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.
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?
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. arstechnica.com/…/company-that-makes-rent-setting…
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I kind of don’t understand everyone’s hate on landlords. My landlord increased my rent from $450 to $640 this year, but that’s market rate and I’d have to pay the same or more if I tried to find another one, so I’m not even mad. When COVID hit a couple years ago and immigration stopped happening he dropped my rental from $600 to $400 so it works the other way as well.
It is just supply and demand and I don’t see how it is any different to any other market.
Sounds like a good landlord, I haven’t had many issues with mine, though she did raise it recently from 400 to around 550. Never heard of any dropping it though.
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
Sounds like they’re living in a high demand luxury apartment with a great view from the looks of it. Landlord just told em they fucked around and are going to find out now. The price is clearly because they don’t want to deal with them anymore.
God damn, no sympathy at all eh? Yes they’re yuppies, but you’re going to bat for a punitive rent hike because “they probably deserved it” or something like that? That’s cold.
These women are losing their home because they argued with a landlord over raising rent. That’s some Dickensian shit right there.
None. This is clearly a sensationalist one sided story from some yuppies who went and complained to a journalist. Are those the type of tenants you think are fun to deal with? I’d want them out ASAP too.
I’m sorry I’m not a bleeding heart for every person who manages to complain loudly to a news org. I’ll go complain to my local paper about how mean you were to me and then get on a Steve Jobs outfit for a horrible photoshoot of my skyline view. Surely then you’ll think I’m great.
Bring your chin down to protect your neck while continuing to stare in his eyes. Bring up your hands and say “I don’t want no trouble ya hear”. Flex your traps and core. Slightly bend your knees.
Here comes the important part. In a low voice begin to say “wolowolowolowolowolo” slowly increasing in volume. He should be surprised by now. Begin to sway side to side and loosen all facial muscles and your anal sphincter and your kegal muscle. By now you should be pretty loud and your opponent will have stepped back and appear visibly shaken.
Begin to piss and shit yourself and let your eyes roll to the back of your head. By now, you’re chanting “WOLOWOLOWOLOWOLO” at the top of your lungs.
He will run away. Everyone within a one mile radius will feel a terrifying presence within their soul.
if you had your largest expense increase 40% you would “complain” too. anyone would. the landlord turning around and making it 400% instead is a dick move in any language
Their rent jump from 2500/month to 3500/month before they complained, which is still absolutely insane. Once they complained, it jumped to 9500/month to get rid of them.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
There is no obligation to enter into a tenancy knowing that the landlord can jack the prices up on a whim. There is plenty of choice – one can opt to move into a unit constructed before 2018 instead, or, in newer construction, one can make it a contractual condition of the tenancy to have an independently negotiated “rent control” in force.
To ignore all of that at the time and then cry about it later because the risk taken didn’t work out is just plain antisocial behaviour. We invented contract law exactly to prevent these kinds of surprises. If you want to play some other stupid game instead, expect to win stupid prizes.
Exactly. To accept a lease on a property that you know doesn’t have automatic rent control, and to not contractually obligate the landlord to long-term price controls in that rental agreement, is reckless. They took the high risk gamble and lost. Such is life. But to then complain that their high risk scheme, which was done to screw over other renters who are more careful, didn’t work out is plain antisocial behaviour.
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.
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 ?
Plenty of capitalists believe that people like rentiers, i.e. landlords, are an abomination to an economy. You don’t know much about economics, do you?
Then you don’t know a lot of people nor know much about economics. Economics isn’t separated from the rest of society, it exists within society. The world is full of capitalists who also have opinions on what is and isn’t good and moral and know that people spending that money attributes to goodness and badness. For example, this is how taxes are often used, to incentivize good behavior and penalize bad behavior.
I think you need to spend sometime away from the internet and start talking to actual human beings around you, as you seem to be stuck in some weird anarcho-capitalist online bubble.
Ok, no landlord are good person. What kind of argument is this ? Like, literally? I know some are asshole ? But some a very kind and appreciative too? What’s your point ? No one should be allowed to rent their property ever ?
You’re trying to pretend landlords only exist in a vacuum instead of in society where people can’t afford the necessities for basic survival. Landlords play a huge role in making sure housing prices are above a “natural” level, all while contributing no productive value to society. There’s a reason why plenty of capitalists are against rentiers.
My position is like the most nuanced in the world while.yours is the most radical. Landlord maintains their assets while the renter does not have to think about it. That’s the benefit of being a renter and that’s why there is a market. Stop being radical, it does not help at all.
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 :)
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.
Assuming that’s a photo of the apartment, that shit would be like 15k a month in NY. Not that any of it’s right, just, or moral, but they definitely had it better than most to be paying that little for what many would consider quite a luxury apartment.
A three bedroom would go for $12k a month, but we don’t even have three bedroom units here. Assuming this is a two bedroom it would probably be in the middle of the range given. So 7k-8k USD. But Toronto shouldn’t be as expensive as Manhattan, NYC.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 brown poor 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.
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.
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.
For what it’s worth, surveys in my country repeatedly show that renters would prefer to own. But the market here is rough and banks are denying people loans even with a lower monthly payments than their existing rent.
I would think it is the same in the US, but most people here rent because they can’t buy.
surveys in my country repeatedly show that renters would prefer to own.
That does not mean they prefer to own right now. If you plan on moving to a new place in a few months, for example, it would kind of silly to buy only to have to buy again a few months later. You may prefer to buy, but the rational person would rent for a few months to bridge the gap, and then buy once they get to where they plan to stay.
And, given the current state of housing, with a high risk of it soon imploding, a lot of people would rather wait a few months, even a few years, before they buy to see what happens to the market. Again, preferring to own doesn’t imply right now.
The data shows a clear downward trend in price, especially in the traditionally desirable areas. If you have somewhere to rent, why would you choose to buy at this exact moment, knowing – with reasonable confidence – that a house will be cheaper in six months?
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.
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.
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.
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