Quote:
Originally Posted by Nehkara
Lost money? I have a hard time believing that. Maybe they only just broke even, but I doubt they lost money.
Now they are probably mostly making a fortune off of people who now struggle to get by.
It's not right, sorry. Needs to be fixed.
|
It wasn't that long ago that apartments sat empty as landlords couldn't find tenants for them. Owners have mortagages, taxes, and basic maintinence and upgrades to pay for and those empty suites were negatively affecting their bottom line. Rents were relativley cheap and it was a renters market.
Now we have the reverse and it's a landlords market. Some, not all, are using this as a means to gouge renters. Others are merely trying to get rents in line with the rising costs of maintaining a rental property. Just like homeowners, their property taxes and utilities go up too. It's not unreasonable for landlords to try and gets rents in line with those increases.
That said we have a section of the population that is being negatively affected by these increases. And from what i'm hearing and reading in the media it's becoming a crisis that I believe the Stelmach govt is failing to deal with. I will agree with you that something needs to be done to help these people. My fear is that if Stelmach govt does a reversal on rent controls more landlords will unilateraly decide to sell their proprties or convert them to condos, thus putting low income earners in a more dire situation. Outside of moving to another province i'm not sure what the solution is.