{"id":37802,"date":"2017-03-23T04:00:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T08:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37802"},"modified":"2017-03-22T10:36:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T14:36:14","slug":"the-rent-is-too-damned-high-i-know-lets-kill-the-rental-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/03\/23\/the-rent-is-too-damned-high-i-know-lets-kill-the-rental-market\/","title":{"rendered":"The rent is too damned high? I know – let’s kill the rental market!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto’s real estate market has been insane for years, with prices for utter wrecks still approaching a million dollars. This has a knock-on effect for rental housing, with insufficient supply guaranteeing that rents will also go higher and higher. The Ontario NDP thinks they’ve got a silver bullet to fix the rental market: rent control! Chris Selley<\/a> explains why this won’t work out the way eager would-be renters in Toronto might hope:<\/p>\n

The NDP\u2019s solution: rent control. MPP Peter Tabuns tabled a private member\u2019s bill Monday that would extend limits on annual rent increases to units built after 1991 \u2014 thus closing a so-called \u201cloophole\u201d the Mike Harris Tories introduced in hopes people would build more new units. The Liberals followed quickly behind, with Housing Minister Chris Ballard promising \u201csubstantive rent control reform\u201d \u2014 details to come.<\/p>\n

You can see the attraction, politically. Robber baron landlords swoop in, cackling, forcing families onto the streets and auctioning off their homes, literally, to the highest bidder. The government can stop it. Why won\u2019t the government stop it?<\/p>\n

No doubt there are some very sympathetic stories out there. But we in the media tend to be very good at finding those, and it\u2019s hard not to notice the preponderance of \u201cvictims\u201d who could afford very high rent in the first place, and didn\u2019t do their homework with respect to rent control or the lack thereof. A typical example: CBC introduced us to a 32-year-old who was paying $1,650 a month for a tiny one-bedroom condo, only to be sent couchsurfing by a whopping $950 increase.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The fact is, rent control would largely help high-end renters in a high-end market. The vast majority of units that aren\u2019t rent controlled are condos. In October, CMHC pegged the condo-over-apartment rental premium in the GTA at 46 per cent for one-bedrooms, 54 per cent for two-bedrooms and 65 per cent for three-bedrooms.<\/p>\n

The real challenge these days is finding an apartment, period: the vacancy rate in October was 1.3 per cent. Critics say the \u201cloophole\u201d didn\u2019t actually incentivize building rental apartments, but closing the \u201cloophole\u201d certainly won\u2019t. Indeed, it\u2019s tough to see how it would accomplish much except transferring money from unit owners to their tenants. Many will like that idea on principle \u2014 but if owners can\u2019t rent to the highest bidder, they are unlikely to suddenly rent for less to the youngest, most disadvantaged and most vulnerable people rent control ostensibly helps.<\/p>\n

If you want central Toronto to be a more affordable place to live, you need to figure out how to boost supply. There are lots of different ideas out there. It\u2019s a topic of constant discussion at City Hall and Queen\u2019s Park alike. Rent control is nothing but a political distraction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto’s real estate market has been insane for years, with prices for utter wrecks still approaching a million dollars. This has a knock-on effect for rental housing, with insufficient supply guaranteeing that rents will also go higher and higher. The Ontario NDP thinks they’ve got a silver bullet to fix the rental market: rent control! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,6,25,84],"tags":[426,798,1036,207],"class_list":["post-37802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","category-economics","category-government","tag-housing","tag-ndp","tag-rentcontrol","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9PI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37803,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37802\/revisions\/37803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}