For those who no longer aspire to own a home for financial, environmental, or other reasons, their consolation prize is lousy – rising rents. Many Canadians will struggle to find a suitable rental among our too limited supply, particularly for family-sized units.  Check out this report for data on rising rent costs for all provinces and territories, as well as a number of communities across Canada. 

Building on our comprehensive housing solutions framework, here's a deep dive into what Canada can do to support renters and create affordable rental units. 

Our Goal: Level the playing field between owners and renters

Renting is an increasingly common way to make a home, especially as housing prices leave earnings far behind. For too many Canadians, rental markets are now a nightmare of insecurity, sky-high costs, intense competition, limited options, and a sense of being treated as second-class citizens. 

Gen Squeeze is working to level the playing field between renters and owners, to make it so Canadians can count on local rental housing for affordable, secure homes in which to live, raise families, save, and age.

Guiding principle: renters aren't second-class citizens

In public policy, finances, and community life, renters are often at a disadvantage.

Many housing and tax policies favour homeowners, e.g. with capital gains exemptions, RRSP tax breaks, exclusionary zoning, and other measures. The home ownership tax shelter, which exempts wealth gained from rising home values from taxation, is the largest government expenditure on housing. Finance Canada pegged the cost to the federal government of this exemption at approximately $10 billion for 2022, with billions accruing billions more in costs. 

At the same time, too many neighbourhoods resist the addition of new rental housing units, viewing renters as a problem rather than a boon. These NIMBY attitudes help slow down or block much needed purpose build rental housing development.

We need to stop treating renters as second-class citizens, and instead support them with adequate, affordable rental housing supply; and by disrupting costly policies that unfairly privilege home ownership.

Our basic plan

The housing system is interconnected. Restoring affordability for those who want to purchase a home will also help create breathing room in the rental market. We've got big picture plan to help tie it all together – but here we're drilling down on what to do to fix the rental market specifically. 

Build a culture that welcomes a diversity of rental housing and renters

Especially in urban, low-density neighbourhoods, though inclusionary zoning, countering NIMBYism, and adding the voices of those who'd like to live in a neighbourhood (not only those who live there now) to dialogue and planning about its future development.

Stabilize the existing rental market

Stabilizing the existing market means protecting our current stock of purpose-built rental (e.g. apartment buildings), and making sure we fully understand and regulate our secondary markets (e.g. rented condos and basement suites). It also means encouraging landlord certification (e.g. through third-party registries) and strong tenant relocation policies (e.g. when older buildings are renovated/redeveloped). 

Specific steps we can take include:

• Protecting existing purpose-built rental ("PBR") — by using rental-only zoning, replacement policies, rate of change policies and/or incentives for long-term maintenance, and improvement of existing rental housing. The goal is to avoid a net loss of PBR (e.g. converting it into condos).   
  
  
• Understanding and regulating the secondary market — by gathering data on "secondary" units (often the majority of rentals), more flexibly regulating those that are illegal/unpermitted to help both renters and landlords, and regulating short-term rentals to balance homeowner and renter needs.    
  
  
• Encouraging landlords to get certified — by using registries like this one in B.C., which serves as quality assurance, and assists renters in identifying knowledgeable landlords who are committed to providing safe, secure, professional rental housing.
  
  
• Ensuring strong tenant relocation policies — that spell out tenants' access to e.g. right of first refusal on new/upgraded units, assistance finding a new home, help with moving costs, affordability guarantees, or other financial compensation when rental homes are renovated, redeveloped, or lost.  
  

Build LOTS of new rental homes

To kick-start a wave of new market and non-profit rental, we should eliminate exclusionary zoning that unfairly confines new rental housing to noisy roads or downtown cores. We should use streamlined processes, tax incentives, and other supports to make it cheaper and easier to build a diversity of rental homes — the recent federal decision to eliminate the GST on new rental housing development is a good start. And we should leverage public and institutionally-owned land to build price-capped, permanently affordable supply.

Specific steps we can take include:

• Protect existing purpose-built rental ("PBR") — by using rental-only zoning, replacement policies, rate of change policies and/or incentives for long-term maintenance, and improvement of existing rental housing. The goal is to avoid a net loss of PBR (e.g. converting it into condos).   
  
  
• Understand and regulate the secondary market — by gathering data on "secondary" units (often the majority of rentals), more flexibly regulating those that are illegal/unpermitted to help both renters and landlords, and regulating short-term rentals to balance homeowner and renter needs.    
  
  
• Encourage landlords to get certified — by using registries like this one in B.C., which serves as quality assurance, and assists renters in identifying knowledgeable landlords who are committed to providing safe, secure, professional rental housing.
  
  
• Ensure strong tenant relocation policies — that spell out tenants' access to e.g. right of first refusal on new/upgraded units, assistance finding a new home, help with moving costs, affordability guarantees, or other financial compensation when rental homes are renovated, redeveloped, or lost.  
  

Rebalance our tax system to address massive wealth inequalities between renting and home ownership 

Specifically, this tax shift means reducing taxes on income, and growing taxes on housing. We can dial up taxes on housing wealth windfalls many owners have gained from rising prices, via putting a price on housing inequity. Doing so will help address massive wealth inequalities between renters and owners, created by decades of government policy and recent runaway markets. And it will help drive down housing costs, everywhere, for both renters and prospective owners.