ACORN demands Trudeau government stop financialized landlords

On Wednesday, April 12, ACORN held a Canada-wide day of action to blast the Trudeau government’s not stopping financialized landlords. The actions were held in 10 cities across Canada including Fredericton and Moncton in New Brunswick.

Fredericton and Moncton focused their actions on two very problematic areas that are having a major impact on the housing crisis across Canada. New Brunswickers feel this deep impact, perhaps even more, due to lack of tenant protections in the province.

In a recent ACORN housing survey, 63 per cent of tenants questioned didn’t know who their landlord actually is and for them, it is impossible to find out. Tenants know who their property manager is but they do not know who the actual owner of the builder is. Often such landlords are out of province or overseas, they buy up the buildings without even checking the condition of those buildings and when tenants need to complain about certain issues, such as maintenance or pests that may inhabit the building, they have no knowledge of who they should hold accountable.

Another troubling issue is that financialized landlords have bought a huge number of Canada’s affordable apartment buildings and they use these buildings to maximize their profit. This is very concerning because these buildings were originally built for low-moderate income people. Often we discover tenants in these buildings face unfair rent increases or maintenance not being carried out, which leads them to move. The landlord is then able to raise the rents of the new tenants moving in.

New Brunswick is already in the middle of a huge housing crisis and these two issues affect the lack of affordable housing in this province massively. Not only that, these issues affect low and moderate income
people the most.

The two rallies held in New Brunswick targeted Liberal MPs in Fredericton and Moncton. Tenants told the MPs they have had enough and the Federal government needs to step up and do more about Canada’s housing crisis.

Myself and two ACORN members protested outside Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin’s office to raise awareness that the federal government is letting tenants down. Atwin did come out to speak to the three of us to understand why we were there and we handed her a letter from ACORN with our demands.

After explaining the situation to her, she said there was a lot of information we had provided that she wasn’t aware of and that she would be interested in setting up a follow-up meeting to discuss the issues further. She told us that she and her team are often out door-knocking and housing has been the number one concern for the people they talk to.

NB ACORN’s co-chairs, Peter Jongeneelen and Vanessa Jones, led the Moncton rally from outside a Killam building on Main Street to MP Ginette Petitpas Taylor’s office to discuss the same issues. Unfortunately, Petitipas Taylor was not in her office, so they spoke to her assistant and handed ACORN’s letter to him.

ACORN is calling on mandate disclosure of property ownership across all provinces as well as an end to financialized landlords buying more affordable housing. Limits should be set on how many buildings they can buy.

As a tenant said to me, when we were discussing the worsening housing crisis, it is no longer a housing crisis but a housing catastrophe.

Both the provincial and federal governments have let tenants down in New Brunswick and it has had a heavy impact on those tenants who are on low/moderate incomes the most. It is quite simple, more needs to be done and the governments, provincially and federally, need to step up!

ACORN Canada President Marva Burnette said: “ACORN wants the federal government to act before all the affordable housing is gone. Each year in Canada, 64,000 affordable existing units are lost. The National Housing Strategy plans to build only 16,000 affordable units per year. The Liberal Government had an opportunity to offer real policy solutions when it announced its Budget 2023. Instead they were silent on tackling the deepening housing crisis.”

Tenants have let the federal and provincial governments know that housing is one of the most vital issues they are concerned about. It is time that both MPs and MLAs took tenants seriously. We have been struggling for years now. Housing is a right for everyone, not just for the few who have enough money to cause the housing crisis to go from a crisis to a housing catastrophe.

For more information about what ACORN is demanding from the federal government, please check out our National Housing Platform here.

Nichola Taylor is the Chair of NB ACORN. ACORN is a nation-wide network of tenants and low to moderate-income people.