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.
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.
They’re not generally cartoonish evil
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.
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.
I read a study that showed they’d rather hurt themselves than help others, even if helping others helped themselves as well, directly or indirectly. It tracks, frankly
this is why they are always supportive of “small government” it’s just a dog whistle for unregulated market.
A “dog whistle” is something disguising the true message, while there’s no attempt to hide it here.
(I am in support of an unregulated market, but also of trade unions and consumer unions and anarcho-syndicalism, which are natural parts of 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The “humane” thing would be to make any and all rent seeking behavior very explicitly illegal, but that’s unlikely to happen.
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.
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.
Before I took economics in college I would have downvoted you. Price ceilings don’t solve the problem.
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.
Landlords are parasites on society.
You can’t afford to buy. If not for landlords who would you rent from? Where would you live?
The idea that if there were no landlords you’d be able to afford a house is absurd.
I agree corporations should be limited in how many single.family homes they are allowed to buy but this whole "all landlords are scum ". Schtick makes u look pathetic and ignorant of the facts.
When people trying to purchase their first home are outbid constantly by investors (corporate or not) who later try to rent out that same space at more than the first time buyer would be paying on their mortgage then no, you daft idiot, they are not providing a service.
This whole lAnDlOrDs ArE oUr FrIeNd shtick makes you look pathetic.
News flash dude. Way before all this increase when rates were low and there were tons of houses on the market I was trying to buy a first home and was outbid constantly by realtors who had more money and connections. It has never had anything to do with landlords per se.
If you dont think landlords are providing a service then you’re the idiot. No one is making you rent from anyone. I joined thought it was worth the space for the money no one would pay it.
If not for landlords who would you rent from?
public housing is a thing, you know
The reason so many can’t afford to buy is because so many houses are bought purely to be rented back out again, if no landlords existed housing prices would drop and more people could afford to buy.
For those who still couldn’t, as others have said - public housing
It’s not that, it’s purely supply. Landlords are a proxy for tenants, whether willing or unwilling, in the housing market when it comes to demand. They are no more interested in driving up housing prices than owner occupants are (which is to say, the vast majority of both are interested in driving up housing prices). The catch is, you can’t drive up housing prices in a market where there isn’t a supply constriction. Build more housing where people want to live, and you won’t have to do anything else for the problem to fix itself.
Pretty sure this is the other way around.
People want to rent. The market responds with a supply of rentals.
I am not a “free market knows all” person but pretty clearly these sky high rents are a function of demand.
The inverse of your suggestion is that, if people bought houses instead of renting, there would be no demand for rental properties and prices would crash.
In fact, if it is true that there are excess properties being purchased to rent out, that should push prices down due to increased supply and competition for the finite number of people wanting to rent.
I mean this is patently false. Even when there were huge housing surpluses and rates were rock bottom people still rented. Sometimes even when they could afford to buy.
Sure now large corps have gobbled up the supply but even if they sold everything and tons of houses were on the market there would still be renters. And those renters need landlords.
If not for landlords who would you rent from?
If not for landlords who would suck all supply?
If not for landlords who would you rent from?
I wouldn’t be renting. Landlords solely exist to make profit, not to serve anyone.
You mean you’d pay the same amount for a house as a landlord pays? But you can do that now, why don’t you?
Has nobody ever informed you that growing demand leads to price growth only if supply grows slower? But if prices grow, then supply does also grow faster. These are feedback loops.
Which means that what a house costs now it would cost still, after a short transient process.
“Suck all supply”, my ass. You mean that you’d buy that house for 1/10 of what the landlord has paid for it, because it’d just be there, like a mushroom after rain? It wouldn’t get built, dummy, cause it wouldn’t be worth the money.
Public housing. That’s where you rent it from. Landlords serve no purpose in society that can’t be solved in better ways.
For example, I would gladly purchase my apartment. The rent that I pay would be roughly equal to mortgage payments on the approximate value of the unit. But instead I’m stuck paying that amount so someone else can own it. Just cut out the parasite in the middle.
Isn’t there another similar unit somewhere you could buy, then? You’re right, it sounds like your landlord isn’t serving much of a role here.
Landlords provide housing the way scalpers “provide” tickets. The solution for people who need can’t afford to buy or who only need short term accommodation is public housing.
The CMHC used to provide funds to the provinces which would then build big public housing units with affordable rent. This provide a check & balance to the free market, keeping rents and house prices from skyrocketing. But then in the 80s and 90s, both Conservative and Liberal PMs successively defunded that aspect of the CMHC to solve budget issues, and those properties were destroyed as they reached their “maturity” date, regardless of whether the building was still usable or not.
I lived near one of them, located here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SG2kkXeVsp3Nia2RA Check out the street view and click “see more dates” for 2012, that’s housing for 90+families. Then in 2014 it was closed for demolition. And today it’s still an empty grass lot. Almost 10 years as a Govt-owned empty lot, instead of affordable housing, because those Govts kept promising “market solutions” to housing problems.
But it turns out the “problem” with housing was letting the “free market” turn it into another Tulip Bulb craze, instead of keeping it an affordable necessity
How many tenants do you know wish they could buy vs needed to rent because they won’t stay long?
Please tell us more about how the types of people who decide to jack rent up to absurd levels when given the slightest push back are actually a good thing for society.
if not for landlords who would you rent from?
“We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”
Decomodify housing. Like tax owning a home past like the 3th one so high it would destitute someone as rich as Musk in a month. Watch everyone who uses property for investment panic sell and crash the market into oblivion. The people who want to own a home can now do so and the rest can be bought up by the government for cheap to convert into public housing. Ez affordable housing and renting in one swoop.
So I’m a big fan of reducing landlords (especially big corporate ones), but aren’t you worried about what happens to all the people that bought a house to live in with your plan? If my house halved in value I’d be well fucked, the house losing value won’t make my mortgage go down unfortunately.
Edit: I guess I crossed a threshold in that comment which puts me in the “landlord sympathiser camp”, which is far from the truth, I’m not too surprised about that though. Look, my preferred option is annihilation of capitalism, but just crashing the real estate market without doing anything else about the system itself would be devastating for a lot of common folks, not just through housing prices but all the other economic effects it would have.
I’ve NEVER met a landlord who had low prices, just government subsidized low income housing. Even large real-estate companies/ banks tend to offer better prices. Landlords fucking suck. Investing in a house, is like “investing” in water. You’re just spending money to increase demand and make money, on SOMETHING PEOPLE NEED TO LIVE.
Found the landlord. If not for tenants, who would you and your estate agent squeeze for every possible cent, cutting every possible cost along the way so you can more horde wealth, buy more homes and get fat at other people’s expense.
Nobody that wasn’t bleeding renters would try and look reasonable by saying “corporations shouldn’t be able to own too many houses”.
The people complaining are not the ones who should be ashamed.
Yep, the house I got lucky on and am saving for my kid to move into in a year makes me scum of the earth.
I don’t disagree but what we need is stability. So far capitalism has given the US that. If you’re proposing a different system fine just make sure that while we move to it the perceived wealth of the country doesn’t take a hit and after it is implemented do the same.
I don’t think it is possible from here. What we really need is loads more regulation and Corp criminals going to prison to start.
The geniuses on this site think that if the government is your landlord then you don’t have a landlord. Basically they want a form of communism. Public housing has it’s place but as someone who has rented in the past it’s not the sort of housing I’d choose unless it’s a last resort.
In any case, VERY STRONG DISAGREE that the only rentals should be government run or co-ops.
Attacking landlords is textbook communism. Straight by the book. The red guard is in full force on lemmy.world.
I mean I get the hate to some extent. I’ve been on both sides of this coin so I can see how both sides feel squeezed.
Same thing is happening to me right now (UK). LL inherited a portfolio of mortgage-free properties a few years back, immediately jacked the rent up on them all. I tried to haggle what imo was an egregious rent increase (notified middle of the year after asking for a minor repair), we agreed on a price then he served me notice to quit; via the letting agent, not a peep or thanks from the LL after I’ve put ~£90000 into his familys’ accounts over 13 yrs.
Of course, I can pay someone elses mortgage, but when I apply to a bank for one myself, I can’t afford it.
I can pay someone elses mortgage, but when I apply to a bank for one myself, I can’t afford it.
But when you can’t afford it any longer, the landlord is free to replace you with someone who temporarily can. That’s the difference!
This is what I don’t get. Where’s the risk for the lender? If I can’t pay, they get the house and can sell it. I guess there’s a potential cashflow issue but the underlying asset isn’t going anywhere.
Here in Norway ut is illegal to raise rent more than once a year and maximum by the current consumer price index. If the rent isn’t raised a year you don’t get to raise for that years CPI.
There is a similar rule in Ontario, but it doesn’t apply to buildings built after 2018.
This exemption was put in place as an incentive for more rental units to be put on the market (or to enrich developers and landholders, depending on your political stance).
I’m not sure that works. The idea was that if rent control was lifted, there would be incentive to build new units. Trouble is, the building didn’t happen as expected. New housing starts even declined after the change came into effect. Balance is not going to give more incentive to build.
Since it didn’t work, we may as well go back to a proper rent control system. A proper one, not the completely ridiculous one that sees young, struggling families subsidizing rich retires that we currently have on those <2018 properties.
There is no limit to yearly increases in the real world. You get a phone call from your landlord telling you that they want to sell/renovate the unit, you get the hint and tell them that you will accept a rent increase, then magically they no longer want to sell/renovate. Happened to me with an otherwise “good” landlord.
In the Netherlands they can sell, but the renting agreement stays in place, so you can just stay there. If they want renovate they can offer to buy of your contract or they have to find you another apartment with equal facilities and for the same price range. A lot of these excesses can be covered by good legislation.
It’s similar in Quebec. Unfortunately this is only enforced by informed renters, so landlords often raise it much more than the allowed amount when someone moves out.
In Norway you can set the rent as you wish when negotiating the initial contact. So it doesn’t matter what the previous tenants rent was. But the raise cap per year is set per year after that as long as the contact is valid.
This exact same thing can happen in Québec with appartements less than 5 years old, the infamous F part, In Montreal a LL can increase your raise from 2500$ to 9500$ if he wishes.
There is no limit on what you can change the rent by between renters. Only what you can increase while the same person lives in the unit. The moment they move out its perfectly fine to increase the rent for the next renter.
The landlord has to let the renter know what the lowest rent was in the 12 months before they sign the lease. If there is an excessive raise, you can ask the TAL to calculate a new amount. https://educaloi.qc.ca/actualites-juridiques/section-g-chien-garde-hausses-excessives/
In reality, landlords usually leave that blank, and renters are wary of starting on the wrong foot with their new landlord. There is a custom of leaving a copy of your lease in the kitchen drawer for the next person to find.
I would say it’s legal but not perfectly fine.
There is a vast difference between the two, esp when it come out of #DrugFraud 's office.
Name them and shame them.
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 :)
Maybe not here, maybe not us. But that landlord’s name ought to be made public by the media.
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.
No landlord is a good person. The sisters, even if assholes, doesn’t excuse the fact that the landlord is also an asshole simply by being a landlord.
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 ?
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.