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.

  • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • mindcruzer@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • ClumZy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • mindcruzer@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • SinAdjetivos@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The “humane” thing would be to make any and all rent seeking behavior very explicitly illegal, but that’s unlikely to happen.

          • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            So wait where do college students live in your world?

      • EnterOne@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Before I took economics in college I would have downvoted you. Price ceilings don’t solve the problem.

          • Duxon@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            Sure, but it’s irrelevant. There’s no economical rigor behind those statements. They could be true, they could be hallucinated.

            • mindcruzer@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              I didn’t just type it into ChatGPT and copy/paste whatever it wrote without looking it over lol

      • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Pxtl@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • Rocket@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • happyhippo@feddit.it
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • systemglitch@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          In my province on Canada this is illegal. I’ve taken landlord to the rentalsmen who tried pulling illegal rent increases and won before.

      • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Filipdaflippa@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Well they can just purchase their own property and not have to pay rent, right? If someone raised the rent to $1mil I don’t think anyone would live there, it’s a free market no?

          • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • Rambi@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • Xavier@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Echo71Niner@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      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 :)

    • Smk@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      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.

        • Smk@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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 ?

      • LeFantome@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        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.

          • ddkman@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            This really depends. If the building is rentable for 5000 than it is. Like it or not.

            • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • ddkman@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                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.

              • Rocket@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                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. Live with your choices.

  • systemglitch@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s a shitty solution lol. But yeah, you are right. It is an option. Move away from your home and everyone you love because your home is too expensive for normal people.

    Banning foreign investment into Canadian real estate might have stopped this situation, but what do I know?

  • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • MrBusinessMan@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    A landlord has an absolute right to raise rent whenever he feels like it. Don’t like it? Buy your own house!

    • MrShankles@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      What a hot take, I’ve never thought about it like that before! Holy shit guys brb, I’ma go run to the store quick and buy a house! I’ve been bamboozled this whole time