SUDU, other groups call for immediate halt to bill 11

March 26th 2026

BILL 11 IS A DEATH SENTENCE FOR TENANTS IN SUPPORTIVE HOUSING SAY TENANT ADVOCATES 

Traditional and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), QayQayt First Nation, Kwantlen, q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie), Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen First Nations, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), and Stó:lō Nation – Tenants and advocates are sounding the alarm on proposed amendments to the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA). 

In early March, the BC Government introduced Bill 11, which proposes sweeping changes to the RTA under the guise of addressing “safety” and “security” issues in supportive housing. While still light on details, Bill 11 proposes to equip landlords with tools to evict tenants in supportive housing on the grounds that they see a “weapon” in their unit – a term that remains undefined. The changes would also grant landlords sweeping power to lock tenants out of their housing while awaiting Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) hearings. 

“We know that tenants in supportive housing are already experiencing barriers to accessing justice,” says Sepideh Khazei, TRAC Lawyer. “Bill 11 legalizes punishment for tenants before legal proceedings, a move that will accelerate homelessness and evict tenants to nowhere.” 

“There's already protection for tenants who are threatened with a weapon – there's already rules in place. It’s illegal to attack someone with a weapon, whether on the street or in your own apartment building, says Matt T., Our Streets. “But they are using this idea of weapons as an excuse to roll back the Residential Tenancy Act? It makes no sense.” 

Bill 11 also proposes to empower BC’s Housing Minister to skirt ordinary legislative process in making future changes to the RTA, which includes implementing changes that would further claw back other core tenancy protections for people living in supportive housing. 

“Bill 11 sets the stage for the BC NDP to continue chipping away at the rights of tenants living in supportive housing - and to do so without legislative scrutiny. It places power to revoke life-and-death protections for tenants in the hands of the government of the day,” says Laura Macintyre, Pivot Legal Society Lawyer. 

“Violence is a direct result of state abandonment. Further destabilizing people when [the government doesn't] have a plan for where they should go will only cause further violence and increase the risk of death,” says Gina Egilson, SUDU Board of Directors. 

"Bill 11 will allow landlords to weaponize the system against our community members, adding to the increasing number of evictions from supportive housing that we are already seeing. This measure will disproportionately impact Indigenous communities, and women and gender 

diverse people who experience violence. There is a dwindling number of affordable housing units, which will only worsen in the face of upcoming building closures along Granville Street and beyond – there is an urgent need for more shelter-rate housing. We are extremely concerned about how Bill 11 will further displace people to nowhere, severing ties to their community and crucial social and health resources,” says Eilidh Drever and Jenn McDermid, Kilala Lelum Health and Healing Cooperative. 

Set to go to Second Reading next week, tenants backed by tenant advocates are calling for a halt to Bill 11. 

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MEDIA CONTACTS 

Cailin Tyrrell, 604-223-1202 Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre (TRAC) 

Rosa Sundar-Maccagno, 647-823-5410 Surrey Union of Drug Users (SUDU) 

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BACKGROUND 

The amendments to the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA) proposed within the BC Government’s Bill 11 follows previous drastic changes made in February 2024. These changes removed the rights of tenants in supportive housing to have guests, privacy, and quiet enjoyment in their homes. This has resulted in several egregious violations of tenants’ rights, including landlords entering the units of supportive housing residents without appropriate notice for reasons other than wellness checks and overly restrictive guest policies – further isolating tenants of these buildings – many of whom are living with physical and/or mental disabilities. 

According to Minister Boyle, Bill 11 is aimed at providing “new tools to address health and safety issues in supportive housing and protect tenant rights.” Yet the focus of Bill 11 is on “problematic tenants,” and does not address the myriad concerns that supportive housing tenants have related to the maintenance of their building, or the increasingly unaffordable rates of rent they are forced to pay. 

We are particularly worried about women, gender-diverse people, Indigenous people, and other racialized individuals for whom living on the street is a death sentence. Barring tenants from accessing their unit while they await eviction presumes that there is an abundance of places for people to go. Yet, in the context of increased police street sweeps and decampments across B.C., we know all too well that there is nowhere for us to go. 

We maintain that if the BC Government was genuinely concerned about the quality, safety, and security of supportive housing, it would: 

1. Consult people with lived and living experience of unregulated substance use and supportive housing residence to inform policy development in supportive housing; 

2. Create minimum service standards and training requirements for supportive housing providers which include transparent third-party inspection, building maintenance, de-escalation, OFA 2 first-aid, trauma-informed care, and advanced overdose response with naloxone; 

3. Stop exploiting workers through casual, non-unionized, and underpaid positions. Instead, fairly compensate, provide ongoing training, and create unionized and non-casual positions in supportive housing to prevent burnout and maintain quality working conditions; 

4. Require contracted housing providers to create authentic peer-led support, operational, emotional first aid, and de-escalation roles for housing residents to more formally support site safety within their homes; 

5. Require contracted supportive housing providers to solicit and follow-up on resident feedback, suggestions, and complaints through regular community consultation and by creating tenant advisory committees;

6. Expand the role of harm reduction-informed peer workers in all supportive housing environments;

7. Create peer-supported supervised inhalation spaces in low-barrier supportive housing, provide staff with effective PPE, organize floors by tenants’ drug of choice, ensure proper negative pressure ventilation, adequately maintain buildings, and seal windows to mitigate indoor smoking and related concerns; 

8. Regulate the toxic drug supply, expand prescribed safer supply access, reverse harmful witnessed ingestion policy for new safer supply clients & free DULF. 

Above is the approach to improving safety in supportive housing proposed by SUDU, which goes beyond performative responses blaming tenants for decades of policy neglect. We remain committed to creating safer, functional, and less hazardous working and living environments for everyone in supportive housing. Tenants and workers have the right to safety.