Prominent landlords and the B.C. Apartment Owners and Property Managers Association support the online rental database city hall may set up.
"It's a good idea," said Jason Gordon of Gordon Nelson Inc., the company that made headlines for rental increases and evictions at the Seafield apartment building in the West End. "There're some bad buildings in this city."
Christine Ackermann, president of the West End Residents Association, or WERA, told the city Jan. 17 that a rental database should allow tenants to search the names of the individuals who own their buildings, which are often registered to holding companies.
Gordon supports the notion. "The reason you're calling me is because my partner and I put ourselves front and centre in our building," he said.
Ackermann also argued renters should be able to see groupings of buildings owned by one landlord.
But Marg Gordon (no relation to Jason), CEO of the BCAOMA, disagreed.
"It could be at a disadvantage in the real estate business if somebody knows [which] all the buildings are that you've sold and bought," she said.
In her appearance at city hall Jan. 17, Gordon said the association supports the city posting public information about outstanding fire safety or maintenance orders on apartment buildings in one place, as long as landlords who have complied with an order are marked as having fulfilled their obligations or removed from the list. She wondered whether a work order would be considered outstanding from the date issued or once the deadline for the ordered work had passed.
Gordon told the Courier that city staff have agreed to consult her as they compose a report for council about a potential database within the next two months. "My biggest disappointment, though, is that it leaves out such a large sector of rental housing and that's SROs [singleroom occupancy low income hotels] and rented houses, basement suites, co-ops, rooming houses, row houses, investor-owned condos," she said. "My case in point was, unfortunately, those [three] men that died in that fire in 2010, there still would have not have been an outstanding work order listed against that because it was a house."
She disagreed with former COPE councillor Ellen Woodsworth's assertion that a rental database should include space for comments. "Vancouver, I doubt, would even consider that because of the fact that how can you police comments," she said.
WERA says landlords including Gordon Nelson and Hollyburn Properties have tried to evict tenants to carry out minor upgrades so they could raise rents, so Ackermann argued the online database should allow visitors to see if landlords have applied for development or work permits.
But the BCAOMA's Gordon wasn't sure this information was difficult for tenants to get.
She added only a small percentage of owners clear buildings for minor upgrades and she didn't count Gordon Nelson and Hollyburn Properties among that group, although Residential Tenancy Branch adjudicators have ruled otherwise. She said the provincial government allowed landlords beginning in 2004 to evict tenants to carry out important safety and energy efficiency upgrades, and subsequently charge higher rents, so that decadesold rental stock could be maintained.
Hollyburn Properties also supports a renters' database that focuses on fire safety and maintenance orders.
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