Under The Same Roof
Mark Leger is the editor and part-owner of Huddle. This is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region.
Around 10 years ago, I was the coordinator of a steering committee to address housing and homelessness issues in Saint John. A group of us used to meet regularly to talk about how to ensure a plentiful supply of housing that’s safe and affordable. There were local firefighters on that committee who told us in a meeting once that the city centre’s aging building stock was near a “tipping point,” much of it a fire hazard because it was in such poor condition.
Over the years, many of those buildings have been boarded up and torn down, and there remains a shortage of safe, affordable housing in the city. But many of the city centre buildings, which were constructed more than 100 years ago and fell into disrepair over the last several decades, have been purchased and renovated (saved, really) in the last 10 years or so.
The problem is the restoration and upkeep work is expensive and the rents are pricey as a result, the units suited mainly to empty nesters and young professionals who can afford them. There is also growing demand for units generally as more people want to live in the urban core, raising rents across the board. The situation has generated a great deal of animosity, particularly in the young renter class who want to be in the city centre but can’t pay the higher rents.
In all Maritime urban centres, housing construction and renewal has been one of the few pandemic-proof economic sectors. In Huddle this week, we had stories on two major projects in the planning stages – one in Halifax and one in Dartmouth. CBC also reported on a proposal for a 12-storey building at the top of King Street in Saint John. These projects, and the many others under development in cities like Moncton and Fredericton, are something to be celebrated but they come with a problem that needs to be addressed.
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It’s unfortunate that it’s become such a charged debate between the needs of renters versus landlords when both are critical to the health and vitality of our city centres and economies.
The building owners are constructing new buildings and restoring old ones, creating economic activity and density in urban cores that will benefit area businesses. The capital investment in these buildings is significant, especially when it comes to projects that involve preserving heritage buildings in cities like Saint John and Halifax.
The renters are the bedrock employee base for area companies, large and small, and the ones that drink the beer and the coffee and eat the food in the restaurants now struggling through the pandemic. They can’t have all their disposable income going to paying their rent, and they shouldn’t have to feel insecure and uncertain about when and how big their next rent increase might be.
Full disclosure: I’m a building owner now with my own house in the city centre and a rental property with five units. But I rented many apartments myself in the decades before I owned my own place. I paid relatively low rents and lived amidst a group of younger people who formed the core customer base for the local businesses that have proliferated in the neighbourhood over the last 20 years.
The renters deserve affordable housing and predictability with rent increases that are inevitable given the significant investments being made by building owners.
This is where the provincial and federal governments play a role. On the affordable housing side, they need to generously support rent supplement programs for low-income earners and make more capital investments in affordable housing projects.
They also need to institute some form of rent control to bring a measure of predictability that would benefit renters and building owners.
I liken it to the minimum wage issue, something I addressed in a recent column. Progressive business owners and policymakers in Nova Scotia recognize that higher minimum wages are good for employees and employers if there’s predictability in the schedule of increases. The New Brunswick government has a regular schedule of increases too but they’ve been meagre (just 5 cents this year).
Nova Scotia is also ahead of New Brunswick when it comes to addressing concerns over increasing rents. In late November, the Nova Scotia government announced that it was capping rent increases at two percent, a pandemic-response measure that will be in place until February 2022. Landlords will also be unable to evict tenants to do renovations. Whether or not those laws stay in place post-Covid-19 remains to be seen, but they’re steps in the right direction.
“Now is not the time for people to be worried about putting a roof over their head or being forced to find a new home for their family. But, unfortunately, that is exactly the situation many people are in,” said the housing minister at the time.
New Brunswick has been slower to respond to public pressure for similar measures. On Thursday, a tenants’ advocacy group called ACORN organized a rally in King’s Square in Saint John.
The group is asking for measures like Nova Scotia’s – a two percent cap on rent increases and a moratorium on evictions until the Covid-19 pandemic is over. They delivered a letter with their demands to cabinet minister Mary Wilson at the nearby Service New Brunswick office.
In the state of the province address last month, Premier Blaine Higgs announced a 90-day review of the rental situation in the province that will include evaluation of the market, vacancy rates, rental fees, trends and the overall impact of the pandemic.
Sarah Lunney, an ACORN spokesperson and a board member at the Saint John Community Food Basket, rejected that idea, saying the government is merely stalling by calling for a report first.
Unlike the situation in Nova Scotia where some business and labour leaders were able to find common ground on minimum wage, advocates for tenants and building owners are far apart on solutions, with the New Brunswick Apartment Owners Association rejecting the idea of rent caps.
“If these politicians are putting forth rent controls we’re going to have a much worse situation,” said Willy Scholten, the association’s president, in an interview with CBC last fall. “People will stop building and we’ll have more people on the street.”
This shouldn’t be a bad-news story, one characterized by the animosity between renters and landlords. The province needs to bring them under one roof and find a solution.
As a resident of an urban core that nearly burned to the ground in the 19th century, the continued existence of fire traps is unacceptable, but so is making people worry about having a roof over their head because the solution is so expensive.
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