Today I will speak on behalf of many of my constituents who rent their accommodations in Yellowknife Centre.
The Residential Tenancies Act allows landlords to raise the rents once per year with adequate notice. This puts tenants at a disadvantage when it comes time to renegotiate a lease. They can be left in a position with little options: they can be offered a 12-month lease with a rental increase, or they can enter into a month-by-month lease with even a larger increase.
The problem arises as to whether you commit yourself to a long-term lease and realize some savings, or you lose the flexibility. Or do you keep paying whatever rate they’re offering?
Mr. Speaker, long-term leases have their place. They give landlords the peace of mind that their properties are rented and allow the renters some certainty for budgeting over a long period of time. However, I believe when the economy is hot and the vacancy rate is low, there should be some mechanism that makes it easier for a renter to break the terms of a lease to help people follow potential opportunities. Rental increases need to have merit, based on modesty, not on gluttony. A new Norman Rockwell artwork in the lobby shouldn’t constitute a need for a rent increase. I’m talking about what’s affordable and about fairness.
Mr. Speaker, there is a lack of reasonable protection in the act for renters at this time. With these types of consumer-protection clauses that I talked about today, I certainly hope that we’ll be looking at that when the proposed Residential Tenancies Act comes forward to this Assembly for deliberation.
I want to close on two points. The first one is quite clear: you could double someone’s rent, and there’s nothing that could be done about it. The fact that somebody may say, “We would never do that,” doesn’t mean they don’t have the possibility to do that. The second point. Pontius Pilate once washed his hands of responsibility for making a fateful decision. He let the crowd determine the justice. Don’t let this government wash its hands of the responsibility for protecting our consumers, our constituents, our people, our family.
