On September 20 - the last day of the Fall 2024 legislative session - I said the following about the Houston government’s legislation that: failed to implement real rent control, made it easier for landlords to evict renters, left the fixed-term lease loophole, and extended a rent cap higher than any other in Canada, and more than double the rate of inflation. Here is what I said:
The situation for renters in Dartmouth North, in HRM, and across the province is getting more and more dire. Rents are incredibly high. We're hearing about studio apartments going for $1,700, and one-bedrooms are over $2,000. These are not luxury apartments.
The fact is that most incomes are nowhere near adequate to pay these prices, and it results in people being evicted for non-payment, defaulting on their power bills or other loans, not taking the medications they need, not eating enough and getting sick, or experiencing crippling anxiety and fear about all or any of the above.
People contact me every single day for help with housing. They can't afford where they're living. They're living with an abuser, and there's nowhere to escape to. Their landlord is moving into their unit, and they have to get out. Their power has been cut off. The list goes on and on.
Let me be clear: These are not calls that I get once a month, every couple of weeks, or even every couple of days. These calls come in every day, and most days there are more than one. People need help, and they need it now.
Yes, supply will help a little, but supply is coming in years and not days or months, and there is no guarantee of what the rents of all these buildings will be. People need housing that is adequate and that they can afford. There are some solutions to this that the government is at best ignoring and at worst working against.
We need a system of rent control where the rent is tied to the unit and not the tenant. This Bill does not do this. We need a system where there is no financial incentive for the use of fixed-term leases so they would be used for the intended purpose instead of for landlords to skirt the rent cap, as we heard about in Law Amendments Committee. This Bill does not have that.
Instead, it provides a pathway to homelessness, which, by the way, quadrupled in HRM since this government came to office. We need a system where there would be no financial incentive to make buildings pet-free when they were always pet-friendly; no need to charge for storage lockers when they always had been included in the rent; and no need to renovict tenants when there is nothing more than a cosmetic improvement needed to do to a unit or building. This Bill does not have this.
If not fair or affordable, the rent cap will give some predictability to renters for the next couple of years, but what happens then? This government is determined to return our rental market to a scenario where there is no control at all. We need this Bill to legislate permanent rental control tied to the unit and not the tenant.
The opportunity to bring this Bill forward could have done so much good, but it actually does the opposite. It will not help the housing and homelessness crisis, and in fact, it will probably make it worse for all these reasons I have laid out. For the tens of thousands of renters I represent in Dartmouth North, I cannot support this Bill.