Yeah, Sure.
In a warped example of ‘those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, the Conservative Party currently forming Ontario’s government hasn’t learned, so Toronto renters are doomed to repeat history.
Almost thirty years ago, construction and financial industry lobbyists convinced the Conservative government of the day that removing rent controls on newly built rental housing would ensure that new rental housing would get built. Rent controls legislated in 1975 remained in place for older housing, thank heavens. (Full disclosure: the author lives in an older apartment.)
So they did — removed rent controls on rental buildings constructed after 1991.
And did the construction industry build any? No. Their attention was entirely elsewhere — building downtown condos for the financial industry to flip, complete with a condo-rental backstop for absentee owners that allowed them to jack up rents for those condo units lease by lease.
That’s history.
Well, the most recent (Liberal) government learned. Last year it reinstated rent controls on newer rental buildings.
Woah! Rental building developers announced that their ‘imminent’ plans to build rental accommodation (which had been nowhere in sight a moment before) had been dashed upon the rocks with rent controls once again in effect.
Alas, almost immediately came a change of government. Liberals gone. Conservatives incoming, having clearly learned nothing from recent history (at least nothing reflecting the interests of their renter-constituents).
The Conservatives promptly rescinded rent controls on new rental buildings. Read more in the Toronto Star: Housing minister says nixing rent control on new units will ‘solve’ lack of supply
And so we wait with bated breath for the rental housing developers to announce the reinstatement of all those projects that were so cruelly squashed by the Liberal steamroller.
Ain’t going to happen. But don’t take our word for it. UBC’s Centre for Social Innovation and Impact Investing lays out why the private sector does not invest in purpose built rental housing. See pages 21 to 24: Investing in Affordable Housing: BC, Canada, and the World
Read some of the predicted Ontario consequences at the CBC: Rent control reforms could mark return to sky-high increases for Toronto tenants, advocates warn
Hope you’re paying, attention, California, with your failed proposition 10. All those warnings that rental buildings won’t be built under rent controls? You’ll find out what you already know. They won’t be built anyway, with or without.
Meanwhile, those who might have benefited from a little affordable housing stability in their lives might well be be driven from town.
