The landlord had told them he wanted to raise the rent to $3,500 and when they complained he decided to raise it to $9,500.
“We know that our building is not rent controlled and this was something we were always worried about happening and there is no way we can afford $9,500 per month," Yumna Farooq said.
It shows that “no rent control” basically means “your landlord can throw you out at any time without notice” by raising rent to a ludicrous amount. It completely undermines all other tenant protections. Even conservatives should be supporting at least modest rent controls to prevent cases like this.
Modest is what we had before. Never vote Conservative.
I think last year’s inflation spike demonstrates that “2.5% per year regardless of your carrying costs or maintenance costs changing due to interest rates and inflation” is not modest. A reasonable rent control policy would let landlords gradually adapt to market realities without giving them the power to gouge or de-facto evict tenants with sudden rent spikes.
Most conservatives are middle class small business owners and landlords, this is why they are always supportive of “small government” it’s just a dog whistle for unregulated market.
I saw a documentary that spoke to some Twump (sic) supporters who lived in a shithole building that they didn’t realize was owned by the Kushners. I can’t recall anything else about it that might help identify it.
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They’re not generally cartoonish evil, I’m sure they agree that some tenant protections against sudden eviction are a good thing, and allowing unlimited rent hikes completely obliterates all that.
They’re not generally cartoonish evil
You really need to look at how they’re talking on landlord forums and such, the way they speak about tenants. Reality will remove this naive idea from your mind.
I agree they are not cartoonishly evil, in so far as that a cartoon villain usually is thwarted by good through the power of friendship. Real villains don’t have such opposition.
I hope you are tipping your landlord 20%
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You mean, worse than you speak of landlords?
False dicotomy. People talk shit about landlords because of how they’re treated by them. Landlords talk shit about tenants because they’re pieces of shit which is the same reason they treat tenants like shit.
And how are they treated by them, exactly? Asked to pay for the space provided?
From my experience most people don’t care until they’re inconvenienced in some way, so they won’t have an opinion on it so they wait until someone they rely on and trust to tell them how they should feel. I think we all know which entertainment network is going to tell them all about why rent control is ruining Canada/America.
This is Canada do people even get that network here?
Yes
I read study that showed they’d rather hurt themselves than help others, even if helping others helped themselves as well, directly or indirectly. It tracks, frankly
Oh wow, one study that I’m sure has massive sample size and wasn’t created by a biased group of academics.
It makes complete sense given the other behaviour landlords exhibit, and how they make money.
this is why they are always supportive of “small government” it’s just a dog whistle for unregulated market.
A “dog whistle” is something disguising the true message, while there’s no attempt to hide it here.
(I am in support of an unregulated market, but also of trade unions and consumer unions and anarcho-syndicalism, which are natural parts of it)
I don’t know how this law passed but it should definitely be repealed
Ok, your rent is now $1 million. A month.
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Yes, rent control, our panacea.
Negative Effects on Supply: Rent control can potentially lead to housing shortages over the long term. When landlords are unable to raise rents to cover maintenance and operating costs or to generate a reasonable return on their investment, they may have less incentive to maintain or invest in their properties. This can lead to a deterioration in the quality of rental housing and a reduction in the overall supply of rental units. In some cases, landlords may convert rental properties into other uses, such as condominiums or commercial spaces, further reducing the supply of rental housing.
Inefficiencies and Reduced Mobility: Rent control can lead to inefficiencies in the housing market. Tenants in rent-controlled units may have less incentive to move, even if their housing needs change, because they want to keep their low rents. This reduced mobility can make it harder for new renters to find suitable housing.
Selective Impact: Rent control often applies to older buildings or units built before a certain date. This can create disparities in rent levels between newer and older housing stock, potentially discouraging the construction of new rental units and leading to further imbalances in the housing market.
A short term band-aid that causes long term problems. Government price controls are a tale as old as time.
Jesus, I’m getting it from both ends here, somebody else is dumping on me for suggesting that a rent-control system that’s a few points above inflation so that landlords could adapt to the market without abruptly bankrupting their tenants was somehow a reasonable compromise.
I’m not arguing for extreme rent-control policies, just that no rent control is bad because it lets landlords write their own eviction laws.
Peg it at like 2.5% or 5% per year above inflation and you can’t use it as a sudden backdoor eviction but you also let landlords adapt to market reality over time.
Capping rents might be stupid for all the reasons economists say, but putting a damper on sudden price shifts is just being humane.
The “humane” thing would be to make any and all rent seeking behavior very explicitly illegal, but that’s unlikely to happen.
So wait where do college students live in your world?
We have rent control in Paris, France. Appartments are still expensive, but I pay 1600 euros per month for 60sqm in the center of one of the liveliest cities in the world.
Rent control WORKS.
It’s inevitable that any type of price control will lead to supply/demand issues. That’s great it worked out for you but it is well documented that rent control harms rental markets long term. Anyone who disagrees is in denial.
And for the places without rent control with supply/demand issues…
Yes, multiple things can affect rental supply, not just government price controls.
I think your second point is valid, but the first is upside-down. Landlords compete with tenants for plots and bank loans. If they started leaving the market, more plots will free up and banks will be forced to start giving out loans to tenants. This will allow people who are currently tenants to build their own houses, rather than needing to rent. And your third point only applies if you exclude some properties from rent control, which is what Ontario seems to be doing.
Uh, part of the point of the greenbelt is to stop building detached houses because they’re actually environmentally quite bad. I mean maybe individuals could work together to put together a co-op but Housing Now TO says that municipal governments generally block any of those that would pencil out.
I wanted to build a duplex but “zoning laws” say that wasn’t allowed, only single family detached houses with at least X amount of land.
Most zoning laws are serious bullshit and work as defacto segregation to keep the dirty
brownpoor people away from the nice good rich folk. It’s why suburban school is a totally different things from poor urban school.Zoning laws are why developers in LA can’t afford to build anything other than luxury condos. Land is literally too expensive to build. As an example: a requirement to have at least X parking spots per X units, even when it’s built right next to a metro and a bus depot and you’re building low income housing for people who are less likely to own cars in the first place.
Too many NIBYs whining about things.
part of the point of the greenbelt is to stop building detached houses because they’re actually environmentally quite bad.
If we’re being honest, all housing is environmentally bad. And not just environmentally bad, but bad for society in general. A necessary evil for the individual, perhaps, but it stands to reason that they should carry a high cost to account for the negative externalities they place on everyone else.
Landlords compete with tenants for plots and bank loans.
Not really. Landlords need tenants. If tenants would rather own, then there would be nobody for the landlord to rent to. Landlords serve those who prefer to rent. Of note, one reason people prefer to rent is a belief that the housing market is about to crash. With a lot of signs suggesting that is a real possibility on the near horizon, this is why rents have skyrocketed recently. Nobody wants to be the bag holder, so many more are, right now, opting to rent over buying in order to wait and see what happens.
banks will be forced to start giving out loans to tenants.
There is nothing that forces them to give loans to tenants. If landlords start leaving the housing market it is likely that credit offers will grind to a halt. The bank wants absolutely nothing to do with a security that people are running away from. Furthermore, the money leaving housing is apt to flow into productive businesses, which means that any credit that the banks are still willing to extend will go in that direction.
landlords serve those who would prefer to rent
If you honestly believe this then you are delusional. I’m sorry there’s pretty much no kind way to put it. This statement is that egregiously erroneous that it is so incongruous with reality so as to be delusional.
Oh, right. People only pay for things they don’t want. How could I have forgotten?!
So the first point is simply false, the second point is symptomatic of the third point which is simply an example of a poor policy.
Also the second half of the third point is completely fucked off. If new construction were exempt from rent control then your ROI would be better on building units than buying units.
Why don’t you provide proof. Who the fuck are you that we’re just gonna believe you when you say ‘this is false’ lol
Before I took economics in college I would have downvoted you. Price ceilings don’t solve the problem.
Before I took economics in college I would have downvoted you.
Now that you have studied economics, what do you think he got wrong that keeps you from pressing the “This is factual” button now?
There are countless examples showing it works. Look up France for example.
It’s funny, somehow I managed to understand this before any college. Because supply and demand are supposedly quite intuitive.
Nice ChatGPT copypasta, bro
It was a lot faster than writing it myself
Sure, but it’s irrelevant. There’s no economical rigor behind those statements. They could be true, they could be hallucinated.
I didn’t just type it into ChatGPT and copy/paste whatever it wrote without looking it over lol
Landlords are parasites on society.
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Nooo how dare you suggest solutions11!
You can’t afford to buy. If not for landlords who would you rent from? Where would you live?
The idea that if there were no landlords you’d be able to afford a house is absurd.
I agree corporations should be limited in how many single.family homes they are allowed to buy but this whole "all landlords are scum ". Schtick makes u look pathetic and ignorant of the facts.We don’t need Capitalism any longer. We can do better.
Capitalism is the only reason you exist.
They said, not even knowing where I’m from. There are people who would be dead without Soviet Authoritarianism.
And somehow that’s not what I’m advocating.
A LOT MORE people would be alive and well without Soviet Authoritarianism or any other flavour of socialism/communism.
Same thing is happening to me right now (UK). LL inherited a portfolio of mortgage-free properties a few years back, immediately jacked the rent up on them all. I tried to haggle what imo was an egregious rent increase (notified middle of the year after asking for a minor repair), we agreed on a price then he served me notice to quit; via the letting agent, not a peep or thanks from the LL after I’ve put ~£90000 into his familys’ accounts over 13 yrs.
Of course, I can pay someone elses mortgage, but when I apply to a bank for one myself, I can’t afford it.
I can pay someone elses mortgage, but when I apply to a bank for one myself, I can’t afford it.
But when you can’t afford it any longer, the landlord is free to replace you with someone who temporarily can. That’s the difference!
Bank can’t do the same thing?
This is what I don’t get. Where’s the risk for the lender? If I can’t pay, they get the house and can sell it. I guess there’s a potential cashflow issue but the underlying asset isn’t going anywhere.
Typically it’s pretty low risk in comparison to other loans which is why home loans are relatively low but there’s a risk that both the property value declines and the outstanding loan and selling costs is more than property value.
No
Here in Norway ut is illegal to raise rent more than once a year and maximum by the current consumer price index. If the rent isn’t raised a year you don’t get to raise for that years CPI.
There is a similar rule in Ontario, but it doesn’t apply to buildings built after 2018.
This exemption was put in place as an incentive for more rental units to be put on the market (or to enrich developers and landholders, depending on your political stance).
It’s frustrating that that’s a fixed date, instead it should be a floating date of 5 or so years.
The fixed date creates a weird scenario where the controlled supply is limited but the uncontrolled supply isn’t, which allows gross pricing disparities to arise and allows old-building owners and new to abuse their tenants (for old: you can’t afford to leave, for new: good luck getting a cheaper place, they’re all full).
A floating rent-control date balances things: developers only get to be greedy for so long, the supply of controlled housing is increases so pricing is more even, and landlords will want good relationships with tenants when they know they’re going to get “stuck” with them in a rent-controlled scenario.
A floating rent-control date
… is still a bad idea. Let’s not focus on what kind of bat we’re beaten with; let’s just get Ontario back on track.
I’m not sure that works. The idea was that if rent control was lifted, there would be incentive to build new units. Trouble is, the building didn’t happen as expected. New housing starts even declined after the change came into effect. Balance is not going to give more incentive to build.
Since it didn’t work, we may as well go back to a proper rent control system. And not the one that sees young, struggling families subsidizing rich retires that we currently have on older properties.
Any date is a bad idea
There is no limit to yearly increases in the real world. You get a phone call from your landlord telling you that they want to sell/renovate the unit, you get the hint and tell them that you will accept a rent increase, then magically they no longer want to sell/renovate. Happened to me with an otherwise “good” landlord.
In the Netherlands they can sell the renting agreement stays in place, so you can just stay there. If they want renovate they can offer to buy of your contract or they have to find you another apartment with equal facilities and for the same price range. A lot of these excesses can be covered by good legislation.
Renter protection is very strong in the Netherlands, probably one of the strongest in the world.
Used to be that squatter rights were also very strong but I believe that has reduced now.
It always feels like the countries in that region go out of their way to put every roadblock they can in front of pathetic little schemer pricks who only want to rob everyone of every penny. Here in the US, the politicians go out of their way to make sure there’s every possible loophole for corruption and morally bankrupt pieces of shit to abuse.
A lot of these excesses can be covered by good legislation.
So we’re fucked, great.
It’s similar in Quebec. Unfortunately this is only enforced by informed renters, so landlords often raise it much more than the allowed amount when someone moves out.
In Norway you can set the rent as you wish when negotiating the initial contact. So it doesn’t matter what the previous tenants rent was. But the raise cap per year is set per year after that as long as the contact is valid.
That’s a great compromise imo
There is no limit on what you can change the rent by between renters. Only what you can increase while the same person lives in the unit. The moment they move out its perfectly fine to increase the rent for the next renter.
The landlord has to let the renter know what the lowest rent was in the 12 months before they sign the lease. If there is an excessive raise, you can ask the TAL to calculate a new amount. https://educaloi.qc.ca/actualites-juridiques/section-g-chien-garde-hausses-excessives/
In reality, landlords usually leave that blank, and renters are wary of starting on the wrong foot with their new landlord. There is a custom of leaving a copy of your lease in the kitchen drawer for the next person to find.
I would say it’s legal but not perfectly fine.
There is a vast difference between the two, esp when it come out of #DrugFraud 's office.
These laws exist to protect existing renters against exploitation of the cost of moving as a negotiation tactic (since the consumer cannot easily shop between renegotiations, it is not a free market).
These laws do not exist to implement fixed housing price policy. What you may be looking for is public housing.
In my experience, a lot of existing rental law tends to be a pretty fair balance between rights of renters and very small property owners, which we should totally encourage. The problems arise with medium and large (institutional) property owners, that don’t need the same degree of protection as small renters, and who leverage their size to bully. The laws should be updated to be stricter for large blocks of ownership. But defining that can be a challenge.
When I lived in Quebec they raised it like 8%, and my boss told me to appeal it. As an American it blew my mind I could say no. They ended up being allowed to only raise it 4%.
We need an official rental price registry, managed by the TAL so that new renters have access to the rental price of previous tenants.
This exact same thing can happen in Québec with appartements less than 5 years old, the infamous F part, In Montreal a LL can increase your raise from 2500$ to 9500$ if he wishes.
This used to exist in Ontario but the Conservatives removed it for anything built or renovated after 2018. Canadians need to learn to never vote Conservative.
It’s pretty much the same in Denmark
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Don’t tell em. Let the American continent crumble under it’s own weight while we carry on enjoying our “freedom-less” socialism.
Name them and shame them.
Regardless of who is in the right or wrong here, please don’t post personally identifiable information if the source is not public.
While it’s important to push for justice and fairness, there’s a distinction between advocating for fairness and doxxing / calling for mob justice. We don’t have formal rules for this stuff yet, but use your best judgment and report any comments that veer into harmful territory.
I’ll try to post a discussion thread on proposed rules sometime in the future, but this seems like a good one to bring up in the meantime. Feel free to share thoughts, and thank you :)
Maybe not here, maybe not us. But that landlord’s name ought to be made public by the media.
That’s fair yes :)
Before mobbing the landlord, it would be a good idea to know what’s the real story behind this. Maybe the sisters were assholes. We don’t know that.
Found the landlord
Haha, I’m not! But I would be intrigued to know what’s the real reason behind the landlord’s move. I know we like to believe that all landlord are assholes but let’s love in reality where nuance is everything shall we ?
Ya. It sounds like they wanted to raise the rent to $3500 which the landlord clearly thought was being reasonable for this building. They bitched about it so the landlord raised the rent high enough to get rid of them.
Sounds like the gambled and lost. Instead of going to the news, they should have tried to negotiate back to $3500 or something close. Good luck now.
Bumping the rent from $2500 to $3500/month is clearly not reasonable.
This really depends. If the building is rentable for 5000 than it is. Like it or not.
If 2500 was reasonable back then, then it still is reasonable right now.
Unless gigantic upgrades were performed to the house that warrant a 1000 price hike, which I highly doubt.
Just because the market is fucked doesn’t mean you get to make the market even worse.
Except the price of food building materials renovation costs went up by about 100% where i live realistically. So a landlord isn’t going to just take the fact that their 2500 whatever is now only worth 1700 whatevers.
If accepting a lease on a post-2018 construction, knowing that no rent control was in force, was reasonable then, it is still reasonable now.
having no rent control is never reasonable. People only accepted places without rent control because all other options are shit too
You like profiting from others misery. It’s not illegal and it’s not generally even frowned upon but it’s still shitty and you have to own it
You forgot to add an overly pretentious “like it or not” at the end of your reply.
Thanks for adding it. Where would we be without your over pretentiousness?
You realize that there’s people living in these apartments right? You know there’s a housing crisis right now that’s fueled by housing investors from all over the world and shit like Airbnb and corporate greed, right?
It’s so cool how you can lose your home for disagreeing with a landlord.
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It doesn’t really help the case that they show a picture a sky line dream apartment, but still that price is ridiculous and obviously there to drive them out.
The top 0.01% laughs as you nibble at the heals of the top 1%
This absolutely should not be legal
Why?
In both the Western countries I’ve lived so far (France and Italy, but my guess is the list is much longer), this wouldn’t be possible.
The landlord could at most adjust the rent to inflation.
The only wag he/she could ask for such a steep increase is by making a brand new contract with someone else, but for that purpose the current contract should be terminated, which isn’t possible if your occupants are paying their rent, unless he/she wants to re-take possession for selling the apartment/house or to live in it. If they fake the repossession and actually end up renting again to an inflated price, the new contract is deemed void and the previous occupants could be reinstated.
In my province on Canada this is illegal. I’ve taken landlord to the rentalsmen who tried pulling illegal rent increases and won before.
It makes any other sort of renter protections moot if they can basically be evicted whenever by saying the rent is now $1,000,000 take it or leave it.
Well they can just purchase their own property and not have to pay rent, right?
The point of raising the rent to ludicrous amounts isn’t to actually get that amount, it’s to get rid of your tenants which usually have protections. This is just a cheap way around those protections and a loophole that should be closed.
No one should answer you seriously, because that the most braindead question I’ve read.
Sounds like you’re mad
Mad because of what?
I’m not sure but I hope you feel better.
Because people need housing to live in, so it’s in the interest of the vast majority of people to make sure the few that own property can’t increase rent by 100s of % for no good reason. Additionally we live in a democracy so usually the interests of the majority are supposed to guide policy making even if it upsets the minority that control access to resources because they won’t profit quite as much as otherwise.
Is there anything holding them back from buying their own property and not having to pay rent?
Yeah they are not rich you asshole.
Didn’t know you had to be rich to buy property, my bad
You do in Toronto. Average home is over a million dollars.
Well they can live somewhere else right? You have to pay for convenience, can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Found a landlord
Fuck Canada, more than half of Canadian politicians are fucking landlords and this is why they allow these abusive and scummy laws to stay, no rent protection, fuck this country.
Does that mean the landlord has to charge the next tennant that rate, or was that a special rate just for them? Can they charge different rents fir different people based on whether they like the tennant?
I was wondering thia too. Without control, they can probably just lower it again once the tenants leave.
When escalation of this magnitude is your solution, you shouldn’t be surprised when your clients respond with violence.
Exactly the same problem in Québec, buildings 5 years or less have no law nor rent control, so it’s free for all for the landlord to raise a rent from 1500$ to 4000$ as he wants.
I wonder if there are information or anonymised statistics regarding the portion of elected representatives, senators and members of the judiciary from municipal, provincial and federal bodies/institutions that own more than a property (principal residence).
How many properties? What type of properties (from residential single family to high rise residential appartments/condominium, from empty/rundown/abandoned farmhouses/buildings to unused farm/land, etc…) What purpose do they have for those properties? Do those properties generate some kind of revenue? If so, how much? How is the revenue generated?
While thinking about it, how much of all properties in Canada are tied up behind a corporate veil by companies/fondations/trusts and various legal entities? Are there statistics on that?
There are too many unknowns and legal protections behind those unknown to be able to make a clear picture of the housing crisis.
I don’t want the scapegoat excuse of too much RED TAPE to build new housing or that IT’S THE IMMIGRANTS and the FOREIGN WORKERS or FOREIGN INVESTORS/SPECULATORS took all our housing. That’s too easy of a excuse to avoid the real and difficult work of understanding this whole mess.
I want real data, not proxy data. Full information on every transfer of property; from whom to whom, by which financial institution, for exactly how much, timespan elapsed between transfer of ownership, who is the mortgage holder if a loan is involved, renovation details if there has been any, every inspection report and details should always be public and attached to the property for the life of the property as a historical snapshot of the property, etc…
It’s not that hard to implement these data gathering services but there are always deeply vested interests that would do everything in their power to discourage such endeavors and make up any excuse to avoid providing it.
Anyways, sorry this became a long rambling rant on my part.
It’s disgusting that we have to deal with this kind of shit in CA or the US. Even worse are the ghouls conspiring to jack up rates for renters by purchasing large amounts of housing then jacking up rates in coordinated manners. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/10/company-that-makes-rent-setting-software-for-landlords-sued-for-collusion/?comments=1&comments-page=1
This shit should be so illegal.
And what if we grind out all those numbers and there’s nothing magical? What if it really is just supply and demand?
Then you have become the first person ever to find the fabled Golden Goose who shits out money for the rich, no strings attached.
By the looks of it, Toronto might get worse than Vancoucer for rent prices very soon.
Damn I didn’t realise the Ford government weakened it to 2018 and before. Reminds me of a lot of US states, although they have a cutoff in the fucking 70s sometimes
I’m guessing there’s a rule against this, unless he thinks a different tenant will actually pay that.
It won’t be that price for a new tenant. This is special just for them.
Yeah, I think you’re right, and I’m pretty sure this is super illegal as a result.
There is nothing in the RTA that says they can’t do this
Hmm, so it doesn’t look like there’s a rule against evicting someone for no reason, unless you can prove discrimination, which is mildly surprising to me,
but there is a cap on the amount they can bump up rent without special permission in many types of units. Based on that the landlord doesn’t have a leg to stand on unless they switch to just openly telling the person to leave, but IANAL.Edit: Oh wait, it says it’s a brand new unit that this doesn’t apply to. RIP.
