Tenants with a beef may soon find it easier to take their landlords to task.
Surrey is asking the Lower Mainland Local Government Association (LMLGA) this week to press the province for amendments to the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA), in hopes people living under unacceptable conditions can seek remedy quicker and easier.
A resolution brought forward by Coun. Judy Villeneuve Monday, received unanimous support from council and will be addressed this week at the LMLGA meeting in Whistler.
At issue in the resolution is Part 5 of the RTA, which outlines an onerous series of steps, including court filings and a court-enforced judgement.
"Tenants who wish to enforce their rights under the RTA must navigate a complex bureaucratic and legal process and be prepared to spend significant amounts of time and money to engage the process, creating barriers for tenants to access the RTA, especially tenants with low incomes of vulnerabilities," the resolution states.
Villeneuve and the city's Social Planning Committee have been working on the issue for more than a year.
"We have a concern with a lot of the rental stock that was built in the 1980s," Villeneuve said, adding that it's getting old. "Tenants are living in untenable situations."
She notes that the Residential Tenancy Branch should be enforcing its decisions, rather than making people go to court to affect change.
"What they have in place is totally ineffective to protect tenants," Villeneuve said.
The resolution, if passed, would go to the Union of B.C. Municipalities, which would urge the province to bring meaningful change to the act.
In addition to that resolution, Surrey council is asking the LMLGA to lobby for changes to legislation making it unlawful to leave dogs chained outside.
The LMLGA Conference is being held Wednesday through Friday this week in Whistler.