First United on housing: platform focuses on inclusion, fairness & stability

First United is celebrating its 140th anniversary this year – and for all of those years the church has been widely recognized as an advocate for its neighbours.

The most recent manifestation of that care is their newly released Law Reform Platform on ‘Inclusion, Fairness & Stability: Advancing Solutions for the Right to Housing in BC.’

A September 23 email to supporters noted:

This platform builds on the success of our systems change work to improve conditions for the 1.6 million tenants across the province.

Based on updated findings from the BC Evictions Mapping Project and research from jurisdictions across Canada and globally, our platform includes three categories for legislative and policy solutions:

1. 1. Protecting diversity and inclusion in housing:
      1. Prohibiting pet bans in rentals
      2. Confirming tenants’ right to install cooling equipment (air conditioners) and prohibiting clauses that restrict the use of cooling devices
   2. Improving procedural fairness at the Residential Tenancy Branch:
      1. Requiring landlords to apply to evict a tenant
      2. Requiring landlords to provide evidence first when evicting a tenant, and providing tenants reasonable time to respond to evidence
      3. Ensuring that adjournments will be provided to allow tenants appropriate time to review and respond to landlords’ evidence
   3. Rent stabilization:
      1. Replacing unlimited rent increases between tenancies with selective vacancy control between tenancies in times of low vacancy

Written by First United staff (Dr. Sarah Marsden, Director of Systems Change and Legal; Vinson Shih, Staff Lawyer, Special Projects; and Gwen Hamilton, articled student), the platform will be shared “with government leaders this week at the Union of BC Municipalities Convention.”

In the news

Dan Fumano of the Vancouver Sun interviewed First United Executive Director Amanda Burrows September 23, focusing on the cooling pillar of the platform.

She said:

Just as landlords must provide heat in the winter, tenants must have the right to safe cooling in the summer.

No landlord should be able to prevent tenants from using cooling devices like air conditioners, and no tenant should face eviction or risk their health simply for trying to stay alive in their own home.

Fumano noted:

[Cooling] will be one of the main topics of discussion at the Union of B.C. Municipalities [UBCM] convention, the annual gathering of hundreds of municipal and provincial government politicians and staffers, which takes place this week in Victoria. . . .

Debates around cooling rights have come up in several other jurisdictions, including other parts of Canada, across the U.S. and in Europe.

The new report also shows how First United’s advocacy in recent years has already produced positive results.

After First United reported in 2023 a dramatic increase in so-called “landlord’s use evictions” – where a property owner announces they or close family want to move into the home so a tenant must leave – the province announced new legislation in April 2024 to fight bad-faith evictions.

Since that legislation came into effect, First United reported this week, the number of such evictions disputed at the Residential Tenancy Branch fell by as much as two-thirds.

Go here for the full article.

September 27 note: The UBCM passed the Right to Cool in homes through changes to the Strata Property Act, but lifting the pet ban was defeated.

History of advocacy

First United has a long and storied connection with the Downtown Eastside.

The first page of the Inclusion, Fairness & Stability platform offers a land acknowledgement and a description of First United, which states:

First United envisions a neighbourhood where the worth of every person is celebrated, and all people thrive.

For 140 years, its responsive low-barrier programs serve low-income, underhoused and homeless individuals in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

An article on its site earlier this year gave a sense of the First United legacy:

In May 1885, a small group of people gathered at the Hastings Mill schoolhouse for a church service. That small congregation started a history that would extend over a century – that was the start of First United.

‘Vancouver’ wasn’t even the name for the city yet. The Canadian Pacific Railway didn’t yet extend to the town of Granville. Powell Street had Canada’s largest Japanese community. The Canadian government made residential schools official policy that year.

So much in the city, our culture and our organization has changed since 1885. But what hasn’t changed is our pursuit of dignity, belonging and justice. . . .

Long-time supporter Bob Burrows also shared remarks:

First United has never been a fancy place. It’s been a real, authentic place. A place where you met people as they were, and where kindness went a long way. The staff and volunteers didn’t have all the answers – but they listened and helped out as they were able. Day after day. Year after year.

The story of First United is about the people. The guests and the staff. The volunteers. The community. The people who gave what they could, and those who received more than they expected. It’s about a church that didn’t just talk about hope – it lived it. Still does.

Burrows wrote Hope Lives Here: A History of Vancouver’s First United Church (Harbour Publishing, 2010).

A new home

A major redevelopment of the First United property is expected to be completed this fall:

First United is redeveloping its site at 320 East Hastings into a multi-storey, purpose-built space with four floors of community services and amenities (operated by First) and seven floors of below-market Indigenous social housing (operated by Lu’ma Native Housing Society).

Last November, First United introduced “a new art initiative as part of its capital campaign and announcing $1 million in support from the Audain Foundation.”

They added:

Informed by conversations with Indigenous consultants, the exterior of the building respectfully integrates works by Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh artists, holding space for Host Nation art on traditional Host Nation lands, contributing to an ongoing revival of Salish art forms, and standing as a visual welcome to the community.

Notable among these exterior features is a woven brickwork pattern by well-known Musqueam Master Weaver and Designer Debra Sparrow. The interior of the building will include works by Urban Indigenous and Downtown Eastside artists, ensuring that the stories and voices of the Downtown Eastside community are represented.

Go here for First United’s Law Reform page and here for the Inclusion, Fairness & Stability platform.