By Dave Pizer
A city committee wants to give Ottawa renters a two-year break from rent hikes.
The motion, approved by the health, recreation and social services committee on Jan. 16, also asks the provincial government to conduct a review of the Tenant Protection Act and its impact on tenants.
“We need a time out to reduce pressure on our tenants, and we need to come up with a better solution for our rental housing crisis,” says committee chair Alex Cullen.
The committee also wants council to establish a tenant defence fund to ensure that tenants brought before the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal (ORHT) facing rent increases and possible eviction have adequate legal representation.
John Dickie, chair of the Eastern Ontario Landlord Organization, says a rent freeze would be a “draconian” measure that fails to address the real problem facing low income tenants, which is their income level.
“The problem that they can’t afford to pay rent is no different than they can’t afford to buy food, or buy clothes,” says Dickie.
“We don’t as a society expect the owner of an IGA franchise to sell his food cheaper to everybody because low-income citizens can’t afford it.”
Under the Tenant Protection Act, implemented by the Mike Harris government in 1998, rents are only permitted to increase by a set percentage each year — this year’s limit was 2.9 per cent.
Despite this, a landlord can apply to the housing tribunal for an above-the-maximum rent increase to offset “extraordinary costs” incurred from things like major renovations, an increase in the cost of utilities, municipal taxes or inflation.
When a rental unit becomes vacant, landlords may increase the rent to whatever level they choose.
Cullen says the act, which weakens rent controls in order to encourage investment in rental housing, has failed to produce an increase in affordable housing.
“We’re simply not getting the housing supply the government promised,” says Cullen. “The market is not responding.”
Ottawa has the third highest average rent in the country and a vacancy rate that has risen over the past two years — but still remains low at 1.9 per cent.
According to Cullen, there are more than 13,000 families on the city’s social housing waiting list.
Approximately 80 per cent of these families have annual incomes of $20,000 or less. As a result, they can only afford to pay roughly $500 per month in rent.
The housing tribunal in Ottawa is currently considering applications from 120 apartment buildings whose landlords are seeking above-the-maximum rent increases, some as high as 12 per cent.
Bob MacDonald, program coordinator for Housing Help, an Ottawa-based tenants’ rights group, says the tribunal process ultimately favours the landlords, because the majority of tenants facing rent increases and eviction can’t afford legal representation and know little about the process.
“I go to the tribunal with a lot of those people who are at risk of eviction and it’s people who are struggling. Their rents are exceeding their means of income,” says MacDonald. “How many tenants do you know whose income has increased seven per cent each year to keep pace with the rents?”
Dickie says a rent freeze would discourage investment and the creation of rental housing.
As a result, it would make the problem much worse.
“This (rent-freeze) would be a little short-term gain for a few low-income citizens for long-term pain for everybody in the housing market,” says Dickie.
City council will vote on the committee’s proposals on Feb. 12.