Opinion: False equivalences are harming the housing conversation

Article content

Rent control legislation will not turn Alberta into BC or Ontario; It might be the only chance we have to prevent that from happening.

Rents are skyrocketing, vacancies are declining, students are sleeping in their cars, and families are forced to choose between keeping the lights on and putting food on the table. Worryingly, Alberta remains Canada’s largest province without some form of protection from dramatic rent increases.

Article content

Article content

Over the past few months, I have heard many stories from Albertans who have experienced rent increases of 20, 30 and even 50 per cent. I heard from a senior living on a fixed income whose rent increased by $1,800 a month. In the midst of a housing and affordability crisis, Albertans are desperate to catch their breath. Bill 205: The Housing Security Act would give Albertans that opportunity.

Arguments against Bill 205 are often based on a comparison to provinces like BC and Ontario, which have rent caps and also have the highest rental prices in the country. Critics point to high rental prices in these provinces as evidence of the effectiveness of rent control. But that argument fails to take into account one of the most basic principles of research methodology: correlation does not equal causation.

BC and Ontario don’t have the highest rents in the country because they have rent control. In fact, rent control in both provinces has been used to help prevent already high rents from increasing at astronomical rates. And Alberta, a province without rent control, consistently has the cities with the fastest-rising rents in the country.

Article content

Article content

The suggestion that rent caps in these provinces directly preceded and caused their high rental prices, and that introducing rent caps here would result in Alberta mirroring BC and Ontario, is a false equivalence. It is fundamentally flawed and categorically false. And I fear that by perpetuating these false equivalencies, we risk doing nothing at all, which at this rate would lead to Alberta reaching or even surpassing the levels of unaffordability seen in those provinces.

Another point that is overlooked when comparing Alberta to BC and Ontario is the lack of vacancy control. Vacancy control ensures that limits on rent increases are applied equally to vacant units, preventing landlords from exploiting turnover to unfairly increase rents. Rent caps without vacancy control allow landlords to exploit loopholes, such as fixed-term leases, to circumvent rent caps, leading to increased evictions and tenants becoming trapped in housing situations. unaffordable housing. Currently, BC and Ontario do not have vacancy control; however, if Bill 205 is passed, Alberta’s temporary rental cap would include this critical measure.

Article content

Critics of House Bill 205 tend to advocate the same solution: increasing the supply of housing. We agree on this. In fact, Bill 205 is designed to ensure that Albertans see greater housing supply, rather than simply the promise of it.

The housing crisis and affordability crisis in Alberta has met with many unfulfilled promises. Albertans were promised a tax credit to ease the stress of rising living costs, but then were told the credit wouldn’t be coming. And despite promising to increase rent supplements on 1,200 households per year, the UCP only increased rent supplements on 550 households.

One of the most important parts of House Bill 205 is that it requires the government to set housing goals and publicly report on its progress so we can truly address this housing crisis.

We have to keep talking about the housing crisis if we are to have any chance of solving it, but false equivalences and superficial criticism are harming the conversation. Using the examples of BC and Ontario to argue against rent caps completely misunderstands the relationship between rent control and housing affordability, and overlooks how Bill 205 differs from rent regulation. rents observed in BC and Ontario.

We need to move the conversation about housing forward, and to do so, we need to think critically about all possible solutions.

House Bill 205: The Housing Security Act is a private member’s bill introduced by MLA Janis Irwin and is currently being debated in the legislature.

Janis Irwin is the NDP Opposition Housing Critic and MLA for Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood.

Article content