Advocates worry about more people being homeless, and landlords say they have to pay for rising costs
When Elizabeth O’Hanley was looking for a new place to live in early March, she looked on Kijiji and saw an ad that shocked her. The Dartmouth triplex she had just left was on the market for more than twice the rent she had been paying for years.
Since 2016, O’Hanley had been living on the second floor of the small family home. The last time she paid rent, it was $925 per month. She saw that a smaller unit on the middle floor was listed for $2,350 per month.
She posted about the situation on TikTok, and a few days later she heard that both units had been rented.
Even though Nova Scotia limits annual rent increases for existing tenants to 2%, some landlords are trying to get around the rule by evicting tenants or using fixed-term leases that must be renegotiated at the end of each term. The rent cap doesn’t apply to new leases with new tenants, and the rent can be raised by any amount.
Advocates for housing worry that things will get worse if the cap isn’t renewed at the end of this year as planned.
O’Hanley said, “I don’t think anything is worth that price.””I think $2,300 is a good amount if you want to live in a high-end condo because that’s important to you. But [for me], no way, no how.”
Late last year, O’Hanley and the tenant in the middle unit found out that their fixed-term leases wouldn’t be renewed at the end of March. Their new landlord told them that he and his mother would be moving into the home’s top two floors.
O’Hanley said that made her look for another place to rent for $1,500 for several months.
She said, “It was a crisis.” “I started looking for apartments, but there were none available. My neighbor downstairs was in the same situation as me: she had one income and was looking for an apartment every day.”
“There was really nothing to choose from.”
O’Hanley works full-time in marketing and thinks of herself as middle class. She said she never thought she wouldn’t be able to buy a house or even rent one.
She says she’s worried that what’s happening to her now is a sign of what’s to come after December.
The previous Liberal government put in place the 2% cap in 2020 to help protect renters during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current PC government ran against rent controls, but in response to the housing crisis, they extended the cap until the end of 2023.
Organizations that help renters have the same worries as O’Hanley.
Joanne Hussey, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid Service in Halifax, said, “I think what’s really scary is that it gives us a good idea of what we can expect when the rent cap comes off. If nothing else is done, rents will double or triple,” she said.
Hussey said that her organization has seen this kind of rent increase happen a lot even though the rent cap is still in place.
“We know that wages and people’s earnings haven’t tripled, so there’s no way that people making minimum wage, seniors, or people on income assistance can keep up with rent increases that big.”
The group that represents landlords in the province, on the other hand, says that the rent cap is making the problem worse and wants it to end in December.
Kevin Russell, executive director of the Investment Property Owners Association of Nova Scotia, said, “If we’re being realistic, we’ll probably see some kind of phase-out or some changes that will make it better for everyone.”
“But something needs to change, and ideally, the rent cap would be taken away. If not, it would be changed to reflect the current state of the market and the fact that the costs of running apartment rentals are going up.”
Province stays tight-lippe
Minister of Service Nova Scotia and Internal Services Colton LeBlanc told CBC in an interview on Tuesday that his department is “considering all options” for the future of the rent cap, but he wouldn’t say what those options are.
LeBlanc said that staff from the department have been meeting regularly with stakeholders and that any changes will be announced in the fall.
LeBlanc said, “When we talk about the Residential Tenancies Program, it does have a wide range of effects on the lives of Nova Scotians.” “In Nova Scotia, there are 300,000 renters and 6,000 landlords. So we continue to listen to what Nova Scotians have to say and try to find a good balance.”
When asked if his department is looking at B.C. and Ontario, which have rent control systems, LeBlanc said that the government of Houston “does not support a rent control regime.”
Concerns about the growing number of homeles
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s most recent rental market report says that even with the rent cap, Halifax had the highest increase in residential rental costs from one year to the next, at 9.3%.
As of January, 796 people in Halifax had been homeless for more than six months, according to the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia.
Max Chauvin, Halifax’s director of housing and homelessness, told the Halifax Regional Council at a recent meeting that if the provincial rent cap is allowed to expire at the end of this year, HRM could have 500 to 1,000 more homeless people within months.
LeBlanc said that this does worry him, and the provincial government is putting “all hands on deck.”
“As a government, we are working very hard to meet the housing needs in our province,” he said.
A group of landlords says they need more help
Russell said that the rent cap could make more people homeless if landlords who are losing money sell their units and quit the business.
He said that landlords shouldn’t have to solve the housing crisis on their own and that the province needs to help more.
Russell said that the government needs to do something.”They need to solve this problem by making more homes available. They need to give landlords incentives to stay in business and give developers incentives to build more housing.”
“They need to have a clear plan, and that plan must include both help for landlords and help for renters.”
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