The Intent to Rent Form: What It Is and How to Get One Signed

There is no BC government form called an intent to rent. The document people mean is the Shelter Information form, HR3037, issued by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, and on the current version, revised 12 August 2024, the only signature line on it is yours.

Your landlord does not sign it. If you have been told your assistance is stuck because a landlord will not sign the form, that advice is out of date, and it is costing you money every month it goes unfixed.

The form is two pages and free: HR3037, Shelter Information (PDF, gov.bc.ca). Any ministry office will also hand you one.

What the form actually does

The ministry pays assistance in two parts. The support allowance is fixed by family size. The shelter allowance is paid up to your actual housing cost, to a maximum. HR3037 has one job: it tells the ministry what your actual housing cost is, so the shelter half of your cheque can be set.

Family unit size	Minimum shelter	Maximum shelter
1 person	$75	$500
2 persons	$150	$695
3 persons	$200	$790
4 persons	$225	$840
5 persons	$250	$890
6 persons	$275	$940
7 persons	$300	$990

Source: BC Employment and Assistance rate tables. The shelter amounts are identical on the income assistance table, which carries an effective date of 1 August 2023, and the disability assistance table, effective 1 December 2025.

Add the support allowance and the totals are these: a single person on income assistance receives $1,060 a month, and a single person with the Persons with Disabilities designation receives $1,483.50, plus a $52 transportation supplement.

Set that against the market. CMHC's Rental Market Survey of October 2025, published 11 December 2025, put the average purpose-built one-bedroom across the Vancouver census metropolitan area at $1,807. The cheapest zone CMHC publishes in the region, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows, was $1,426. The $500 maximum does not reach a one-bedroom anywhere in Metro Vancouver. It is a contribution toward a room, a shared suite, an SRO, or subsidised housing, and the form exists to make sure you get the full contribution rather than the $75 floor.

Which sections you fill in, and which your landlord fills in

Section on HR3037	Who completes it
1. Personal information	You
2. Rental start date and address	You
3. Type of shelter allowance, monthly rent, utilities	You
4. Security deposit and pet damage deposit	You
5. Landlord information	You, about your landlord
6. Declaration and signature	You

That is the whole form. There is no landlord section, no landlord attestation and no landlord signature line. Section 5 collects your landlord's legal name, address and phone number, and asks whether you want rent paid directly to them. If you tick yes, the form warns that the ministry may phone your landlord to arrange it, so tell them to expect the call.

The definitions on page two are explicit about who is responsible: "If you are the renter, you should be the one providing shelter information to the Ministry." The declaration you sign says the information is true and complete and that the ministry may verify it. That last part is real. Inflating the rent on this form is fraud against the ministry, and the ministry checks.

One more line on the form matters and is easy to miss: "this Shelter Information form (HR3037) cannot be used as a Residential Tenancy Agreement." It proves nothing about your right to stay. What a tenancy agreement has to contain, and what a landlord can and cannot do once you are in, is covered in our other BC tenancy guides.

Three documents do the same job

The ministry's Support, Shelter and Special Care Facilities policy says documentation "may include but is not limited to a tenancy agreement, a completed Shelter Information form (HR3037), and/or a rent receipt." Any one of the three is enough.

Document	Who produces it	When it is the easiest option
Tenancy agreement	The landlord, by law	You have a formal tenancy and a signed agreement already exists
HR3037	You	No written agreement, informal suite, room in a shared house, sublet
Rent receipt	The landlord	Month-to-month with no paperwork; must show date, amount and full address

What to do when the landlord will not co-operate

This is the real question behind the search, so here it is in order.

Ask for the tenancy agreement, because they owe it to you. Section 13(1) of the Residential Tenancy Act says a landlord must prepare in writing every tenancy agreement entered into on or after 1 January 2004, and section 13(3) says the landlord must give you a copy within 21 days of entering into it. That is not a courtesy. A landlord who refuses is in breach of the Act, and the agreement they are withholding is the exact document the ministry will accept.

If you pay cash, demand the receipt. Section 26(2) of the Act requires a landlord to provide a receipt for rent paid in cash. A receipt showing the date, the amount and the full address satisfies the ministry on its own.

If none of that works, fill in HR3037 yourself. Ministry policy states, in these words, that "a shelter allowance should not be denied because actual shelter cost information is provided by someone other than the landlord or the owner of the property." Complete every section, sign the declaration and submit it. If a worker tells you it needs a landlord signature, ask them to check the Support and Shelter policy and look at the current form.

Know the floor. The same policy says minimum shelter is provided regardless of documentation. Even in the worst case you receive $75 as a single person. Nobody should be sitting at zero shelter while they argue about paperwork.

If the refusal is about your income, it may be illegal. Section 10(1) of the BC Human Rights Code prohibits denying someone the right to occupy a rental, or discriminating on a term of the tenancy, because of their "lawful source of income" among other grounds. Income assistance and disability assistance are lawful income. A landlord who says no to your application on that basis, or who refuses to put your rent in writing because you are on assistance, is exposed to a complaint at the BC Human Rights Tribunal. Write down what was said and when.

How long the ministry takes

There is no published service standard for processing a shelter document, so plan around the payment cycle instead, which is published and fixed.

New applicants complete a three-week work search before the eligibility assessment, unless they are exempt. Exemptions include people with a disability or health condition that prevents work, single parents with a child under three, survivors of domestic abuse, and applicants 65 and older. At the assessment, renters must provide "a copy of your tenancy agreement or use the Shelter Information form."

Once you are on assistance, the monthly report is due on the fifth of each month, and payments are issued on set dates: 26 August 2026 for September, 23 September 2026 for October, 21 October 2026 for November. The practical rule is to get shelter documents in before the fifth if you want the change reflected in the next cheque rather than the one after.

Submit through My Self Serve, in person at an office, an office drop box, or by mail. The ministry line is 1-866-866-0800.

The deposit is the harder problem, and the BC Rent Bank exists for it

Getting the rent verified is paperwork. Getting into the unit in the first place means finding half a month's rent for a security deposit, and often another half for a pet damage deposit, before the first cheque with the new shelter amount arrives.

Two routes. The ministry issues a security deposit supplement covering a security deposit and pet damage deposit, and it is repayable, deducted from your assistance afterwards.

The second is the BC Rent Bank, a network of local rent banks offering interest-free loans. As of August 2026 its published terms are these:

BC Rent Bank	Terms
Interest	None; an administrative fee may apply
Repayment	6 to 36 months
Typical loan	Under $2,000; maximums are set by each local rent bank
Covers	Current or overdue rent, utility arrears, and security deposits, pet deposits or first month's rent once housing is secured
Arrears limit	Less than $3,500 owing
Other conditions	19 or older, renting in BC, no undischarged bankruptcy, income within BC Housing's limits

BC Housing's Housing Income Limits, published October 2025 for use from 1 December 2025, set the Vancouver-area ceiling at $58,000 gross for a one-bedroom or smaller household. The organisation reports $9.5 million lent to 7,200 households.

The catch, and it matters here: if you already receive income assistance or disability assistance, BC Rent Bank asks you to seek help from the ministry before applying. Ask your worker about the security deposit supplement and the crisis supplement first, then go to the rent bank if the answer is no.

The honest part

HR3037 is a small administrative document doing a large amount of work in people's lives, and the paperwork is the easy half. A single person can prove a $1,400 rent perfectly and still receive $500 toward it. The income assistance rate table has carried the same effective date since 1 August 2023 while asking rents moved. Rentals.ca reported BC's average apartment and condo asking rent at $2,357 in July 2026, down 4.1% year over year, which is a genuine softening and still roughly five times the maximum shelter allowance for one person.

What the form does buy you is the difference between $75 and up to $500 a month, every month, and control over a step most people believe they cannot take without their landlord's co-operation. You can take it today.

Where the shelter allowance goes furthest in this region is southeast of the city. Rents in New Westminster and Surrey sit several hundred dollars below the Vancouver average, and shared housing and rooms turn over there more often than anywhere on the west side. Our live listings show what is actually posted right now, not what an average says should exist.