Toronto (A Tale of Two Opinions)
Recently stories like this started popping up about rentals in Toronto. Crazy right? Unfortunately a lot of people seemed to make arguments for it. CIBC’s Benjamin Tal was quoted as saying.
“ The turnover rate under rent control is lower as tenants stay in properties longer.”
This coupled with the “fact” that if property owners and developers are not allowed to charge what they want in rent willy nilly than development will stop or come to a halt. This all in the face of the 1% vacancy rate. Obviously no demand for housing and no room to make any profits. Are you kidding me?
Something has to be done right. There’s a Facebook group called Toronto Housing Woes started by CBC (Shannon Martin & Chris Glover) starting the discussion as to what can be done. Surely reason will prevail and some kind of logical conclusion will be reached regarding the 1991 loophole that landlords are using to exploit rising costs. Unfortunately there are a lot of people talking out of their asses or just plain AstroTurfers trying to make arguments against rent control.
They say things like Toronto is the playground of the rich and if you can’t afford to live here you should leave (meanwhile whenever their property tax goes up by $100/year they scream foul, but it’s perfectly acceptable that people’s rent goes up $1600/month). That it’s really all the Premier, Kathleen Wynne’s, fault because she has doubled hydro costs. I’m going to stop right there for a second to debunk this argument. So as a landlord you don’t have to pay the cost of hydro. You could pass that cost on to your tenants should you feel that expense is too cost prohibitive. Secondly if for some reason your taxes, costs for maintaining or repairing the property or even your bills have a large spike you can easily apply for a rental increase that is above the standard increase to help cover the unforeseen added expenses. So just stop with that argument. It’s invalid and has zero to do with this debate. On the other hand you know what does? Wages and cost of living. It’s somehow OK for landlords to increase your rent by 100% or more but not for your employer to pay you enough to live here.
Which leads me to my point about what the very real effect of not having effective rent control will do to our city. If you want to have a understanding of what pricing people out of markets does to cities you have to look no further than to our neighbours to the south. America always beating us to the punch and hoping we learn from their lessons (Remember that time that the Harper Government wanted to privatize the prison sector in Canada and then Senators from Texas -Yes, Texas! Personally called him and warned him not to do it?). So we can look at cities like Tallahassee, Trenton, and Tucson for reference. You can see in other examples as the economic segregation happens you see thriving areas surrounded by a vast and sprawling desert of desolation. You will have concentrated areas of poverty as you drive out the people who can no longer afford to live within the cities limits.
Do you know who those people affected are? People who have jobs. People who even have multiple jobs. People generally working in the service industries. The people making your over priced coffees. Some of those are even students. So if we start pricing those people out we will start to see staffing issues for service industries. Smaller student populations which could even lead to cut backs at schools. Then to counteract that measure you companies will have to start paying staff more to take the jobs in the city and as a result charging end consumers more. Students will likely look to schools in other affordable cities so they don’t have to commute so they can actually study to get that job that allows them to afford to live in the city that wouldn’t allow them to study and live in it. Don’t even think about allowing immigrants into the city either. Not to mention the overall decline in tourism. Oh and hey, remember that original “fact” that developers will not be able to develop if they can’t charge whatever they want? Who will they be building these properties for? I mean sure the super elite will probably own a home and a condo downtown but I am doubtful that they alone will be enough to sustain the city. I wonder how that will effect development when you have a bunch of vacant properties no one can afford to rent?
There is a domino effect waiting to happen if some form of effective rent control isn’t put into place and other measures are not taken to help the situation. This is a time to speak up and inform your government what your needs are. By and far there is nothing on the books that punishes landlords the way this 1991 loophole punishes tenants. It’s time to put a stop to that and keep making effective changes for our rights. It’s our city too and no one can tell you otherwise.