Filling the Gaps: Evictions and Government Policy in Vancouver During COVID-19

This report explains how tenancy and income protections impacted evictions during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Metro Vancouver area by looking at eviction filings patterns from 2010-2022. The key question explored in this report is whether rental protections and income supports had the intended result of ensuring that households did not lose their housing due to hardships brought on by the pandemic. As stated by Leilani Farha, former UN Special Rapporteur on Affordable Housing, “Housing has become the frontline defense against the coronavirus. Home has rarely been more of a life-ordeath situation” (1). For much of the pandemic, social distancing was necessary to reduce community spread, meaning that safe and secure housing was fundamental to health and safety. Between March and September 2020, the Provincial Government in BC implemented an evictions moratorium to protect households impacted by pandemic layoffs and support the wider effort to keep people safely distanced. This report evaluates the impact of the pandemic policies between 2020 and 2022 and the role that weak tenant protections played to undermine eviction moratorium and wider efforts to counter-act forced displacement.