Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
He should be telling those people to call Service Alberta about their landlords breaking the law without correct amount of notice.
And there's reasonable reasons for a large increase, if a place hasn't had a rent increase for a decade, someone buys it, and has to increase rent by 30-40% just to bring it up to cover the mortgage. Or the owner was okay with low rents because they bought it 20 years ago but brings it up to market value because they pulled some money out.
But like Slava said, how much profit is ethical to make? I don't think having the government decide how much rent is reasonable would go over very well here.
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Pretty much this. But there's a ton of confusion/bad information out there about landlord/tenant rights in this province. Add into this the major hassle of moving and dealing with housing and much of the action/energy gets directed into the wrong channels.
I'd also speculate that many tenants with a genuine grievance with their landlord are likely to choose not to rock the boat with their landlord by going the Service Alberta route. They either accept their lumps, or choose to move.
It's the basic "don't **** where you eat" scenario. Even if my landlord is 100% in the wrong, it's still a roof over my head in a tight rental market. So complaining to the mayor/city hall about it seems less likely to result in blow back then going to Service Alberta.
I haven't rented in a few years now, but the last place I rented the landlord decided to sell the property and evict all the tenants, which guess what, is illegal and against the Service Alberta laws about selling rental properties. But given the situation I could either spend my limited time/energy towards fighting my landlord (who's in the middle of a real estate deal) or finding a new place to live. Guess which avenue I took?