This election is about our housing rights

Dear New Brunswick Party Leaders,

I am writing to let you know that housing is top of mind in this election.

New Brunswick tenants have had enough! We have endured huge rent increases since the pandemic: more than 28.7% on average since October 2020. This past April they were up almost 11% on last year. Some tenants have seen even larger increases. Salaries have not gone up by anything close to that.

Enough is enough! There was a simple solution to this problem that should have been enacted years ago: rent control.

Instead of making the 2022 rent cap permanent, Housing Minister Jill Green erroneously claimed that it reduced investment in housing and ended it. In 2023, New Brunswick led the country in rental housing inflation. But the end of the rent cap didn’t bring new investment in housing—in fact, it declined.

In 2021, the government initiated a rental market review and found that there was no housing crisis. But since then, the number of people waiting for scarce public housing units has doubled to more than 11,000 households. Many tenants who used to be able to pay rent and get by are now relying on food banks.

According to census data from 2021, New Brunswick is losing 33 affordable market units every week because we lack rent control.

New Brunswick tenants face many challenges that need to be addressed: ending fixed-term leases, protections against landlord retaliation and discrimination, and social housing tenants also need to be protected against arbitrary eviction.

In order to feel secure in our homes, we need action from the next government. More of the same will merely leave more tenants feeling poorer and less certain of the future.

We are calling on you to make rent control a priority in this election and to make loud and clear that your party will adopt permanent, fixed controls as a right for all tenants in New Brunswick—a measure already enjoyed by 85% of Canadians.

We are also calling on you to ensure that this rent control is effective and preserves our existing affordable market rental housing by applying controls to housing on tenant turn-over, so that affordable units can be found for households when they move.

Housing is a right and a basic human need. It is not an investment opportunity!

We are also calling on you to prioritize investment in new non-market, not-for-profit housing development. We need to increase the availability of affordable housing, not see it further eroded by private investors.

Solutions to many aspects of New Brunswick’s affordable housing crisis are within the power of the provincial government to implement. We are calling on you to take action before more New Brunswickers are impoverished or left homeless through continued inaction.

Sincerely,
A New Brunswick Tenant and Voter

Please click HERE to contact New Brunswick’s Party Leaders.
(If link does not open, select and copy the headline and text from this page and send it to Blaine Higgs (Blaine.Higgs@gnb.ca), Susan Holt (Susan.Holt@gnb.ca), and David Coon (David.Coon@gnb.ca)