Advocacy groups call for rent cap, more power for tenants

In a newreport on the housing crisis in New Brunswick, advocacy groupscall on all political parties to beef up tenants' rights.

Among the recommendations in the report by the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants' Rights released Thursday is one for rent control.

To make sure political candidates get the message, copies of the 44-page report, titled Without Protection: An Examination of New Brunswick's Rental Housing Crisis, will be sent directly to all political parties, saidreport lead author Tobin LeBlanc Haley, who is also a spokesperson for the coalition.

"Government authorities and some opposition parties continuously talk about balancebetween the interests of tenants and landlords, but they neglect the huge power imbalance between the two," said LeBlanc Haley.

"Many of these recommendations are ones that folks will have heard before from us, from other scholars, from other advocacy groups, but it brings them together in one place and kind of lays them out really clearly."

Rent-control recommended

Topping the list of recommendations is a rent-control regime.

The report says the annual rent capshould be published each year and not exceed the consumer price index. It also says the cap must apply to all rental units occupied and unoccupied.

LeBlanc Haley said she's been paying attention to what political parties have said they would do or not do if elected.

The Liberals, for example, have promised a three-per-cent rent cap if elected, while the Greens have promised 2.5 per cent.

The PCs have said the current system is working and previously rejected rent caps after a one-year cap came to an end in 2023.

WhileLeBlanc Haley is encouraged by the rent-cap promisesof the Liberals and Greens, she said she'd like to hear more.

"The devil is in the details," she said.

If the Liberals or Greens win, LeBlanc Haley said she'll expect "a lot of fleshing out what it looks like to have a rentcap and to enforce a rent cap and to protect tenants under that rent cap."

As for the PCs, who have not made any rent-cap promises, LeBlanc Haley said they have "made a lot of incremental changes that haven't improved the situation sufficiently on the ground for New Brunswick tenants."

According to the report, one-third of respondents were worried about rent increases. They're also worried about losing their homes.

"People are really struggling to pay utilities, to put food on the table, to pay for medication just having some kind of predictability in rent would be an enormous benefit," said LeBlanc Haley.

The report also said average rental costs "rose a shocking 9% between October 2022 and October 2023, three times the rate of inflation for the same period. Since October 2020, average rents have gone up almost 30%."

It also said that the waitlist for public housing"is now more than 10,000 households, double what it was in 2021. Shelters are full. Encampments are growing. More needs to be done."

One of the things the report suggests is to develop a landlord-tenant tribunal to adjudicatedisputes between the two.

LeBlanc Haley said the existing Tenant and Landlord Relations Office operates more like a mediator than a tribunal.

The coalition envisions thenew body workingas an impartial tribunal that would hear evidence and would have the power to enforce provisions of the Residential Tenancies Actand review all eviction proceedings.

"Low-income tenants also should have access to legal support to help them defend themselves on landlord-tenant disputes. Currently, Legal Aid certificates do not cover these issues, yet we know that losing your home is pretty devastating, especially for low-income households with fewer resources to help defend themselves," said LeBlanc Haley.

The recommendations

Other recommendations include:

• Amend the Residential Tenancies Act to include public housing tenants.
• Abolish damage deposits.
• Offer greater eviction protections to tenants.
• Provide aid to low-income tenants to cover landlord-tenant matters.

While the Liberals and the Greens have addressed rent caps in their party platforms, LeBlanc Haley said none of the parties include anything close to the other recommendations.

She said she'shopeful that all parties will use the research and details in the report to come up with more comprehensive plans to protect tenants from unreasonable rent increases and arbitrary eviction, and to help level the playing field between landlords and tenants.

"We see a lot of pain and anger amongst tenants in the province," said co-author and coalition spokesperson Kristi Allain in a news release about the report.

"Tenants believe that the system is not protecting them and instead works in the interests of landlords."