were you renting in Vancouver before or after the vacant property tax went into effect?

regardless, i suspect most of these "college kids are renting mansions" stories omit the "from their rich parent's friends" part of the story.

I suspect a lot these "lucky students" are from well off families who may well know the landlord personally.

If your a poor "First Nations" student maybe not so much.

I dunno, it seems that these days the accepted way to make money is by nickel and dimeing poor people. How are they supposed to make bank on a family w/ kids that won't constantly owe extra due to delinquent payments? Just a theory, seeing as how the poor and the financially-irresponsible seem to be the best customers of banks and creditors. Might as well be the same for renters.

Nickel and dimeing poor people and collecting delinquent payments is definitely not something that most landlords want to pursue as a business model. Morality aside, that is a very labor intensive business to be in, and relies on economies of scale to balance out those without the ability to follow through on payments.

That is an incredibly low view of people and has not been my experience at all in life or as a renter.

I think most developed NA cities have pretty strict tenant protection laws that, even if failing to actually protect tenants, at least guarantee you'll take some loss from tenants that don't pay and therefore make such activities undesirable. This seemed to be a thing with the slumlords of the past but I bet it's just not profitable enough right now.