After the Boom: Tenant Experiences of Vancouver’s Emergent Rental Crisis, 1960s–1970s

Abstract

What does a rental crisis look like from the inside? This article explores how tenants in one Canadian city navigated the low availability and rising cost of housing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a particular focus on the everyday problems they experienced finding and keeping an apartment. The analysis is grounded in contemporary sources including newspapers, industry documents, and the archives of local activists, juxtaposed with tenant complaints to Vancouver’s Rental Accommodation Grievance Board. Tenant experiences are brought into dialogue with wider changes in housing and the city, including the end of the postwar construction boom and the consolidation of an apartment world organized around big landlords and the logic of real estate investment. This provides a fresh perspective on a period when, like today, public attention was riveted on the availability and affordability of urban housing, opening a space for tenants to speak out about their experiences.