New Brunswick tenants coalition calls for apartment owners to back off

The New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants Rights and ACORN NB are calling out the New Brunswick Apartment Owners’ Association (NBAOA) for its tactic of pressuring tenants to side politically with landlords.

Over the weekend, a flyer was circulated to tenants in Colpitts buildings, and possibly other buildings, calling on tenants to pressure the Higgs government to cut taxes on landlords or face rent increases of as much as $700.

The flyer has the name of the NBAOA on it and it pressures tenants to contact the premier if they don’t want rent increases.

“This constitutes harassment,” says Jael Duarte, the Coalition’s tenant advocate. “Landlords are threatening tenants to raise the rent if they don’t comply with their demands, it clearly shows how the housing crisis in New Brunswick is a human rights issue” she said.

ACORN activist Sarah Lunney said “extending the provincial exemption to landlords does not guarantee protections for tenants. What does protect tenants is rent control.”

New Brunswick legislation does not protect tenants from any kind of rental price increase, nor does it allow for tenants to receive any benefit from lower taxes for their landlords.

However, property taxes are a deductible expense for landlords, according to a joint tax-law analysis by the NB Coalition for Tenants Rights and the University of New Brunswick Law Tax Clinic. The tax increases reflect rising assessments on property owned by landlords.

To restrain rent increases, the Coalition and ACORN NB are renewing their demand that the province implement rent control.

“The proposed tax cuts are just another form of trickle down economics. It is the same solution that has caused the problem of rental shortages,” says Lunney.

Moreover, ACORN and the Coalition remind tenants that the apartment owners’ proposal runs directly against their interests, and will lead to yet more rental inflation.

“Apartment owners are proposing a solution to a business problem without thinking of the effects on the rental housing market,” says Matthew Hayes, a spokesperson for the Coalition, and a professor of Sociology at St. Thomas University.

“Corporations bought up New Brunswick apartment buildings at record prices during the pandemic, and that is why our property taxes are now going up—there is a property bubble. Extending a homeowner tax credit to corporate landlords will only make it more profitable for those buyers, and not surprisingly, more of them will come shopping here,” Hayes says.

While the province seems keen to invite new investment in the apartment sector, Hayes notes that corporate landlords are not building new affordable housing units—they are just moving them up the market, often without adding any value to the properties. “Their proposal for countering property tax increases will just lead to more property price inflation, and therefore, higher taxes and more rent increases.”

“The only measure that we know can halt this and dampen speculative investment in New Brunswick’s rental housing sector is rent control and protections against eviction,” says Kristi Allain, a spokesperson for the Coalition.

The NB Coalition for Tenants Rights and ACORN NB have proposed that the province bring in rent control attached to rental units, so that corporate landlords cannot just increase rents when tenants turn over in apartments.

“It is an important measure to protect New Brunswick’s affordable rental housing,” says Lunney from ACORN.