The average price of rent in New Brunswick has increased by 10.5 per cent since April of last year, according to new data from Statistics Canada, far exceeding the province’s target of 2.5 per cent.
New Brunswick tenants coalition spokesperson Matthew Hayes says that’s evidence the government is failing to address the housing crisis.
“There’s no sense of urgency on the part of the provincial government,” he said.
“Renters in New Brunswick are being impoverished by the government’s deliberate inaction on this issue.”
The pace of growth is second only to Alberta and higher than in past years. In the previous few years, growth in rents has stuck around six or seven per cent.
Hayes says the fact that the rents are now growing at a faster pace is evidence that rent control tied to units is necessary to stem the bleeding.
“Clearly rent control protects access to affordable housing and we really need access to affordable housing,” he said.
“That is a public good and the government has the responsibility to ensure it’s there and the only mechanism that it can do in the short term is to regulate the price of rents.”
Housing Minister Jill Green has resisted re-introducing rent control after the 3.8 per cent cap expired at the end of 2022. She told reporters last week that the province doesn’t want to disincentivize construction.
“We have to look at the whole continuum and look at how each individual measure interacts with the next one and that’s what we’re doing, we’re taking our time and making decisions based on facts and data,” she said.
Yet housing starts continue to fall short of the target of 6,000 per year. There were just over 4,500 starts in 2023, down slightly from the year before and falling short of New Brunswick’s Maritime neighbours.
Green acknowledged last week that more can be done.
“Can we do better? Absolutely, and we’ll keep putting new measures in place to try to force that to the next level until we get to the number of housing starts we need to sustain the population,” she said.
But Hayes says trying to rely on the market to address the housing crisis is doomed to fail — and that the 380 public units being built over the next few years is needed annually.
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