SASK. NDP ANNOUNCES PLAN TO ADDRESS RENT AFFORDABILITY CONCERNS

NDP Leader Carla Beck made the announcement in a downtown Regina park Tuesday morning, flanked by nominees and current MLAs. She said affordability has been the No. 1 issue expressed by the public during her party’s pre-election, door-knocking sessions in anticipation of the coming fall vote.

“We’ll protect tenants from excessive and unreasonable rent increases and will protect landlords by bringing back the option for direct payment for social services clients,” she said.

A return to direct payment has been a long-standing call from landlords in Saskatchewan after changes were made to social assistance programs between 2019 and 2021.

Consultation with housing organizations, tenants and landlords alike will form the backbone of the act, stated Beck and NDP housing critic Meara Conway.

According to a report in early September from Urbanation and Rentals.ca, which analyzes monthly rental listings, Saskatchewan has the lowest average rent in Canada ($1,338), but its numbers are also the fastest growing. The province saw rent costs rise 21.4 per cent from September 2023 to September 2024.

Conway stopped short of calling it rent control but said the province is an outlier because “there is absolutely no maximum increase that a renter may be charged by a landlord month-over-month.”

Conway pointed to a “rent increase guideline” — similar to what’s currently used in Ontario — as an example to draw upon when crafting the policy. A Government of Ontario news release from June 2023 said the province was “holding the rent increase guideline for 2024 at 2.5 per cent.”

When a landlord feels rent needs to increase beyond the prescribed limit, they can make a case to do so, Conway said.

With 3,000 vacant units owned by the provincial housing authority, Beck said the NDP would put $10 million toward bringing a portion of those back online in her first year, and make all province-owned vacant units available for rent within four years of forming government, if elected.

“We should be putting these units into the market,” said Beck. “We should be making them available to people who need housing.”

Conway and Beck presented the initiative as one method to help alleviate strains within the rental market, since many people currently vying for public housing are renting from the private sector. This has contributed to a low vacancy rate among private housing options, they argued.

“We’ll drive down the cost of rent by increasing the supply of rental units in the market and give families an opportunity to have a roof over their heads that they can actually afford,” said Beck.