This Ontario tenant will soon have to pay $350 more on rent every month. This is why it's allowed
An Ontario tenant will soon have to pay $350 more in rental fees every month – a 17.5 per cent hike her landlord is set to enforce in less than two weeks.
“It’s really maddening,” Kara Petrunick, a naturopath in St. Catharines, Ont., told CTV News Toronto.
She left Toronto for the Niagara Region during the pandemic to live and work closer to family.
When she moved in Feb. 2021, her rent for a three-bedroom townhouse on Russell Avenue cost $2,000-a-month. She recognized the price tag was high, but the local rental market was limited and it was the best she could find.
Two years after she moved in, on Feb. 28, she said she found a note was taped to her door announcing a 17.5 per cent rent increase set to go into effect in June.
“Of course, it comes as a shock,” she said.
Ontario capped the maximum a landlord could increase rent at 2.5 per cent in 2023.
However, that rule does not apply to new buildings first occupied after Nov. 15, 2018. The Ford government scrapped rent control for these units to “stimulate the construction of new rental housing,” a spokesperson for Ontario’s Minister of Housing told CTV News Toronto.
Ontario resident Kara Petrunick's rent is set to be raised $350-per-month in June (Supplied).
The problem with this model, says Douglas Kwan, director of advocacy and legal services at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, is these newly built rentals won’t become affordable for 10 to 15 years, once the units age and are no longer as hot on the market.
- Are you living in a rental unit built after 2018? Has your rent increased more than 2.5 per cent? Reach us at torontotips@bellmedia.ca
“We’ve seen so many horror stories of just every day Ontarians seeing double digit increases because of the rent control exemptions for post 2018 units,” Kwan said.
'FEAR AND RISK'
Up until this point, Petrunick’s rent had never been increased past $2,000, which she credits to unfinished renovations on her townhouse.
According to Petrunick, the landscaping was left as dirt and mud, no fences were put up between the townhouses, and there were gaping holes in her floors instead of heating grilles. She also said the appliances in some of her neighbourhoods’ homes were never hooked up.
In an effort to negotiate the rent hike, she sent a letter cosigned by neighbours, offering a 5 to 9 per cent increase, instead of 17.5 per cent.
In response, her landlord said he sympathized with the current state of living and faced the same dilemmas with the cost of mortgages, insurance, property tax and maintenance costs.
“This is the first increase I have provided since you occupied the unit and purposely did not increase until now and tried to hold off as long as possible, but the expenses have gone to a point where I am unable to hold off on increasing rental prices,” they wrote in a letter reviewed by CTV News Toronto.
Petrunick’s landlord has not responded to CTV News Toronto’s interview requests.
While Petrunick said she can afford the current rent increase, she worries about the uncertainty looming in the future.
“I can stay, but what about next year? What about the year after? Am I going to be hit with a $1,000 increase next year just because they can?,” There is a lot of fear and risk in speaking out, but Niagara is my home,” she said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6976926.1721883767!/httpImage/image.png_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.png)
DEVELOPING Alberta's request for federal assistance approved after fast-moving wildfire hit Jasper National Park: Trudeau
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on social media that Ottawa has approved Alberta's request for federal assistance after a fast-moving wildfire hit Jasper National Park and its townsite late Wednesday.
Loblaw, George Weston to settle class action over bread price-fixing for $500 million
Loblaw Cos. Ltd. and its parent company George Weston Ltd. say they have agreed to pay $500-million to settle a class-action lawsuit regarding their involvement in an alleged bread price-fixing scheme.
EXCLUSIVE One address, 76 foreign currency dealers: Inside Canada's money service business 'clusters'
An IJF and CTV News investigation has found dozens of cases across Canada where multiple money services businesses (MSBs) are incorporated at the same address, sometimes without the knowledge or consent of the location's actual occupant. One money laundering expert calls it an 'abuse of the system.'
U.K. police officer suspended after video appears to show a man being kicked in head
A British police officer was suspended from all duties Thursday after a video was posted on social media that appeared to show an officer kicking and stamping on the head of a man lying on the floor of a terminal at Manchester Airport.
'I'm so broke': Two Toronto women speak out after losing $76,000 in romance scam
Two women from the Toronto area are speaking out after losing thousands of dollars to a romance scam, including a single mother who lost $62,000.
Barrie-Innisfil MPP 'blacked-out' and crashed car into window of child care centre
Staff at a Barrie child care centre say they are frustrated by what they call a local MPP's inadequate response after a car crashed through a window in one of the toddler rooms.
Norad intercepts Russian and Chinese bombers operating together near Alaska in apparent first
The North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) intercepted two Russian and two Chinese bombers flying near Alaska Wednesday in what appears to be the first time the two countries have been intercepted while operating together.
Biden explains why he ended re-election bid in Oval Office address
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday delivered a solemn call to voters to defend the country's democracy as he laid out in an Oval Office address his decision to drop his bid for reelection and throw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris.
Jasper mayor says alert system to be reviewed after message 'glitch'
More than 25,000 people have been displaced from Jasper National Park since wildfires started to threaten the picturesque corner of Alberta Rockies on Monday, but the mayor of its namesake municipality says not everyone received an evacuation alert when it was sent out.