The New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants Rights has released draft rent control regulations that, if enacted into law, would stabilize run-away rent increases in New Brunswick while providing fairness to landlords.
The draft regulations, commissioned by the Coalition from the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights, a national housing rights advocacy group, provides a template for the next provincial government to address large rent increases that are crippling tenants’ finances.
While rental inflation mostly affects the province’s almost 90,000 tenant households, the Coalition also notes that investors are collecting single-family homes to rent, and that this growing market has pushed up housing assessments and property taxes on homeowners.
“The cost of living crisis in New Brunswick is largely about housing-related bills, and the government’s ‘leave-it-to-the-market’ approach has failed. It is time to address that failure, and this legislation would begin to do that,” says Kristi Allain, a spokesperson for the Coalition, who is also a member of Fredericton’s Affordable Housing Committee.
The proposed measures would permit landlords to increase rents to match inflation, pass through increases in tax, insurance, and renovation costs to tenants, and stabilize rent increases for tenants.
It would also provide a mechanism for property tax reductions to be passed on to tenants, which currently does not exist.
Most importantly, the measures are tied to the rental unit, rather than the tenant, ensuring that the province does not continue to rapidly lose more of its relatively affordable rental stock to investors.
According to analysis from the Coalition and UNB’s HOME-RL, a research lab, New Brunswick lost 8,600 rental housing units affordable to modest income-earning households between 2016 and 2021—an average of almost 33 units per week.
“The legislation we are proposing sets the agenda for the next government. Whoever wins the election on October 21st, this is the legislation we need to keep more New Brunswickers securely housed,” said Kristi Allain.
Between October 2020 and October 2023, rents in New Brunswick increased by nearly 30%—the largest increase over that period in Canada. This has left many New Brunswick tenants in financial distress, and it corresponds to a period of rapidly increasing homelessness in the province’s towns and cities.
“The lack of rental protections for tenants has had a huge impact on the safety and security of the almost 90,000 households in New Brunswick who rent,” said Tobin LeBlanc Haley, a spokesperson for the Coalition.
“While opposition parties have called for a ‘rent cap’, they have not explained how they will prevent rapid rental inflation due to lack of controls between tenancies.”
The draft regulations will protect New Brunswick from rampant rent increases, renovictions, and other abuses against tenants that are observed in other jurisdictions. It will make it easier for tenant households to find more affordable rental units.
In a research report to be released later this month, the Coalition draws attention to the lack of housing security in New Brunswick’s deregulated rental environment.
“It is having a huge impact on tenants,” said Tobin LeBlanc Haley.
The Coalition explains that the market is failing tenants and people who live in homes.
The Coalition is also fighting to have social housing tenants included in the Residential Tenancies Act. The exclusion of the province’s most vulnerable tenants from protections of any sort, however limited, is a major legislative gap that should have been addressed by previous governments.
The draft regulatory changes commissioned by the Coalition will address this gap, while ensuring that tenants in social housing continue to benefit from deep affordability measures that regulate rent increases.
Since the release in May 2021 of the Conservative government’s rental housing market study, known as the Hansen Report, which found there was no rental crisis in the province, the number of households on social housing wait lists has doubled to almost 11,000.
Over the same period, food bank use has increased more rapidly than in other provinces, where rent control measures exist.