Quebec Landlords Corporation

By Dan Laxer
The Suburban

The Suburban reported last week on the recommended rent increases in Quebec at nearly 6 percent, the highest it’s been in three decades. Now groups are calling on Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau to do something to pull it back.

The groups include not just housing organizations and tenants’ groups, but also provincial opposition parties – the Quebec Landlords Corporation (CORPIQ), the Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants Associations of Quebec (RECLALQ) the Liberal Party, and Québec Solidaire.

They are calling on a change to the formula used to come up with the annual rent increases. Liberal Housing Critic Virginie Dufour says she would like to see a committee made up of both landlords and tenants who could come up with a new formula that would take into account landlords’ actual expenses, but that would be clearer for tenants.

Québec Solidaire Housing Critic Andrés Fontecilla agreed. But first and foremost, he says, is to rein in the newly announced rent increase. He says it should be capped at Quebec’s yearly consumer price index, which for 2024 would be 2.3 percent.

CORPIQ’s Eric Sansoucy, however, said this year’s increase is good for landlords, helping them mitigate increased costs. He does acknowledge that this year’s rent increase is high, and that the formula does need to be looked at, but that it’s also not the first time the increase was excessive. In 2022, for example, inflation was at 6.7 percent, and the recommended rent increase was up to five percent. He suggests landlords’ profit index be tied into the inflation rate, averaged over three years, to bring rent increases to levels that benefit both landlords and tenants.

But representatives from RECLALQ insist that the formula shouldn’t even include profits. Moreover, it says rent should be frozen until a better system can be set up for calculating increases. Fontecilla says a freeze would be unfair to landlords who if they can’t cover their costs, would find themselves in the untenable position of having to sell to corporations, which in turn would exacerbate the housing crisis. He says there has to be a balance.

Premier François Legault will not intervene, saying the TAL should be independent of the government, even though, as Fontecilla points out, they intervened to limit Hydro-Québec rate hikes. He says the government should intervene. And between now and the end of March – the period in which landlords have to issue notifications for July 1 increases – the government has plenty of time. n