Why it's time for a serious debate about rent control in Canada
Why it's time for a serious debate about rent control in Canada
Ricardo Tranjan: Economic costs of soaring rents are too high to ignore potential benefits of some rent control options. Find out more here.
We need:
-limit 1 house per family
-serious rent control
-4-storey apartments built owned by the public and cooperatives
-Stronger renter protections
-Aggressive tax on empty properties/units
Vacant House Taxes have been tried throughout Canada and are generally ineffective. They are just a distraction.
The main reason why they don't work is fairly obvious: Why would someone own property to keep it vacant?
Sure, there are some people with vacation homes, or second homes where they frequently visit (heck, I might have to get an apartment where my office is located now we're being forced to return to the office). Oh the Urbanity has a great video where they point out the vast majority of "Vacant Homes" are either students who don't permanently live there, in the process of a move, under renovation, etc.
Aggressive and escalating.
The longer you leave a residential property vacant, the higher the tax rate becomes.
Speculating on residential housing needs to become costly - more expensive than making it livable and available for people to live there.
I think we also need to discount and ease new construction - NIMBY bullshit shouldn't be allowed to prevent densification and we either need direct subsidies or material subsidies of construction materials.
When new builds are all mcmansions from developers with deep, unethical, ties to politicians it doesn't really help much either.
Looking at you Doug Ford.
Can you explain what you mean by
-limit 1 house per family
Many of the times I've heard this sentiment, it's been to either ban Mom&Pop landlords, or ban rental houses completely. These options seem to benefit potential homeowners by screwing over renters. I'm not sure if you mean something different?
That's a lot of 4-story apartments, since that's the main thing that will actually get built under this scheme. I guess it worked okay in the USSR, but Soviet citizens definitely did complain about the lack of other options for living arrangement.
I think we need a rental tax credit. Whether it's partial or fully tax exempt, doesn't really matter. If every renter was reporting their rent payments on their taxes it would be impossible for landlords to dodge their own taxes, thereby shifting the tax burden where it belongs.
A rental tax credit would likely result in money laundering schemes. For example you're a Mafia boss and you purchase a building with very expensive appartment rents and people that you pay to "pay" you the rent. Then that money is magically clean and tax free
I don't see how this would make money laundering for organized crime any easier than it is today, the tax would just be shifted to the landlord side (likely at a higher rate since they're probably in a higher tax bracket) and off the tenant.
Right now the tenant earns money, pays income tax on that money, pays rent, and the landlord pays taxes on that money (if they're honest and report it all) but can claim their mortgage interest as a tax deduction.
I think the tenant should be able to claim some portion of their rent as a tax deduction. It would require an official record of rent paid, which would keep the landlord honest. I'd say the mortgage interest on a rental property probably shouldn't be tax deductible either, but even still this would have the biggest impact on those large private landlords that are often what you'd call slumlords.
Edit: I'm obviously not an expert on taxation or housing policy so if I'm wildly out of touch I'll accept that, I just think it's kind of bullshit that the government subsidizes the mortgages we pay for our landlords with the money we paid the government when we worked for it.
Like how Donald Trump does it?
Fwiw, rent control is fully insufficient - what you need is a completely massive supply of affordable housing built, owned and operated by the public. Nothing short of this will make a dent
So problem will never be solved then. Far too much vested interest in the status quo from existing landowners.
Nobody is going to build “affordable housing” unless you like living 10 hours commute from major cities. And as soon as someone builds a bullet train to shorten the commute to an hour the prices will skyrocket.
I'd advise you to avoid defeatism. This is a policy that has historically been implemented in various countries, and it can be done again if pushed for enough from the voting population.
Step one is identifying the correct solution, which we've now established. Step two is to spread the word about it.
I'm actually shocked that the Financial Post said something positive on rent control. This is some alternate universe stuff. It's typically neolib drivel.
We have rent control in BC (I think, unless I misunderstand), but I'd be willing to ease the restrictions a bit in exchange for vacancy control. I've only been in my current place for 4 years, but if I had to move (renoviction or personal use) I'd be looking at almost a 150% increase for something comparable. I know I'm not alone in that. I could handle a 10% increase per year if it meant I had the flexibility to move if I needed an upgrade or my landlord was simply being an ass.
im just sick of ppl listing rooms on craigslist for $800-1000 :/ esp when they title it misleadingly as a whole suite