Here's what happened at our General Meeting on November 24, 2018...
Item 1: Territorial Acknowledgement & Community Agreements
Item 2: Introductions of present members/Advocacy Rounds
[Confidential - VTU does not publish names of meeting attendees or their tenancy situations]
Item 3: Next Steps for Renovictions Ban
VTU members and other tenants facing renovictions have been organizing and strategizing around supporing Vancouver Councillor Jean Swanson's Motion B10: "Protecting Tenants from Renovictions and Aggressive Buy-Outs" Review of strategy and discussion:
- We need to pressure every member of council to understand we need to pass this motion
- You can contact Syd ([email protected]) all day tomorrow (Nov. 25) and on Monday (Nov 26) at 6pm at Carnegie there will an info-session for speakers who have signed up to speak to the motion
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Reviewing amendment to Jean’s motion: “In accordance with the Residential Tenancy Act to the end of party 1b” → to acknowledge that the RTA already allows this, because of Vivian Bauman’s case
- Part b: New West already doing this, even though City staff's memo implies it’s illegal
- Amendment to part c : “including changes to the Vancouver Charter if necessary”
- City Lawyers are telling the City you can’t do these things. Not true.
- We need to keep up the morale in the room. If you can come to the city hall meeting for a bit, come.
- Bring snacks, water, books. Join us anytime between 5 and 10pm.
- A lot of people have been evicted with building permits, we want to tell the City they need to step up and request changes to the Charter and protect all renters.
- We are just asking the City to align with the Province -- jurisdiction shouldn’t an issue
- The renters office won’t help. We need change right now and the office won’t be legislating new policy, they’ll be working with the existing TRPP.
- Which councillors are gonna be on our side? All of them ran on affordability. Especially Fry and Carr. Kennedy Stewart has said he doesn’t trust market housing: This is how you make housing a human right.
- Developers say: if this motion passes, they won’t build any more rentals.
- None of those units are gonna be affordable to us anyway.
Item 4: Vacancy Control Campaign Click-to-Call
- The BC Government's Rental Housing Task Force is due to release its recommendations in the coming weeks. BC NDP is really vulnerable right now with an MLA stepping down and by-election called. Now is our moment to demand loud and clear that we need vacancy control.
- Website click-to-call app make it easy to call Housing Minister's office and say you want the province to impliment vacancy control: where rents are tied to the unit.
- Go to realrentcontrolbc.ca/call_minister
- Setting up phone bank to let people know about the click-to-call campaign
Item 5: Fundraising
- VTU is member driven, and we need funding to keep up our campaigns.
- [Several members in the room pledge to become monthly sustainer donors.]
- Members who can afford to donate to the VTU monthly can do so here: https://www.vancouvertenantsunion.ca/member_monthly
*No General Meeting for December 2018*
Next General Meeting: January 2019 (Date TBD - this will also be our pre-AGM Meeting)