The landlord had told them he wanted to raise the rent to $3,500 and when they complained he decided to raise it to $9,500.
“We know that our building is not rent controlled and this was something we were always worried about happening and there is no way we can afford $9,500 per month," Yumna Farooq said.
I’ve always thought the hard “full rent control no hikes above inflation” “no rent control do whatever” dichotomy was stupid.
Why not compromise? Like 5% above inflation (or $50, whichever is higher) on all properties, regardless of how old or new they are. Allows a landlord to adapt to a shifting market, and gives a renter plenty of time to adapt and adjust as a landlord is changing rent yearly.
Then get rid of all the silly “year constructed” exceptions.
By the looks of it, Toronto might get worse than Vancoucer for rent prices very soon.
Fuck Canada, more than half of Canadian politicians are fucking landlords and this is why they allow these abusive and scummy laws to stay, no rent protection, fuck this country.
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I wonder if there are information or anonymised statistics regarding the portion of elected representatives, senators and members of the judiciary from municipal, provincial and federal bodies/institutions that own more than a property (principal residence).
How many properties? What type of properties (from residential single family to high rise residential appartments/condominium, from empty/rundown/abandoned farmhouses/buildings to unused farm/land, etc…) What purpose do they have for those properties? Do those properties generate some kind of revenue? If so, how much? How is the revenue generated?
While thinking about it, how much of all properties in Canada are tied up behind a corporate veil by companies/fondations/trusts and various legal entities? Are there statistics on that?
There are too many unknowns and legal protections behind those unknown to be able to make a clear picture of the housing crisis.
I don’t want the scapegoat excuse of too much RED TAPE to build new housing or that IT’S THE IMMIGRANTS and the FOREIGN WORKERS or FOREIGN INVESTORS/SPECULATORS took all our housing. That’s too easy of a excuse to avoid the real and difficult work of understanding this whole mess.
I want real data, not proxy data. Full information on every transfer of property; from whom to whom, by which financial institution, for exactly how much, timespan elapsed between transfer of ownership, who is the mortgage holder if a loan is involved, renovation details if there has been any, every inspection report and details should always be public and attached to the property for the life of the property as a historical snapshot of the property, etc…
It’s not that hard to implement these data gathering services but there are always deeply vested interests that would do everything in their power to discourage such endeavors and make up any excuse to avoid providing it.
Anyways, sorry this became a long rambling rant on my part.
A landlord has an absolute right to raise rent whenever he feels like it. Don’t like it? Buy your own house!
I kind of don’t understand everyone’s hate on landlords. My landlord increased my rent from $450 to $640 this year, but that’s market rate and I’d have to pay the same or more if I tried to find another one, so I’m not even mad. When COVID hit a couple years ago and immigration stopped happening he dropped my rental from $600 to $400 so it works the other way as well.
It is just supply and demand and I don’t see how it is any different to any other market.
Assuming that’s a photo of the apartment, that shit would be like 15k a month in NY. Not that any of it’s right, just, or moral, but they definitely had it better than most to be paying that little for what many would consider quite a luxury apartment.
toronto isn’t NY.
same thing might be $2k USD equivilant in Adelaide. did you actually consider location might be a factor here?
No it wouldn’t. Here is a comparable: https://www.realtor.com/rentals/details/166-Amsterdam-Ave_New-York_NY_10023_M33265-52776?property_id=3326552776&from=ab_mixed_view_card
A three bedroom would go for $12k a month, but we don’t even have three bedroom units here. Assuming this is a two bedroom it would probably be in the middle of the range given. So 7k-8k USD. But Toronto shouldn’t be as expensive as Manhattan, NYC.
They must have really pissed off the landlord. It doesn’t say what they asked for in the lease agreement changes… Or what they said to him when they “complained” when he raised the rent initially by a smaller amount.
Still ridiculous that it’s legal to raise rent by that much, but oof, if you’re in one of those buildings, be nice to your landlord.
Edit: i think people are taking what I said the wrong way - I’m saying with the way things are, if landlords can get away with this, they hold all the power!
Edit2: I guess I’m the bad guy here, but I recommend you focus your rage on Ford who set this shit up in the first place.
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yeah they probably wanted their broken toilet to flush and the landlord was so aggrieved at the insult that they actually have to do something they flew into a rage
raised the rent initially by a smaller amount.
You write ‘doubled’ funny.
Source on doubled? There’s no mention in the article of the initial rent
Edit: For all we know the initial rent increase could have been $50. But sure, I’m the bad guy for pointing out lack of info
Sisters Khadeja and Yumna Farooq say a Toronto landlord is raising their rent by $7,000 per month
Which means an initial rent of about $2500? So not doubled.
Good catch. And yet I’m getting downvoted 🤷♂️
Witch hunts on lemmy are even more indiscriminate than they were on Reddit. There’s just no in between.
You said there is no information on the initial rent, but there is. So why should people not down vote you?
Yes, let’s ignore the guy who made the inaccurate claim, which is the entire reason I asked for a source
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I didn’t catch that it doubled. Jeez. Landlord is a tool.
If the landlord cares about something then they should have put it in the contract and then kicked them out due to that. Raising pricing is not necessary.
Yeah agreed but because of the lack of rent control they don’t have to. That’s my point. They hold a lot of power being able to do what they want with rent changes alone.
#DrugFraud 's legacy.
?
He removed rent control from units less than 5 years old back in 2018.
This absolutely should not be legal
It shows that “no rent control” basically means “your landlord can throw you out at any time without notice” by raising rent to a ludicrous amount. It completely undermines all other tenant protections. Even conservatives should be supporting at least modest rent controls to prevent cases like this.
Modest is what we had before. Never vote Conservative.
I think last year’s inflation spike demonstrates that “2.5% per year regardless of your carrying costs or maintenance costs changing due to interest rates and inflation” is not modest. A reasonable rent control policy would let landlords gradually adapt to market realities without giving them the power to gouge or de-facto evict tenants with sudden rent spikes.
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Yes, rent control, our panacea.
Negative Effects on Supply: Rent control can potentially lead to housing shortages over the long term. When landlords are unable to raise rents to cover maintenance and operating costs or to generate a reasonable return on their investment, they may have less incentive to maintain or invest in their properties. This can lead to a deterioration in the quality of rental housing and a reduction in the overall supply of rental units. In some cases, landlords may convert rental properties into other uses, such as condominiums or commercial spaces, further reducing the supply of rental housing.
Inefficiencies and Reduced Mobility: Rent control can lead to inefficiencies in the housing market. Tenants in rent-controlled units may have less incentive to move, even if their housing needs change, because they want to keep their low rents. This reduced mobility can make it harder for new renters to find suitable housing.
Selective Impact: Rent control often applies to older buildings or units built before a certain date. This can create disparities in rent levels between newer and older housing stock, potentially discouraging the construction of new rental units and leading to further imbalances in the housing market.
A short term band-aid that causes long term problems. Government price controls are a tale as old as time.
Jesus, I’m getting it from both ends here, somebody else is dumping on me for suggesting that a rent-control system that’s a few points above inflation so that landlords could adapt to the market without abruptly bankrupting their tenants was somehow a reasonable compromise.
I’m not arguing for extreme rent-control policies, just that no rent control is bad because it lets landlords write their own eviction laws.
Peg it at like 2.5% or 5% per year above inflation and you can’t use it as a sudden backdoor eviction but you also let landlords adapt to market reality over time.
Capping rents might be stupid for all the reasons economists say, but putting a damper on sudden price shifts is just being humane.
The “humane” thing would be to make any and all rent seeking behavior very explicitly illegal, but that’s unlikely to happen.
So wait where do college students live in your world?
Before I took economics in college I would have downvoted you. Price ceilings don’t solve the problem.
Before I took economics in college I would have downvoted you.
Now that you have studied economics, what do you think he got wrong that keeps you from pressing the “This is factual” button now?
It’s funny, somehow I managed to understand this before any college. Because supply and demand are supposedly quite intuitive.
There are countless examples showing it works. Look up France for example.
I think your second point is valid, but the first is upside-down. Landlords compete with tenants for plots and bank loans. If they started leaving the market, more plots will free up and banks will be forced to start giving out loans to tenants. This will allow people who are currently tenants to build their own houses, rather than needing to rent. And your third point only applies if you exclude some properties from rent control, which is what Ontario seems to be doing.
Uh, part of the point of the greenbelt is to stop building detached houses because they’re actually environmentally quite bad. I mean maybe individuals could work together to put together a co-op but Housing Now TO says that municipal governments generally block any of those that would pencil out.
part of the point of the greenbelt is to stop building detached houses because they’re actually environmentally quite bad.
If we’re being honest, all housing is environmentally bad. And not just environmentally bad, but bad for society in general. A necessary evil for the individual, perhaps, but it stands to reason that they should carry a high cost to account for the negative externalities they place on everyone else.
I wanted to build a duplex but “zoning laws” say that wasn’t allowed, only single family detached houses with at least X amount of land.
Most zoning laws are serious bullshit and work as defacto segregation to keep the dirty
brownpoor people away from the nice good rich folk. It’s why suburban school is a totally different things from poor urban school.Zoning laws are why developers in LA can’t afford to build anything other than luxury condos. Land is literally too expensive to build. As an example: a requirement to have at least X parking spots per X units, even when it’s built right next to a metro and a bus depot and you’re building low income housing for people who are less likely to own cars in the first place.
Too many NIBYs whining about things.
Landlords compete with tenants for plots and bank loans.
Not really. Landlords need tenants. If tenants would rather own, then there would be nobody for the landlord to rent to. Landlords serve those who prefer to rent. Of note, one reason people prefer to rent is a belief that the housing market is about to crash. With a lot of signs suggesting that is a real possibility on the near horizon, this is why rents have skyrocketed recently. Nobody wants to be the bag holder, so many more are, right now, opting to rent over buying in order to wait and see what happens.
banks will be forced to start giving out loans to tenants.
There is nothing that forces them to give loans to tenants. If landlords start leaving the housing market it is likely that credit offers will grind to a halt. The bank wants absolutely nothing to do with a security that people are running away from. Furthermore, the money leaving housing is apt to flow into productive businesses, which means that any credit that the banks are still willing to extend will go in that direction.
landlords serve those who would prefer to rent
If you honestly believe this then you are delusional. I’m sorry there’s pretty much no kind way to put it. This statement is that egregiously erroneous that it is so incongruous with reality so as to be delusional.
Oh, right. People only pay for things they don’t want. How could I have forgotten?!
For what it’s worth, surveys in my country repeatedly show that renters would prefer to own. But the market here is rough and banks are denying people loans even with a lower monthly payments than their existing rent.
I would think it is the same in the US, but most people here rent because they can’t buy.
surveys in my country repeatedly show that renters would prefer to own.
That does not mean they prefer to own right now. If you plan on moving to a new place in a few months, for example, it would kind of silly to buy only to have to buy again a few months later. You may prefer to buy, but the rational person would rent for a few months to bridge the gap, and then buy once they get to where they plan to stay.
And, given the current state of housing, with a high risk of it soon imploding, a lot of people would rather wait a few months, even a few years, before they buy to see what happens to the market. Again, preferring to own doesn’t imply right now.
The data shows a clear downward trend in price, especially in the traditionally desirable areas. If you have somewhere to rent, why would you choose to buy at this exact moment, knowing – with reasonable confidence – that a house will be cheaper in six months?
So the first point is simply false, the second point is symptomatic of the third point which is simply an example of a poor policy.
Also the second half of the third point is completely fucked off. If new construction were exempt from rent control then your ROI would be better on building units than buying units.
Why don’t you provide proof. Who the fuck are you that we’re just gonna believe you when you say ‘this is false’ lol
We have rent control in Paris, France. Appartments are still expensive, but I pay 1600 euros per month for 60sqm in the center of one of the liveliest cities in the world.
Rent control WORKS.
It’s inevitable that any type of price control will lead to supply/demand issues. That’s great it worked out for you but it is well documented that rent control harms rental markets long term. Anyone who disagrees is in denial.
And for the places without rent control with supply/demand issues…
Yes, multiple things can affect rental supply, not just government price controls.
Nice ChatGPT copypasta, bro
It was a lot faster than writing it myself
Sure, but it’s irrelevant. There’s no economical rigor behind those statements. They could be true, they could be hallucinated.
I didn’t just type it into ChatGPT and copy/paste whatever it wrote without looking it over lol
I don’t know how this law passed but it should definitely be repealed
Ok, your rent is now $1 million. A month.
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Most conservatives are middle class small business owners and landlords, this is why they are always supportive of “small government” it’s just a dog whistle for unregulated market.
this is why they are always supportive of “small government” it’s just a dog whistle for unregulated market.
A “dog whistle” is something disguising the true message, while there’s no attempt to hide it here.
(I am in support of an unregulated market, but also of trade unions and consumer unions and anarcho-syndicalism, which are natural parts of it)
it always seem like a dogwhistle for slave labor at a local level
I saw a documentary that spoke to some Twump (sic) supporters who lived in a shithole building that they didn’t realize was owned by the Kushners. I can’t recall anything else about it that might help identify it.
They’re not generally cartoonish evil, I’m sure they agree that some tenant protections against sudden eviction are a good thing, and allowing unlimited rent hikes completely obliterates all that.
They’re not generally cartoonish evil
You really need to look at how they’re talking on landlord forums and such, the way they speak about tenants. Reality will remove this naive idea from your mind.
You mean, worse than you speak of landlords?
False dicotomy. People talk shit about landlords because of how they’re treated by them. Landlords talk shit about tenants because they’re pieces of shit which is the same reason they treat tenants like shit.
And how are they treated by them, exactly? Asked to pay for the space provided?
I hope you are tipping your landlord 20%
Sent from my iPhone
I agree they are not cartoonishly evil, in so far as that a cartoon villain usually is thwarted by good through the power of friendship. Real villains don’t have such opposition.
From my experience most people don’t care until they’re inconvenienced in some way, so they won’t have an opinion on it so they wait until someone they rely on and trust to tell them how they should feel. I think we all know which entertainment network is going to tell them all about why rent control is ruining Canada/America.
This is Canada do people even get that network here?
Yes
I read a study that showed they’d rather hurt themselves than help others, even if helping others helped themselves as well, directly or indirectly. It tracks, frankly
Oh wow, one study that I’m sure has massive sample size and wasn’t created by a biased group of academics.
It makes complete sense given the other behaviour landlords exhibit, and how they make money.
When escalation of this magnitude is your solution, you shouldn’t be surprised when your clients respond with violence.
Sounds like they’re living in a high demand luxury apartment with a great view from the looks of it. Landlord just told em they fucked around and are going to find out now. The price is clearly because they don’t want to deal with them anymore.
God damn, no sympathy at all eh? Yes they’re yuppies, but you’re going to bat for a punitive rent hike because “they probably deserved it” or something like that? That’s cold.
These women are losing their home because they argued with a landlord over raising rent. That’s some Dickensian shit right there.
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Only if the place you are renting was built before 2018.
Not sure why you are down voted. If people know why this limit is not viable in this case they should tell. Us.
From that person’s link:
The guideline applies to the vast majority – approximately 1.4 million – of rental households covered by the Residential Tenancies Act. It does not apply to rental units occupied for the first time after November 15, 2018, vacant residential units, community housing, long-term care homes or commercial properties.
Because they can’t bleed their tenants dry otherwise.
It’s not enough to have someone else paying your mortgage for you, you need to be cashflow positive each month as well.
You should read the article
Does that mean the landlord has to charge the next tennant that rate, or was that a special rate just for them? Can they charge different rents fir different people based on whether they like the tennant?
I was wondering thia too. Without control, they can probably just lower it again once the tenants leave.