The Martlet

Steve arrived at my apartment by bike, with one backpack slung over his shoulder and another thrown across his chest — the essentials of his Vancouver life to transplant into Victoria.

The magnetism that attracts students to their place of study, with dreams of new beginnings each September, hasn’t worn off for my friend despite the fact that he graduated last spring. This time, he came with job interviews lined up, and hopes of beginning a career.

I told Steve he could stay at my place for a while.

“Throw your bags near my bed,” I said, which, in my pecan-size bachelor suite, means anywhere.

It was only a week into school, but my apartment was already disheveled, and Steve immediately offered to do my dishes. He is a good house guest — the type of guy I would want as a roommate if I hadn’t recently moved out of a shared house for some space of my own.

Five years ago, I moved to Victoria like Steve, with only a backpack. In three days I’d handed over a damage deposit, securing a room mid-month in a punk house with two guys. I was 17, with no job, no connections in the city, not a desirable roommate.

Steve, who at age 25 holds a degree and was hired to work a full-time job on his first day in the city, should have no problem securing a place to live. Except it’s September and in the years since I moved here the vacancy rate for rentals in Victoria has slipped to the lowest in Canada at 0.3 per cent — as in, on average, eight months out of the year there is zip.

The season of zero vacancy follows the migration of the students, who are forced to look for off-campus housing because there isn’t enough space for them in UVic’s residence buildings or four-person Cluster units. These students’ newly-signed leases on many of the affordable rentals in Victoria mean that September may be the worst possible month for a home-sized hole in your heart.

Steve made a routine of sitting on the floor in the middle of my apartment with his laptop open to the housing listings on Craigslist. I peeked over his shoulder as he clicked through the blue links in the Rooms & Shares category.

“Females only,” he grumbled, clicking out of a listing.

It was one week into his hunt. He had just returned from looking at a house to share with a middle-aged mother and her 15-year-old son. While Steve wandered through the place, the kid stood in the kitchen scratching his balls and, well, being a teenager. The mother said over 60 people had responded to her online ad. He wasn’t likely to get the place even if he wanted it.

In a desperate moment Steve told me, “I’ll pretty much settle for anything.” Then, reconsidered: “No, I want to live with young people that I love!”

When Steve lived in Victoria last spring, it was in a socially-conscious shared house in Fernwood, where the windows were steamed up every Sunday for a local food potluck. It wasn’t uncommon to hear the roommates jamming in the living room by the wood fireplace.

He read aloud a new listing, emphasizing the words “private” and “available now.” The ad had been posted just three hours earlier. He dialed the number provided, but the room was already gone. Steve was told the room was rented within one hour of being posted. The vacancy rate returned to zero.

Though the abnormally low vacancy rate in Victoria seems daunting, it doesn’t necessarily mean no turnover. People still shuffle; they move out of the city, in with different people and to other neighbourhoods — some lucky souls even afford a mortgage and escape the rental market for good. But lately, moving between rentals has meant paying more for a similar place.

Al Kemp, CEO of the Rental Owners and Managers Society of BC, explains that the cost of owning a home in Victoria is increasing because of rising property taxes and increased utility costs, so rental owners pass that cost on to their tenants.

Last April, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Victoria was $900, just a couple hundred shy of the country’s highest average rent of $1,096 for two-bedroom apartments in Calgary, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The difference between here and Cowtown: we have rent controls.

B.C. legislation prevents landlords from raising tenants rent more than 3.7 per cent each year. So landlords have to wait for an apartment to turn over before they jack the price up to “market value.” Which, Kemp said, is exactly what they’re doing now.

When Victoria’s unemployment rate slid past Calgary’s to the lowest in the country last June, more people flocked here for temporary work. But the number of rentals didn’t increase.

According to Henry Kamphof, Senior Manager of the Capital Regional District (CRD) Housing Secretariat, Victoria loses about 200 rental properties each year due to demolition or conversion. However, only about 150 new rentals are added. He said bylaws that legalize secondary suites in Victoria are needed in neighbouring municipalities like Saanich and Esquimalt. He would also like to see governments go further by offering incentives for homeowners to put a suite in their house.

Some renters know how desperate people are to find a place. Steve found another new listing and when he called, the man on the line said he was showing the place now and Steve could see it if he came over immediately. He called Steve “bro.” I told him not to bother, but he biked over to the place anyway.

The current occupants were three bartenders. They didn’t pretend to be anything less than slobs. They knew the place was a hole. The landlord lived upstairs and is an alcoholic; he never returned damage deposits. The toilet flooded, the kitchen was usually a mess and all that was up for grabs was the shittiest room in the house — a room that no less than six potential tenants were staring at, along with Steve. The bartenders would decide the next day who would get it.

But Steve wasn’t interested. He considered upping how much he’d be willing to pay for rent to $500 or maybe $600.

Bernie Pauly, UVic nursing prof and co-ordinator of a UVic working group on housing and homelessness, said that a growing number of people in the CRD dedicate more than 30 per cent of their income to rent, which puts them at risk of homelessness.

Pauly said the best way to keep rents affordable for low-income earners is by creating social housing. That is, housing operated on a not-for-profit basis or through government rental subsidies. The few complexes that currently operate like this in Victoria are only for people on income-assistance. In the ‘70s the government scrapped many social housing programs that could have helped workers in need.

Cheap rent still exists in Victoria but you have to be lucky to find it and accept the quirks that keep the price down — then stay put.

Tyrel, a UVic student who has been living in Victoria for two years, found his current rental last May — the time when many students leave the city and the pickings for shared housing is at its best. Tyrel decided not to go home for the summer so he could keep his place. One could hardly blame him; the rent is under $300 per month.

Tyrel shares a house in the Hillside area with five roommates, a number that breaks a city bylaw restricting the legal number of unrelated people sharing a unit to four.

Besides the crammed kitchen, there is plenty of room for everybody to spread out. There are several common rooms, including one with a pool table and another with a wide-screen TV. The place has been a student house for over a decade, and Tyrel says people often visit and tell him they used to know somebody who lived there or that they’d partied there before.

Some call Tyrel’s room the “Bat Cave” for its location in a dark corner of the basement. Former residents used it as a smoking room though its intended function was probably a closet or pantry. Standing at 5’11, Tyrel has to duck past the low entrance to his room (or knock his head on it when drunk). Inside, if he were two inches taller his hair would brush the ceiling. There isn’t room for more than a queen-size bed and a square grade-school desk that doubles as a nightstand. The room itself is smaller than a res room.

“It’s okay,” Tyrel said. “I chose this room. I don’t mind it.”

Steve left my apartment before he found a place to rent. His friend had an absentee roommate and agreed to let him stay in the abandoned room, then on a couch when the roommate returned.

I was glad to have my little apartment to myself again.

Every time I talked to Steve for the rest of the month he told me he was still looking for a place in earnest. He expanded his radius of interest, checking out a place in Burnside, despite not having a car. He looked at some apartments and shared houses far out of his ideal price range, but got no offers. He’s stopped laughing about the bad places. The hunt was serious.

Four days to the end of the month Steve contacted a friend whose family owns an apartment. While the building forbids renters, the two plan to fib and say they are brothers if ever confronted. A six-year age gap and matching blond hair makes the story believable.

Steve will move into a room that was an office in the small two-bedroom unit. With fewer connections, Steve said, he might be have been homeless this October.