Rents go through the roof in New Brunswick

Rent has gone through the roof in New Brunswick again, the second highest increase in the country, according to the latest Statistics Canada data.

The Consumer Price Index information, released Tuesday, showed that between April 2023 and April 2024, the average rent in the province went up 10.8 per cent.

"Five or six years ago, when a landlord gave you an increase you couldn't afford, you were able to find an apartment you could afford," said Nichola Taylor, the cochair of Acorn NB, a branch of a national organization of low-to-moderate income families fighting for economic and social justice.

"But now people are really stuck and have to make big choices, like paying the rent or paying for the electricity and groceries. And all of that has increased as well. Life is a lot harder now, so we need new rent control measures."

New Brunswick's increase is higher than the Canadian average of an 8.2 per cent hike. Only Alberta's, at +16.2 per cent, was higher.

New Brunswick's was also worse than the increases in neighbouring provinces, such as Quebec (+9.2 per cent), Nova Scotia (+9.3 per cent) and Prince Edward Island (+4.1 per cent).

The other two Maritime provinces have rent caps - New Brunswick does not - and Quebec's overall rent controls are stricter.

But New Brunswick's housing minister cautioned against looking at the latest statistic in isolation.

In an interview on Wednesday, Jill Green pointed out that New Brunswick still has one of the lowest average rents in the country - even if it is inching closer and closer to the Canadian average - and home ownership remains among the highest in the country.

"There's a good story here, not just a negative story," she insisted, pointing to the success of the housing strategy the Progressive Conservative government introduced June 25 of last year.

She said she plans on looking closely at all the data on the oneyear anniversary of the strategy and promises to make tweaks where there might still be some shortcomings.

Among the targets in the strategy are at least 6,000 housing starts a year and holding annual rent increases to an average of 2.5 per cent.

It also aimed to reduce the number of people on the waitlist for social housing from 11,000 to 7,500 by 2026.

New Brunswick set a record pace for development in January, February and March, with 750 housing starts. It is traditionally the slowest period of the year for construction and the building is expected to accelerate further.

But it is still a far cry from fulfilling the need - apartment vacancies are at a record low of 1.5 per cent as of last year and neighbouring Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia have seen even faster builds.

Green said she is trying to find the middle ground between tenants'rights groups and landlords who both argue for very different government measures to making housing more affordable.

"We have to look at all the numbers and try to balance things," the minister said. "Because we need units built and at the same time protect existing tenants. We do have rent controls and we're certainly looking at them all the time."

Acorn, for instance, wants the return of a rent cap that could be tied to normal inflation and a complete overhaul of the Residential Tenancies Act to give the upper hand to tenants in disputes with their landlords.

It also wants a rental registry that would provide a public listing of all the apartment unit rents in the province, so that tenants can shop and compare.

"We may not have a rent cap, but we do have rent control," Green said. "Landlords can't just raise rent as they want. They do have to go through a process that's become stricter. We are keeping them to modest increases because of the controls we have in place."

A former high-tech business executive, Green was unfamiliar with the idea of a rental registry but pledged to investigate it.

Meanwhile, the New Brunswick Apartment Owners Association on Wednesday repeated its demands for tax relief to lower rent costs.

Willy Scholten, the association president, said the Tory government should continue to lower the so-called double tax on non-owner-occupied residential properties. The province has relieved half of those costs already, but the association wants it completely gone.

He points out that thanks to higher property assessments, the average tax hike has gone up 10 per cent this year and could go up another 10 per cent for three more years in a row.

The association has also renewed demands for the province to eliminate sales tax on new home construction, a move that's already spurred more development in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

"We are already hearing of developers moving their development plans to other provinces," Scholten wrote in an email. "We have to have more development and removing the provincial sales tax will have a big impact. By not doing this we will be turning away development that will go elsewhere and for developments that continue here will need to add this cost to their asking rents."

Green, however, remained unconvinced. By lowering those taxes, the government would be starved of tens of millions in revenue that it uses to pay for public services.

"I've talked to Willy Scholten about this many times," she said. "I'm not there yet. It's never a hard 'no," I've always said that, but I'm not sold on it, and I've been clear with Willy on that as well."

She said rather than give blanket help to landlords - who would decide themselves whether to pass along any savings to their tenants - she wants more targeted measures to make housing affordable.

"We have to see a direct benefit to tenants if we put measures in place," she said. "Rather than using a sledgehammer on something, we could use something very small and delicate to take care of the situation."

John Chilibeck, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Daily Gleaner