We know from our experience that low-income tenants are disadvantaged in the housing market because of inadequacies in the provincial laws that regulate their relations with their landlords. The federal government should encourage strong provincial tenant protection policies. These would include effective rent regulation, protection of the rental housing stock, security of tenure, and fair and accessible dispute resolution that is integrated with homelessness prevention measures.
Comprehensive rent regulation can prevent rent gouging during market upswings, encourage stability in the rental market, and keep long-standing tenants from being pushed out of their homes and neighbourhoods by dramatic rent increases.
We'd like to make just a few brief comments on housing first, which is championed by many as a solution to homelessness. Housing first targets long-term chronically homeless individuals who live on the streets or in shelters. Most of these individuals are men. Many have addictions, often concurrent with a mental health issue. But housing first fails to address the problem of the hidden homeless, and those are the estimated 50,000 people who don't live on the streets or in shelters but who are without a safe, permanent, and stable home on any given night in Canada. As well, housing first doesn't address the prevention of homelessness.
To reduce poverty, we need innovative thinking, but we can't forsake what has worked in the past and what continues to work for hundreds of thousands of Canadians, which is rent-geared-to-income subsidies, publicly owned rental housing, and laws to protect tenants from unfair or opportunistic behaviour by landlords and developers.
Thank you for your attention.