NDP, Grits make appeals to renters

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This article was published 25/08/2023 (742 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s NDP and Liberal leaders made pitches to tenants on Friday by promising to boost tax credits, toughen legislation governing rent hikes and secure affordable and social housing units for low-income earners.

New Democratic Party Leader Wab Kinew pledged to give renters a $700 tax credit at a cost of $26.7 million annually, if his party wins the Oct. 3 election.

The income tax credit would restore cuts made in 2021 when the Tories reduced a renters tax credit to $525. It was replaced with the residential renters tax credit in 2022.

Kinew said an NDP government would also amend laws that award above-guideline-rent increases to landlords who make improvements to their properties or report increased operating expenses.

“(Premier) Heather Stefanson and the (Progressive Conservatives) have allowed landlords to charge rent hikes that far exceed the provincial guidelines. Under her leadership, rent control rules are so lax that landlords can impose big hikes with only a few months’ notice,” Kinew said outside an apartment tower in the Kirkfield Park constituency, which is represented by Tory MLA Kevin Klein.

“If we have rent control in this province, should you really have to become a full-time activist just to be able to pay your bills. I think not,” Kinew said. “We need to strike a new balance that tips things back in favour of you the renters, you the tenants, you the folks who are struggling to pay your bills during this time of record inflation in recent memory.”

The Residential Tenancies Board permitted landlords to raise tenants’ rent by an average nine per cent, with hikes ranging between five and 126 per cent, in the first half of 2022, the Free Press reported in November. The province set rent control guidelines at zero per cent for both 2022 and 2023.

Hikes were approved despite the Tory government issuing property tax rebate cheques to Manitoba landlords amid the two-year freeze. The province has set the rent increase guideline at three per cent in 2024.

New Democrats introduced a private member’s bill last year aimed at limiting eligible expenditures considered in an above-guideline-increase application and only permit applications for “extraordinary increases” in utility costs, taxation or capital expenditures. The bill did not pass first reading.

Kinew said some elements of that bill would make into government-sponsored legislation, if the NDP is elected. He said rent controls would be given teeth while respecting landlords who maintain properties and invest in them.

“We’d have to look at ensuring there’s real improvements being made, real investments on the capital side that the renter is certainly going to welcome because it makes their place better to stay, but also strike that balance around affordability,” he said.

Kinew also pledged to create an approval process for non-profit and co-operative entities that want to divest properties built with public funds intended for affordable housing. The process would be aimed at ensuring renters’ rights and affordability measures are maintained, he said.

For their part, Liberals also promised to bring in tough new rules to crack down on “reno-victions” and above-guideline-increases, which leader Dougald Lamont described as unacceptable.

He vowed to house homeless people within one day of them applying for assistance, by 2025, and better support tenants with policy changes, if his party wins the election.

“Being homeless, for that individual, is an emergency. It’s not something that can be put off or handled another day,” Lamont said at a news conference at Coronation Park on Friday. “The act of becoming homeless, for people, is traumatic in itself.”

By 2025, the Liberals said no one would be sleeping in parks or bus shelters under their program.

Lamont tied the commitment to ending homelessness to reconciliation, noting that 68 per cent of the homeless and 89 per cent of those who sleep outdoors in Winnipeg are Indigenous, according to the 2022 Winnipeg Street Census.

Additionally, half of those surveyed for the census had been wards of the child welfare system at some point in their lives. To address this, Lamont said the Liberals plan to transform child and family services, noting that some have described it as a “modern residential school.”

“In the last 20 years, the Manitoba government was seizing thousands of Indigenous children from their families. They also seized the federal child allowance for those children when supports ended when they were 18,” Lamont said. “That is why those individuals are immediately being made homeless.”

To further prevent homelessness, the Liberals plan to create dedicated shelters for women and families in Winnipeg, Thompson and Brandon, and will ensure high standards of safety, security and pest control in Manitoba Housing buildings.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca

cierra.bettens@freepress.mb.ca