Housing advocates in N.L. calling for rent control after report highlights struggle for low earners

Housing advocates are calling for government action in the wake of a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report on housing and minimum wage.

The report, released Tuesday, found that full-time minimum wage workers in every province had to allocate more than 30 per cent of their income to housing.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, where the minimum wage was $13.70 in October, workers needed to make over $2 more per hour to spend less than one-third of their income on rent of a one-bedroom unit.

Housing consultant and researcher Hope Jamieson, who is studying housing for their doctorate this fall at Memorial University's business school, said the report hit the nail on the head.

"The phrase that keeps reverberating around in my head from the report is that markets do not solve the problems that they create," Jamieson said.

"Which I think really emphasizes the ways in which the housing crisis has been manufactured by policy decisions deliberately taken about 30 years ago by the government of Canada to rely on the private market to provide housing in general and rental housing specifically."

The report concluded that three factors are raising rents too high for low-wage earners to afford: wage suppression as a policy, low supply of rental housing and a poorly regulated rental market that allows people to buy up houses as a money-making asset.

One thing Jamieson didn't see in the report was "demand-side" subsidies, where subsidies are given to individual tenants to cover rent.

Another issue is the lack of community housing, which they said isn't being built fast enough.

People on the margins

End Homelessness St. John's executive director Doug Pawson said there's been more downward pressure on the housing market in the last few years.

"We've seen those vacancy rates really rapidly decrease over the last two to three years, and that's meant skyrocketing rents," said Pawson.

Low-wage earners are struggling, and his organization is seeing more requests for support for utility and rental arrears as people struggle to balance paying rent and other necessities, he said.

Once people lose their home it's extremely difficult to get back into housing, said Pawson. For example, a prospective landlord might need proof of income and a 75 per cent down payment on a month's rent.

Jamieson would like to see a hard look at provincial minimum wage legislation and an "aggressive program" that creates and invests in long-term community housing.

Jamieson and Pawson both raised rent control — a cap on the amount landlords can charge on rental units — as a possible solution. However, that mechanism doesn't exist in Newfoundland and Labrador.

"I think that rent control is really the low-hanging fruit in terms of solutions. That's something that could be implemented relatively quickly," said Jamieson.

But Service N.L. Minister Sarah Stoodley isn't currently considering bringing that policy in.

"That is not something I think we need to do immediately," said Stoodley, suggesting more regulation could discourage developers from building new development projects.

"We're very happy to have the conversation and as a government we're always ... looking at ways to help people with the cost of living and make sure that, you know, everyone has a roof over their heads."

Housing isn't optional

More than one-third of N.L.'s population is spending more than 30 per cent of their income on housing.

If nothing is done about affordable housing, said Pawson, there will be "further stresses on people to make ends meet. Further stressors on people to pay rent. Pay for their utilities. Pay for their food."

With time, that balance will falter and something will slip, he said, which could mean heating is cut off to a home or an individual can't make rent and a landlord evicts them.

"All levels of government have a responsibility to intervene because the impacts are at every level," Jamieson said. 

"A lack of affordable housing really does impact the social fabric of our communities at a deep level."

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