By Manuel Johnson
On Quebec’s traditional July 1 moving day this year, over 1,600 households were unable to find a lease for the coming year. They now have to be temporarily housed by friends, family or the state, or camp out in public spaces.
This comes as no surprise for working-class tenants who bear the brunt of skyrocketing rents, low vacancy rates, abusive evictions and landlord harassment. Relatively affordable apartments listed for rent see hundreds of potential tenants lining up to visit, and those with a better financial situation will even offer the landlord more than the listed rent to get their hands on that extremely rare commodity, a decent and affordable place to live.
After decades of disinvestment, construction of social housing is at a standstill. This situation gives landlords, and particularly corporate landlords, the big end of the stick, allowing them to increase substantially their profit margins. Of course, the real-estate monopolies know this as well. They don’t just know it – they brag about it openly in their annual reports.
I recently had the chance to confront the brazen arrogance of one of Canada’s giant real-estate investment trusts, CAPREIT, in front of the Administrative Housing Tribunal of Quebec.
At issue was the “frequent late rent payments” of my clients. One of them was working, and the other received welfare payments. Although they are simply roommates, the Quebec government determined they were a couple and cut off welfare payments. This meant they couldn’t make rent on the first of the month, and then started a pattern of paying the rent towards the end of the month. They never missed a rent payment; they were just paying it two to three weeks late.
In Quebec, a rent paid more than three weeks late creates an absolute presumption of “serious harm” and results in the eviction of the tenant if the rent is not paid at the time of the hearing. As for “frequent late payments,” in principle the “serious harm” is not presumed so the landlord has to prove it. In practice, many judges take it for granted that several late payments cause serious harm, because of the “administrative burden” imposed on the landlord to collect the rent.
In this case, CAPREIT claimed that the administrative burden caused by the frequent late payments justified throwing my clients out into the street, even though they didn’t owe any rent at the time of hearing. To refute the claim that serious harm was caused by these late payments, I produced CAPREIT’s latest financial reports.
For the beginning of 2024, CAPREIT was able to report “another quarter of solid results.” Profits are up, costs are down: “Operationally, occupancy remained high and turnover low, an ongoing reflection of a Canadian housing market in crisis. This continues to drive demand for CAPREIT’s rental accommodation.”
For CAPREIT, the housing crisis is a rose garden. “This past quarter, robust rent growth and low vacancy rates were augmented by a decrease in operating costs.” We know that one of the main ways corporate landlords decrease operating costs is by skimping on or delaying repairs. In a housing crisis, as underlined in CAPREIT’s report, tenants will want to stay put instead of moving out of a poorly maintained apartment.
CAPREIT operates 57,289 apartments in Canada, and 6,862 in the Netherlands. The total value of their assets is nearly $17 billion, which is higher than the GDP of many countries. Their “net operating income” rate, or profit, was 64.1 percent for the first quarter of 2024, up 7.6 percent from the same period of 2023. This translates into $182 million in profits in the first quarter. CAPREIT has a cushion of $370 million in liquid assets.
And my clients paying their rent 3 weeks late causes them “serious harm”?
In response to this argument, the CAPREIT representative claimed the late payments costs the company in terms of lost interest revenues. Calculated at the legal interest rate, the late payments over the course of a year would have cost CAPREIT $61.16 in lost interest.
With these numbers, you may assume that CAPREIT’s application for eviction is bound to be rejected. Unfortunately, jurisprudence has the tendency to favour property rights over basic human rights, like the right to housing. So there is still a risk that these tenants could be evicted over $61.16 in lost interest revenue, while CAPREIT goes on making record-breaking profits off the housing crisis. The judgment will be issued sometime before the end of September.
Support working-class media!
If you found this article useful, please consider donating to People’s Voice or purchasing a subscription so that you get every issue of Canada’s leading socialist publication delivered to your door or inbox!
For over 100 years, we have been 100% reader-supported, with no corporate or government funding.
