Advocates say new legislation to adjust the rules for B.C.’s supportive housing is a step in the right direction, but the province needs to do more to protect tenants.
Last week, Housing Minister Christine Boyle tabled amendments to the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA) that she says address supportive housing providers’ long-time concerns.
In summer 2025, then-Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon announced the establishment of a working group that would examine the possibility of exempting supportive housing from the RTA entirely.
Douglas King, executive director of Together Against Poverty Society (TAPS) in Victoria, says he’s pleased the ministry made the effort to ensure the Act still applies to some tenants, but says there’s a long way to go until their rights are made clear.
“I think these amendments could be a good thing as long as there’s buy-in from the supportive housing providers. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen in the past is if the providers don’t like the rules that the government has made, they often tend to ignore them or try to get around them by claiming that they’re transitional housing, or the RTA still does not apply to them,” King explained.
He says he’s worried about the amendment’s provisions that could allow landlords to temporarily restrict access to a property under certain circumstances.
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Boyle says the “vast majority” of the nearly 15,000 residents who live in supportive housing are good tenants, but operators have been asking for the “right tools” that reflect the “operational realities” of supportive housing.
The minister says the legislation tabled Wednesday in the legislature includes language that would make it easier for operators to evict tenants more quickly if they are found with weapons.
She says that while many operators already prohibit weapons, they have told government that they need additional tools to enforce the bans.
The legislation would also allow operators to temporarily remove tenants for “a sort of cooling off period” to de-escalate serious health and safety risks, Boyle says.
King says he’s used to supportive housing providers locking tenants out without any law to support the action, and without any mode of recourse for the tenant, which he says essentially sentences them to homelessness.
“If the housing providers follow these rules, this could actually be quite a positive change,” said King.
“But, unfortunately, history would suggest that when things don’t necessarily go their way, there isn’t much there to hold them to account if they choose to ignore the rules.”
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Part of the problem, King says, lies with how BC Housing manages supportive housing non-profits, which he says need more funding to improve staffing ratios.
He’s advocating for more regulation over more, and smaller operations, with clear establishment of tenants’ rights.
While TAPS wasn’t invited to the ministry’s working group, King says he knows many members did lobby for pressing concerns and hopes the work continues.
“I’m encouraged to see that some of those concerns, I think, were at least listened to, but we’re still very far away, I think, from a clear resolution on how supportive housing is supposed to work.”
Boyle’s amendments have not yet been scheduled for a second reading in the B.C. Legislature.
—With files from Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press