city once again experiencing a heat wave, they have thoughts on the morality of it.
What’s more, they believe landlords should be responsible for providing cooling in buildings. And they might well be in the future.
Movement in the city
New West city councillors Nadine Nakagawa and Tasha Henderson are expected to bring forward a motion this month directing staff to look at forcing landlords to cool buildings for renters. Speaking after an organizers’ meeting, NWTU member Brook Jensen said he’s not worried about the vote passing, with a broadly sympathetic city council, but the tenants’ union still plans to send a group to council to speak in favour of the motion.
Nakagawa said the motion reflects landlords’ responsibility to provide heating for tenants and that they “need to ensure the places they rent out are livable for tenants.”
And Jensen said he and the tenants’ union—and the tenants they talk to—are broadly in favour of the vote.
“Living in the winter in this province without heating is untenable and dangerous. So we have bylaws that require the operators of buildings to maintain a minimum hea during the winter,” Jensen said.
“So given that summers are also becoming dangerous for people, why shouldn’t the same be true for cooling? … Landlords should be responsible for the cost because it’s their business.”
While landlords may raise concerns about cost—especially if the building would need an electrical upgrade to handle an increase in A/C usage—the NWTU says it’s the cost of doing business.
“Just like if you’re operating a restaurant and there are health codes, it’s your responsibility to buy the equipment and resources and expertise necessary to run the business,” Jensen said.
“You don't just get the government to buy the stuff for you,” he added, referencing the provincial government’s plan to buy 8,000 air conditioners for low-income, vulnerable seniors.
This is especially true, he noted, in a market that’s untenable for many renters—where turnover in a unit means a 43% raise for a landlord whether or not there was any material change to the unit.
“Landlords are in a position where they’re just gouging the average renter right now, in terms of rents, so if landlords want to claim that they are in an environment where they cannot shoulder these costs, then I would love for them to make their finances publicly available to scrutiny,” Jensen said.
Landlords warn tenants against using AC
Andrew Evans lives in yet another one of the several buildings—owned by landlord Dinesh Chand—that received notices warning against using air conditioners. He said the landlord cited an insurance issue for not allowing tenants to use AC.
Chand’s lawyer, Michael Drouillard told CBC in an email that the building mentioned in their article was old and that “not every kind of AC unit is appropriate.”
"Some types of AC units, like window mounted ones, can leak and cause damage to the building envelope, in addition to drawing too much power for the electrical service available in the rental unit," Drouillard said.
Evans said one person he knew in the building was going to get an air conditioner but changed their mind after getting the notice. One high-risk resident, who he said has experienced health issues, is resisting and continuing to use her air conditioner.
“She’s not putting herself at further risk,” he said.
And another unit that already has an air conditioner is now scared to use it, he said.
Evans himself is still considering getting an air conditioner. During the heat dome, which killed 619 BC residents within a week, he said he had to call in sick to work and leave his apartment because it was too hot to work inside.
New Westminster had the highest number of deaths per capita during the heat dome by a long shot. With 41.8 deaths per 100,000 people, New Westminster’s rate was more than a third higher than the second-highest, Burnaby, at 29.3 deaths per 100,000.
But Evans is also on a list for a co-op, and he’s not sure he wants to put up the fight now rather than wait until he gets into a place where he won’t have to fight.
Cooling centres aren’t the answer
Gabrielle Peters is one of several organizers behind the 619 BC campaign, which included spraying sidewalks with spray chalk, using stencils with the number 619 and with the shape of a house with heat waves above it.
While cities, with the support of the provincial government, have opened up cooling centres during heat waves, Peters said those aren’t the solution. She pointed to research by Dr. Glen Kenny that showed the effect of cooling centres are only temporary, and people can’t stay in cooling centres indefinitely.
“A lot of the people who died during the heat dome died at night,” Peters said.
One of the defining characteristics of heat domes is that, unlike some heat waves, it doesn’t cool down at night, when cooling centres are closed. And nighttime heat poses a serious risk, being significantly associated with increased risk of death. In fact, modelling shows the risk of death could be 50% higher on days with hot nights.
This is an even greater concern when climate change is pushing us towards an increase in both the frequency (30%) and intensity (50%) of hot nights by the end of the century.
But there’s also a significant logistical problem. Some, Peters noted, can’t get to cooling centres in the first place.
“A lot of people who can make their way to a cooling centre on a hot day with air quality warnings telling you not to go outside are not the people who are at risk,” she said.
“It’s pretty obvious. During the heat dome, I wouldn’t have made it down the block.”
That’s not to say cooling centres can play no role. Of 619’s seven demands, one is to establish 24-hour accessible, pet-friendly cooling centres that provide meals and have beds and privacy screens.
Individual responsibility and the have-nots
Peters and Jensen both noted cities have passed bylaws requiring air conditioners in new buildings. And that’s great for new buildings—and the people who can afford what are typically more expensive apartments. (I say typically because we live in an absurd market where old apartments with turnover are going back onto the market at “nearly identical” rates to new builds.)
“We are creating policy that is just going to ensure the survival of the most … financially privileged people in our society because it’s going to be a long time before that new housing filters down [to lower-income renters],” Peters said.
“You will literally create a very strong divide in our society, even stronger than now, between those who are surviving summers and those who aren’t.”
The 619 project’s demands also include distributing funding to low-income households to help them afford mechanical cooling in at least one room of their home and raising disability benefits and social assistance rates so people living on those incomes can afford supplies to survive.
They also demand the province establish a maximum indoor temperature of 23 C, enforced through the Residential Tenancy Act, to rental buildings, while also making accommodations for outdoor workers.
And they demand that the 23 C limit be applied also to healthcare settings and other public buildings.
The issue of cooling is most applicable to people most at-risk of death, but Peters said it has to be applied to all, pointing to vulnerability theory developed by Martha Fineman.
“Vulnerability is grossly misused. So Martha Fineman, who developed vulnerability theory, very correctly points out that by asserting that there’s a group that you call the vulnerable, you are necessarily implying that there is another group who would therefore be the invulnerable,” Peters said.
“What is actually appropriate is to understand vulnerability as universal—as embodied beings, we are all vulnerable—and that resilience is not something that we create; it is created exteriorly around us by the social institutions and society we live in.”
In short, Peters notes, vulnerability theory challenges the neoliberal conception of resilience through self-care, that public health isn’t a social responsibility but an individual’s responsibility.
And that hyper individualism then gets applied to how we talk about heat—rather than talking about the built environment where we can cool buildings down, the conversation often shifts to: what was their health condition? What was wrong with them? Questions that likely wouldn’t be asked if people died in an apartment building where, during the winter, the heating failed, Peters said, because we already consider heating to be a social responsibility.
How the city’s motion could play out
Whether or not the City of New West is able to make landlords responsible for indoor cooling is still up in the air. The motion being debated this month is only to direct staff to study the issue.
When Nakagawa approached the tenants union to ask about any concerns they might have, organizers had one in particular: could landlords use this requirement to renovict tenants?
Given the province controls the RTA, it’s unclear whether the city could circumvent provisions in the act around renovictions. The BC Supreme Court ruled against the City of Vancouver on its vacancy control bylaw for SROs last year, a decision the city is appealing, for instance.
But Jensen said if it fails at the city level, it could be a domino for action at the provincial level—whether that comes in the form of an RTA exemption to renovictions for cities that enact this kind of requirement, or whether it’s the BC government copying the city.
The latter isn’t unprecedented. The recent Controlled Drug and Substances Act exemptions applied to the province for its conception of decriminalization were modelled after the City of Vancouver made its own application.
And Jensen noted the most recent renoviction laws passed by the province followed from the City of New West’s own renoviction bylaw passed in 2019. However, he was disappointed in the provincial law, which he said superseded the city’s bylaw but didn’t go as far to protect tenants.
But he has little faith that the province—which responded to the CBC’s reporting on the AC warnings in rental buildings by saying it hopes landlords and tenants will work together to resolve the situation—would act on its own.
“I think that’s why it’s important for us to continue to build power among tenants and make tenants’ voices heard and make the power of us as a voting bloc and the majority of people who work and live in these areas known,” he said.
“The City of New Westminster has been repeatedly put in a position of having to stretch the envelope of what cities are able to regulate. … Yes, I think the province should act. I would rather put my lot with the City of New West right now, to be honest, given the history of those institutions.”