Should Quebec freeze rents next year? One provincial party says yes

Montreal -

Quebec Solidaire (QS) wants to freeze rental costs for a full year, barring landlords from requesting rent hikes and cancelling any increases planned to take effect next summer.

Bill 390, tabled by QS MNA for Laurier-Dorion Andres Fontecilla, is just one page long. If passed, landlords wouldn’t be able to increase rents from June 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023.

“The purpose of this law is to alleviate the financial burden on tenants,” reads the bill’s opening paragraph.

The bill was endorsed by prominent tenants’ advocacy group Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ), who called the proposed measures “necessary.”

In Quebec, landlords can ask their tenants for a bump in rent when the lease is renewed, so long as the increase is “just and reasonable.”

While tenants are free to refuse the hike, RCLALQ says it’s not always so simple.

The group says evictions, which are allowed when the owner wants to subdivide or enlarge the unit, among other things, “are often motivated by other purposes, including excessive and illegal rent increases.”

Meanwhile, rental costs have risen since last year, according to a RCLALQ study published in June which examined thousands of listings on Kijiji between January and May, 2021.

The group found the average monthly price for a 4 ½ in the Montreal metropolitan area was $1,349, 11 per cent higher than what it was in 2020.

But costs weren’t only going up in Montreal -- other markets also reported double-digit increases.

In Sherbrooke, the same unit costed $839. While that’s still cheaper than Montreal, it’s a markup of 16 per cent since the year before.

In Granby, a small town located an hour east of Montreal, rent on a two-bedroom apartment went up 22 per cent, according to the study.

A lack of social housing combined with skyrocketing rents in Montreal is putting vulnerable women's lives in danger, according to advocates.

Housing advocates say a rent freeze could help quell the flames of what they call 'the worst housing crisis in the last 10 years (file photo)

'A RENT FREEZE WILL STOP THE BLEEDING'

At the moment, “nothing is being done to limit abusive and illegal rent increases,” said RCLALQ spokesperson Marjolaine Deneault in a press release, ringing alarm bells over what the group calls “the worst housing crisis in the last 10 years.”

"The crisis is linked to an explosion of costs,” she said. “The mechanisms in place to regulate rent increases are not working."

Fontecilla, QS’s housing critic, is calling on the government to pass the bill before Dec. 1. That’s when requests for rent increases become more frequent, he says.

“The rent increase notices will start to come in within a few weeks, it is time to act and slow down the unreasonable explosion in housing prices,” said the minister in a Sunday press release.

“Every day, families contact my office because they have to relocate and cannot find housing that they are able to afford,” he continued.

Fontecilla says the bill, if passed, would provide the government with time to find new ways to slow rental-price bumps in the province.

“A rent freeze will stop the bleeding in the short term, but the CAQ will have to go much further to turn the tide.”