The province is decreasing the notice period a landlord can give a tenant in a no-fault eviction, by one month.
No-fault evictions can be utilized when a landlord or a close family member want to occupy the unit.
Last July, the province announced it would be increasing the timeline from two months to four to give displaced tenants more time to find a new home.
Ravi Kahlon, the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, said the recent shift from four months to three is due to rising vacancy rates and decreasing rent prices.
“Moving it back to three months still makes it longer than it’s ever been,” he said. “[B.C.] still leads the country as far as the length of time, but allows a little bit more balance and flexibility to ensure that we’re benefiting everyone.”
Robert Patterson, a lawyer with the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre, said he believes the measure will weaken protections for tenants.
“They’re getting less heads up, less time to find a new home in an already very crippling rental housing landscape,” he said.
Hunter Boucher, vice president operations with Landlord BC, said the group had numerous conversations with the province following the July announcement which he described as “drastic.”
“We heard from many people that it was making it difficult to want to rent out their unit,” he said.
“Making it something where they considered, well, if it’s going to take me four months to possibly get my property back, if I need to move into it, do I rent it out in the first place?”
The new measure aligns with another provincial change that came into effect last August, that requires homebuyers to give renters three months’ notice of eviction.
