Everything You Wanted to Know About Landlord/Tenants Laws But Were Afraid To Ask
HALIFAX – In the city of Halifax, everyone seems to be talking about rent control. In recent weeks, stories about tenants facing high rent increases and being evicted for the sake of renovations have dominated online chatter. For many, capping rent increases and putting tougher laws on evictions is something that must be done.
It’s no secret that Halifax is going through a major population boom. Since 2016, Halifax’s population has steadily increased, thanks in large part to international immigration. Last year alone, nearly 10,000 new people were added to the city’s population. Such a boom has put increased demand on housing. Within the next several years, 4,400 new residential units are expected to be built, but that doesn’t help the immediate need for affordable housing.
Mark Culligan, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, is an expert on these issues, and the Residential Tenancies Act. The legal aid service receives 1,300 calls a year for legal advice from desperate people; roughly half of those calls are regarding tenant issues.
“We’ve been getting multiple calls a week, and we’ve been getting that, not in just the weeks or months, but in the last (few) years,” explains Culligan. “The last several years in Halifax, the vacancy rate has been extremely low-historically low- and, so, it’s normal part of the work here at the clinic.”
The most common legal issues that tenants have involved maintenance, rent increases, evictions, and security deposits, according to Culligan.
When it comes to rent control, there is not much a tenant can do to prevent that from happening. There is no cap on rent increases in Nova Scotia if the landlord gives four month’s notice before the lease’s anniversary date.
This has resulted in highly publicized cases of people getting steep rent increases. One of the more popular cases is that of Gracie Fogarty, a Halifax woman who recently got a notice that rent was going to double.
RELATED: Why A Halifax Landlord Nearly Doubled The Rent For One Of His Tenants
Culligan explains, however, that there is one method to legally fight a rent increase. If the tenant can prove that the landlord is using a rent increase as a form of revenge, the tenant might get the increase voided by a residential tenancy officer.
“If a landlord states that the reason for the rent increase is in retaliation for something else, that could be a way to set aside the rent increase, but it needs to be very strong evidence,” says Culligan.
Another issue that has been hotly debated is whether a landlord can legally evict a tenant for the sake of doing renovations. In Halifax, many landlords are doing repairs to older buildings or doing massive renovations that increase the value of the property and rental units.
Some Halifax tenants have reported receiving notices that their lease would not be renewed because the landlord wished to renovate the apartment and/or the building. This type of action is called “renovictions.”
Culligan notes there is a legal process for landlords that wish to do a renoviction, but they must meet certain requirements under the Residential Tenancies Act.
“They’re supposed to make an application to the director of residential tenancies…they need to demonstrate that the repairs that are being proposed are so extensive as to require a building permit.”
In other words, landlords just can’t arbitrarily decide to evict a tenant just because they want to do renovations.
On top of providing people with much needed legal advice, Dalhousie Legal Aid Service has also been lobbying the provincial government to implement rent control. Culligan and others are suggesting landlords be restricted on how much they can increase rent per year. But landlords, under this suggestion, could apply to go over the cap if they have to spend money on repairs and maintenance.
Those who oppose rent control claim that the system doesn’t work, and it forces landlords to forgo repairs and upgrades, which in turn creates slum housing. Culligan argues that, without rent control, bad apartments have already become a big problem in Halifax.
“I would argue that the lack of rent control is allowing landlords to undermine the integrity of the Residential Tenancies Act,” said Culligan.
“We’re years deep into an eviction crisis here. Clearly, the efforts of the province have failed. Clearly, the market has failed to provide affordable housing. So, it’s absolutely necessary that major, drastic, steps be taken to regulate the market…”
Culligan cautions that rent control isn’t a “magical solution” to the affordable housing crunch in Halifax, or in the province. He notes that public housing is needed for the most vulnerable sectors of society. According to Culligan, there is a 5000 person waitlist for public housing in Nova Scotia.
“We need a massive investment in public housing- and I’m not talking rent supplements, I’m talking public housing.”
“That investment hasn’t happened in decades.”