Liberals, NDP tout rent control
Ontario's Liberals and New Democrats are both pledging to reintroduce rent control, taking slightly different tacks on the policy they say would help lifelong renters and would-be homeowners alike.
Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford removed rent control on new units after taking power in 2018, something Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said has only worsened the affordability crisis.
“We've seen over the past four years under the Ford Conservatives how the cost of literally everything has skyrocketed out of control, the cost of food, the cost of renting or purchasing a home, the cost of getting yourself around this city and around cities and communities across Ontario,” Del Duca said in Toronto on Friday.
“It's all going in the wrong direction.”
You see fear, you hear real pain and real anguish.
Del Duca's party is promising to bring back rent control as it existed before the 2018 election, when landlords could raise rent only at a set rate each year during a lease, usually between 0.5 and three per cent.
That's still in place for units built before 2018, but those created after are not subject to rent control.
Del Duca said the two-tiered system has made housing less affordable, and has also seen prospectors snatch up newly built condo units to make a buck.
“We're in the midst of the greatest housing affordability crisis of my lifetime,” he said. “And you know, when you talk to tenants, when you talk to young women and men who are looking perhaps to make a purchase, you see fear, you hear real pain and real anguish.”
The NDP have promised to go a step further than the Liberals, preventing landlords from jacking up rent between leases.
“Rent control will come back — and I mean full rent control, none of this changing the rent on a vacant unit,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Friday.
The party said that policy would remove the financial incentive for landlords to push out tenants so they can raise rent.
Horwath also unveiled her party's plan to allow seniors to defer property taxes, making living in their own home more affordable. Horwath said the NDP plan would save seniors about $375 a month in taxes, while the government would invest $1 billion in homecare services to support them.
Ford was in southwestern Ontario Friday where he announced that in addition to investing $1 billion to fasttrack the building of five new electricity transmission lines, the province is also prepared to speed up the process for approving the lines.
“Nothing will slow us down as we build the infrastructure that businesses need to create jobs right here in southwestern Ontario,” Ford said in a statement.