B.C. bumps up rental subsidy programs for seniors, low-income families

Ashley Joannou · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Apr 03, 2025 6:37 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago

Recipients of two British Columbia programs aimed astatine making rent much affordable for seniors and families successful request volition spot a bump successful their subsidies starting this month.

The state says the mean household supplement nether the Rental Assistance Program volition spell from $400 to $700 per period portion qualifying seniors nether the Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters, oregon SAFER, programme volition receive, connected average, different $145 a month, for a full of $337. 

Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon says the household income eligibility bounds for the Rental Assistance Program is expanding to $60,000 from $40,000 portion the qualifying bounds for the seniors' programme is present $40,000, up from $37,240.

The summation to SAFER is the latest bump to the programme implicit the past respective years but stops abbreviated of the afloat revamp that the province's seniors advocator called for past year.

Advocate Dan Levitt says he's pleased the subsidy is being accrued but noted that it's not tied to the province's allowable rent increases, nor to inflation.

"I'm pleased much seniors volition beryllium eligible to person SAFER, however, I'd inactive similar to spot the SAFER programme beryllium indexed to ostentation and person authorities perpetrate to ensuring the programme is gathering its extremity to person recipients paying nary much than 30 per cent of their income connected rent," helium said.

"The seniors' demographic successful B.C. is expanding rapidly and supports specified arsenic SAFER are critically important for the prime of beingness for low-income seniors."

Kahlon says the changes mean much radical volition get assistance during a clip of precocious costs of surviving and amid uncertainty implicit the commercialized warfare with the United States.

"With the caller uncertainties that travel with tariffs, it is seniors and low-income families that are going to look the brunt of a batch of those tariffs and the impacts of those," helium said.

"We've already been proceeding from a batch of seniors who are truly acrophobic due to the fact that they person pensions and they're seeing the banal marketplace proceed to collapse, and what does that mean for them successful retirement?"