There are growing calls for rent control in Halifax from tenants who say finding a new apartment in the city is simply not feasible anymore.
Danielle Murphy and her family of five have lived at the same apartment in Herring Cove, N.S., for the past seven years, but they were recently forced to move after the owner put the home on the market.
“It went on the market and it sold really quick,” said Murphy. “Now we have to be out.”
At the time when it was sold, Murphy was paying $1,250 for the three-bedroom home. Now, she says she’ll have to pay anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000 a month, a price she says her family simply can’t afford.
“Honestly, with the prices, we’re looking at a family of five living in a one- or two-bedroom apartment,” said Murphy. “We don’t have the flexibility to pay the ($2,000 to $3,000).”
According to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2019 fall rental market survey, Halifax’s rental rate has dropped to a new low of one per cent, making it more difficult to find an apartment than in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver.
Murphy says that’s become perfectly clear to her during her tireless search for a new home.
“As soon as something new pops up I instantly apply, and you just get responses that there’s already 20, 30 other people trying for the same spot,” she said.
As the vacancy rate continues to decrease and rent prices go in the opposite direction, Mark Culligan with Dalhousie Legal Aid says they’re receiving a growing number inquires related to residential tenancy.
He says rental control would play a big role in ending that trend.
“It forces landlords to keep honest, I’d say,” said Culligan. “So they have to justify the rent increase in terms of renovations, or other kinds of upgrades they’re doing to a property.”
On Thursday, Premier Stephen McNeil was pressed on Halifax’s tight rental market by reporters after a cabinet meeting.
McNeil acknowledged there’s a rental and affordable housing issue in the province, but said he doesn’t feel rent control is how to fix it.
“Once we have the right public policy, we’ll communicate it to you,” he said Thursday. “We’re still working on the solution.”
Culligan says Dalhousie Legal has been advocating for rent control along with other community organizations for many years, but their calls have fallen on deaf ears.
“Frankly, there hasn’t been much in the way of receptivity from the provincial government,” he said.
“It’s not really clear to me what their solution is to affordable housing.”