Pivot releases tenant rights card, with a warning

Vancouver, July 3, 2008 – Pivot Legal Society released 5,000 of its new Tenant Rights Card today, providing Downtown Eastside tenants with a wallet-sized list of legal rights to assist in interactions with landlords.

Despite the empowering tone of the cards, the rights listed come with a strongly worded warning. “Tenants may have rights on paper,” said David Eby of the Pivot Legal Society, “but we’ve been told many times that these rights are rarely meaningful for tenants. Sometimes even a lawyer can’t help.”

The card points out that the Vancouver Police Department policy to refuse to intervene in situations of illegal evictions may result in tenants who insist on their rights being kicked out and left without a remedy. It also says that the City of Vancouver’s policy is to condemn a building, rather than use its bylaw powers to force a landlord to do repairs.

“If you’re illegally evicted because you insist on your rights, you can’t call 911,” said Eby. “You’ve got to fill out multiple forms, wait for weeks, take time off work, and have a phone or bus fare so you can take your claim to the Residential Tenancy Branch.“

Pivot’s Tenant Rights Card is based on its extremely successful Police Rights Card. More than 75,000 copies of the Police Rights Card have been distributed by Pivot and its partner agencies across Canada.

The final text on the Tenant Rights cards was the result of feedback from the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA), the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre (TRAC), First United Church, the Vancouver Associated Network of Drug Users (VANDU) and Downtown Eastside residents themselves in focus groups. The Rights Card project was sponsored by the Vancouver Foundation and the Central City Foundation.

Read the text on the card (pdf 155KB)