Exclusive: B.C.’s first eviction mapping project reveals impacts of housing crisis

Jim Campbell says he freaked out when he got bad news from the landlord of the Fort Langley duplex he has been renting for a decade.

“My landlord said: ‘I want to renovate, so please start looking for a new place,’” recalled Campbell, a 71-year-old on a fixed pension who cannot afford more than the $1,375 he pays now in rent.

Campbell showed Postmedia an email he said he received from his landlord in January, saying that rising interest rates left him “with no option but to gut the entire unit and start from scratch to get higher rent, around $2,900 a month, or to try and sell.”

Given the average rent for a two-bedroom unit in the booming Langley area has nearly doubled from $1,250 in June 2016 to $2,400 today, Campbell knew finding another place he could afford anywhere near his neighbourhood was unlikely.

“When I first moved here, it was just a little village out in the sticks,” Campbell said. “(Now) I don’t see anywhere to go. If I were to lose this place, I don’t think I would find another place in Fort Langley.”