Rabble Rants: Renters' Bill of Rights
***Please subscribe to the Rabble Rants feed to keep getting these episodes. Its available anywhere you get Blueprints of Disruption.***
Liberals Announce Plans for a Renters' Bill of Rights
In an attempt to sway young voters, mostly renters, Trudeau and the Liberals have announced what they are calling a Renters' Bill of Rights. It includes some funding for legal aid, plans to tie rental payment history to credit scores and other measures aimed at the landlord/tenant relationship.
Host Jessa McLean goes through the plans, their viability and flags some of the ways these measures could actually harm tenants and their ability to push back against bad landlords and sky high rents.
____________
All of our content is free - made possible by the generous sponsorships of our Patrons. If you would like to support us: Patreon
Resources:
Transcript
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into
Speaker:misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that
Speaker:gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and
Speaker:unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More
Speaker:than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent.
Speaker:Welcome to Rabble Rants. I'm Santiago Gelo Quintero, and alongside Jess McLean, we're going to unpack
Speaker:the stories that have us most riled up and challenge the narratives around them. Last week Trudeau
Speaker:in another pre-budget announcement made some promises around tenant rights, which if you've
Speaker:been listening to the show is something we've been talking about quite a bit. As always,
Speaker:I look at these announcements with… Perhaps an unhealthy level of skepticism, but I'll
Speaker:do my best to break it down with as much of Santiago's hopefulness as possible because
Speaker:he's not with me today. But before I go over the actual details of the announcement and
Speaker:give my two cents, I'd like to ask you to share the episode with a comrade or two. Our content
Speaker:is for the masses, so your boosts absolutely make a difference in getting the word out there.
Speaker:Be sure to tag us at BP of disruption so we can brag about it. All right, back to the liberals.
Speaker:I'll give them a bright spot before I tear apart the details of their appeal to renters. One
Speaker:thing this announcement and all the talk around it does is give a nod to very pressing issues
Speaker:for renters. Things like high rent, run evictions, and abusive landlords. To have the prime minister
Speaker:get up there on his platform and say those terms even, renovations and abusive landlords, I
Speaker:mean, he doesn't just acknowledge their issues that face a lot of people, but he also implies
Speaker:by his actions and his words that it's the government's role to intervene. Now, how much he can actually
Speaker:intervene is yet to be tested. There are provincial jurisdiction issues around the feds. implementing
Speaker:this, but it surely is a standard to set that to say out loud in his position that the exploitive
Speaker:housing market isn't going to fix itself. That being said, it also isn't going to be fixed
Speaker:by these changes either. Nor do I think he's being sincere in what he's doing, but that
Speaker:will become obvious to you as I go through this. Now, I know most folks probably are aware of
Speaker:high rents, that they exist. 30% of people here in Ontario rent and rent, they've just skyrocketed
Speaker:over the past four years in particular. The issue has been covered extensively, but rent
Speaker:evictions hasn't nearly gotten enough attention. We did an episode in March with organizers
Speaker:from Acorn Ottawa and Hamilton on exactly this. Their report that Acorn Ontario just right
Speaker:before that interview is eye-opening. And it only shows a portion of the picture. They pulled
Speaker:all their data, like most folks do, from the records that are available. But they made sure
Speaker:to note over and over that the reality is many landlords don't have to or won't register with
Speaker:any kind of authority. Most landlord-tenant relationships are what you would call off the
Speaker:books. And so the situation is... always worse than what the data will show. That relationship
Speaker:also makes the implementation of a lot of suggested policies very difficult. Either way, rent eviction
Speaker:rates in places like Ottawa have gone up over like 500%. This is a trend that's seen right
Speaker:across the country. Ottawa is in particularly bad, but all urban centers are suffering from
Speaker:this. And it's trends like these that pave the way for extremely high rent. To get an idea
Speaker:of the impact that they have and how folks are organizing against rent evictions, be sure
Speaker:to listen to that interview. We called the episode, Fighting Rent Evictions Locally with Ontario
Speaker:Acorn. And another thing that they talked about in that interview was the need for legal advice
Speaker:when folks are being served with an eviction notice or harassed by landlords. And that brings
Speaker:us to the first detail. We don't get many details of this liberal announcement that we're talking
Speaker:about. the renter's rights announcement. The liberals have promised $15 million in a tenant
Speaker:protection fund. This has been earmarked in the spring budget, which we are expecting on
Speaker:April 15th. What that $15 million is supposed to do is be dispersed throughout their country
Speaker:and fund legal aid organizations. The kind of organizations that would help tenants in their
Speaker:fight against rent evictions and abusive landlords and through their hearings at the landlord
Speaker:tenant boards and stuff like that. You know, rights aren't worth much if you can't defend
Speaker:them. All those rights that we have secured on paper in all of the charters and all of
Speaker:the legislation that has been passed, we can only protect them to the extent that we can
Speaker:challenge their violations in court. And as you know, this costs money, even for legal
Speaker:aid, even for pro bono lawyers, like they need to be funded in some sort of way. And as you
Speaker:can expect, their services are in high demand and in desperate need of funding. Folks fighting
Speaker:bad landlords typically can't afford lawyers. The same can't be said about their opponent.
Speaker:Many of these landlords aren't mom and pop operations. We debunked that in that episode with Ricardo
Speaker:Tranjen, the tenant class. Many of those landlords are actually huge corporations, which makes
Speaker:going up in legal battles against them very difficult. More often than not, folks just
Speaker:walk away, they get evicted, unless they're organizing well. But even still, that $15 million
Speaker:isn't... shit is what I'm trying to say. This is $15 million again. It's across the entire
Speaker:country. And just to give you a picture of the deficit that exists within the legal aid. In
Speaker:2019, the Ontario premier Doug Ford cut $113 million from their funding of legal aid. That
Speaker:was like 30% of their funding. So they need a lot of money. Under austerity measures, these
Speaker:are one of the first services to go because they actually weaken our ability to fight back
Speaker:against the cuts and the violations of human rights that will occur because of those cuts.
Speaker:And so strategically, these services have been cut across Canada for some time. Sharing $15
Speaker:million. I mean, I'm sure it's welcome. When you're desperate for crumbs, you will take
Speaker:anything people offer you. So it's not unwanted. But for them to stand up there and say that
Speaker:they're creating some sort of fund and it's groundbreaking, it's not. Not at all. This
Speaker:is actually peanuts. But at least it's in the budget. That's more than you can say about
Speaker:the pharmacare. I'm sure that $50 million will be gobbled up quite quickly because these legal
Speaker:funds will surely be used trying to secure the next Liberal Promise. We have no idea what
Speaker:it'll look like, but the Liberals are promising to craft a Canadian renter's Bill of Rights.
Speaker:I love all these pre-budget announcements that totally lack any details, but we're all supposed
Speaker:to give them a lot of credibility for it. Either way, what we do know about it is it's supposed
Speaker:to create some sort of national standard lease agreement. I think, again, it's important to
Speaker:mention here that many landlords aren't registered with any kind of authority at the moment. Not
Speaker:the municipality, not the province. Some of them might be declaring it as income, but...
Speaker:As you know, many will not be. It's not a group that has been, you know, registered in a way
Speaker:that they can be held to the kind of standards that he's suggesting at the moment. So and
Speaker:that's not even with the whole provincial jurisdiction problem, even in jurisdictions where it is
Speaker:required for landlords to register or get some sort of credit nation. they will sidestep it,
Speaker:right? Like just like bad bosses. And so I'm unsure exactly how a standardized lease agreement
Speaker:is going to help anyone. They don't really have any authority to have this be a binding lease
Speaker:agreement. They can't prevent people from making modifications to a lease agreement. I think
Speaker:it's, they're really relying on people not understanding the details around a lot of these announcements.
Speaker:And so at face value, they seem like, okay, well it's something, but it's not. What are
Speaker:they going to do? Decide on the best model for a lease agreement and upload a PDF to one of
Speaker:their websites? I'm not sure. But another thing that they want to add into this Bill of Rights
Speaker:is the requirement for landlords to disclose the rental history. How much did the person
Speaker:in that unit pay before you? I got to link Trudeau's video to the show notes here so you folks can
Speaker:see just how ridiculous he's approaching this point, how out of touch this man and his handlers
Speaker:are to think that people are able to negotiate with their landlords just simply because they
Speaker:knew how much the unit was going for before them. And this does nothing to address renovations,
Speaker:especially because the whole premise is like, hey, we upgraded the unit. And so now this
Speaker:is what it's worth. the market determines something's value. I know a lot of folks, again, it's one
Speaker:of these things that you're looking at it, it looks like it should be a good thing, it's
Speaker:something, it might be a tool. I don't, but I don't think anyone's as naive as Trudeau
Speaker:in thinking that just because you know how much the unit might have been worth, that that's
Speaker:some sort of ace up the sleeve. He's trying to play off that folks will be able to have
Speaker:leverage or he's addressing some sort of power imbalance. And you can't bargain fairly with
Speaker:someone that controls the rental rates and access to all of these units. Anybody who's applied
Speaker:to rent anywhere will know that. Sure, by law, they can't discriminate against people who
Speaker:are on ODSP or who have multiple children or pets. But the reality is they do. They don't
Speaker:need to give a reason why you didn't get the apartment when the supply is what it's at.
Speaker:And so if there's a competition, they simply just get to pick their best fit. And it's not
Speaker:first come first serve. There's no rules around it. So there's no negotiations that are able
Speaker:to take place. Jesus Christ, there's bidding wars going on for rental units. So there's
Speaker:the first person that tries to say to that. Landlord. Oh, yeah. Well, I know this unit
Speaker:was worth $500 less last month is off of the bidding war list Like they're not even going
Speaker:to be considered They can even have many vacant units in a building Especially the larger buildings
Speaker:and not be losing any money But if they started to lower rent simply based on the negotiating
Speaker:skills of prospective renters Surely that would start a trend. They don't want to start so
Speaker:Yes, that knowledge would be a good thing. You might feel validated in being angry in having
Speaker:to pay $700 more two years later. But I don't see that actually being able to lower our rents.
Speaker:This brings us to the last and my most objectionable detail of the announcement made by the liberals
Speaker:last week in terms of renters rights. Trudeau says our rent should count towards a whole
Speaker:lot more than just like the roof over our heads, I suppose. He thinks it should count towards
Speaker:things like our credit scores. All right. Now, credit scores are something that banks and
Speaker:other money lenders use to determine if you're worthy of a loan. This includes a mortgage,
Speaker:but also other things like car loans. And if you pay your rent on time, the liberals are
Speaker:suggesting they want the bank to be able to reward you with a better credit score. And
Speaker:again, on the surface, this might sound great. The people in the credit score commercials
Speaker:certainly looked smug as hell when their credit scores were higher than that of their friends.
Speaker:But let's just take a closer look at this. I'm sure there's a lot of renters out there that
Speaker:aspire to be homeowners, but renters aren't being denied mortgages because of their credit
Speaker:scores. People can't afford their rent in record numbers right now, let alone being able to
Speaker:pay the down payment on a house. and the costs that come with home ownership. This is on top
Speaker:of your mortgage. This affordability crisis has drained all of our bank accounts, which
Speaker:were, well, abysmal to start with, right? I don't care how good your credit score is. Have
Speaker:you seen the interest rates the Bank of Canada has set? The barrier to home ownership does
Speaker:not lay in the credit score system, okay? The credit score system sucks. I'm not gonna unpack
Speaker:it all here. It reinforces racial economic inequality. It is lacks any nuance and it's simply there
Speaker:to punish the poorest more. And the way that Trudeau sold this announcement, this part of
Speaker:the announcement, he made it seem like, oh, well, people who pay mortgages, they get to
Speaker:better their credit scores. Well, those same people who are missing their mortgage payments
Speaker:will tell you. that it also lowers their credit scores. People who rent apartments have other
Speaker:ways to raise their credit score if that's what they're worried about, if they can, right?
Speaker:This requires a lot of money either way. But he's trying to imply that people with mortgages
Speaker:all have really great credit scores and we know that that's not the case. And that's also to
Speaker:point out that presumably this tying to the credit score... goes both ways. Late payments
Speaker:would also count against your score. I can't see them setting up a system that didn't have
Speaker:penalties alongside of these so-called rewards. Participating banks will surely insist folks
Speaker:that are in arrears be punished. This is never going to be just a one-way system. That never
Speaker:works that way. And so what does the flip side mean for people? It means the poorest are going
Speaker:to suffer. Again, folks unable to pay on time will find themselves in deeper and deeper holes.
Speaker:I mean, that is what the credit score is designed to do, right? It's there to distinguish the
Speaker:classes based on their ability to pay. And let's also remember that banks are not the only ones
Speaker:using credit scores. Employers are also now using them to weed through prospective employees.
Speaker:Credit scores are bullshit. So you could be denied employment, denied a way to improve
Speaker:your credit score because this is a life goal now, right? Because you have a bad credit score,
Speaker:it's a cycle and it's meant to be. And this is just one more tool. It's just one more power
Speaker:imbalance that'll exist, especially for folks who can't or maybe won't pay their rent, right?
Speaker:What does this mean for the tenants that are out there trying to fight back against bad
Speaker:landlords? Folks like the York Southwestern Tenants Union who have people on rent strikes.
Speaker:These are situations where people have horrible landlords, slumlords, companies trying to squeeze
Speaker:as much profit out of property as possible. And so as a means of last resort, rent strikes
Speaker:are happening where people are withholding their rent in order to press the situation. Like
Speaker:withholding your labor, sometimes it's the only card you have. When we spoke to Bruno, from
Speaker:the York Southwest and Tenants Union, he talked about the work that went in to getting as many
Speaker:people as possible to sign up. First, just with a Tenants Union, but then when it came to that
Speaker:time where it was time for a rent strike, although most people agreed that there was no other
Speaker:tool at their disposal and they had tried everything else, that's still an uphill battle to try
Speaker:to convince people. to withhold their rent. The folks at Acorn Ottawa and Hamilton also
Speaker:told us how almost half of tenants simply leave when they're issued an N13. There's this real
Speaker:deference to authority that exists in everybody inherently the way that we're brought up, right?
Speaker:Actually, not inherent, but it's from the environment that we're brought up in. And so tenants will
Speaker:always be a little bit hesitant, at least until we empower folks, right? Until we empower ourselves
Speaker:to understand what we hold. there will be hesitation, hesitation to push back against landlords.
Speaker:They control your shelter. I mean, it's getting done, but it's a struggle because that power
Speaker:imbalance exists. The fear of reprisal is real and the difficulty in staying housed weighs
Speaker:on people's minds. So adding another point of leverage to landlords in this situation of
Speaker:a rent strike, you can then use this credit score penalties as a viable threat. I imagine
Speaker:them sending a leaflet to every door explaining what a credit score is and how a bad one can
Speaker:harm you and how withholding your rent even for one month can be detrimental to the future
Speaker:of your family. And they wouldn't be all that wrong. So I think of people who are waging
Speaker:rent strikes now across the country, the elites must have to respond to that. When we're advocating
Speaker:for tenant rights, like organizing rights, like the right to negotiate as a collective. We're
Speaker:getting... policies that want to break tenants down into individuals and actually really hamper
Speaker:one of the only tools that they have. Now I'll tell you, I went over this with Santiago and
Speaker:he was much more hopeful here. He believed that, and I hope that he's right, that people faced
Speaker:with the conditions that they're faced with that are on rent strike or that are facing
Speaker:slumlords organizing around that. that they won't be daunted that the victories that they're
Speaker:fighting for are too important to be scared off by the threat of a credit score. And to
Speaker:further that point, the political conditions under which these housing announcements are
Speaker:being made tells us that this is a response from the wealthy trying to control the situation
Speaker:beneath them. This is just another political game by the folks paid to string us along.
Speaker:keep us in line. It's also a move against Trudeau's biggest opponent right now, right, who will
Speaker:surely offer nothing to renters at all, despite the fact that conservatives have been making
Speaker:housing one of their points of interest. They've made Trudeau a real target here, but that's
Speaker:an easy game for them. Trudeau has been in power for a long time and in those years renters
Speaker:have seen increases we have never seen before. Whether they're his fault or not, nobody cares.
Speaker:At this point, nobody cares who implemented what 12 years ago under Harper. You can't use
Speaker:that. How folks starting to vote now weren't even born when Harper took power. Playing the
Speaker:blame game here just isn't going to work. Young folks are particularly disillusioned. And those
Speaker:are the voters Trudeau is trying to appeal to here. The federal liberals have been bleeding
Speaker:voters from the younger generations and they have been losing them mostly to the conservatives.
Speaker:They aren't hiding their approach to this at all. Not in the slightest. Their press release,
Speaker:the government said, this is about protecting renters, but this is also about generational
Speaker:fairness. Making sure millennials and Gen Z, who are most likely to rank at a level playing
Speaker:field in the rental market. This inequality he's alluding to is based on the accumulation
Speaker:of wealth, especially property, land. That economic imbalance will continue to exist, which makes
Speaker:any type of these negotiations, he refers to, laughable. We're talking about a market where
Speaker:real estate investors are buying up 90% of the new units being built when they are built,
Speaker:and they're unaffordable to begin with. It's always this huge oversell by liberals for all
Speaker:of their policies. And frankly, the NDP have called these half measures, and that critique,
Speaker:as usual, doesn't go far enough. But one of these things that the announcement is also
Speaker:in response to, in my opinion, is the leaked RCMP report. And it really doesn't tell us
Speaker:anything we haven't already been feeling, but I imagine it was a bit of a wake-up call for
Speaker:the elites in Ottawa. I mean, it was more than bleak, though, saying it explicitly says in
Speaker:there that folks under 35 won't likely ever own a home. And young people know this. They
Speaker:know this to be true. This is their lived experience. I saw another one of those happiness index
Speaker:surveys showed younger people, I think 35 ish was the age range there ranked us at 56th ranked
Speaker:Canada 56th in happiness. Again, I roll but you know, that was exceptionally lower than
Speaker:their boomer counterparts was the point and that was evidenced in another section the RCMP
Speaker:aptly titled popular resentment. They go and say, the coming period of recession will accelerate
Speaker:the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared
Speaker:to earlier generations. Meaning we can see that there was a certain level of living standard
Speaker:and it is declining and rapidly declining without any hope for it turning around. And this decline
Speaker:in living standards, they say, will be exasperated by the fact that the difference between the
Speaker:extremes of wealth is greater now in developed countries than it has been any time in several
Speaker:generations. I'm sure we were all meant to read that report in the end, and I can only imagine
Speaker:that folks that make decisions read it long before us. I see real promise in that report
Speaker:that might sound strange, but I guess not if you've been listening, right? We also do a
Speaker:podcast called Blueprints of Disruption. And to know that people are getting to a point
Speaker:where they might be willing to risk a little bit more or at least understand their power
Speaker:and the need to push back and a sense of urgency. We always wanted to talk about how it wouldn't
Speaker:take. getting to a certain point, right? So we wouldn't have to experience such oppression
Speaker:and turmoil in order to fight back, that we could perhaps look at other examples before
Speaker:we got to that point. But I think the reality is, people do need to experience more people.
Speaker:It has to be a critical mass of kind of lived experience of poverty and oppression in order
Speaker:to convince people that the systems are not working for them. And we're seeing this. And
Speaker:Trudeau thinks he can address this generational economic gap with these measly measures. He
Speaker:is largely underestimating the same youth he's appealing to. He's underestimating their ability
Speaker:to recognize this for what it is. And the RCMP are predicting civil unrest from it all. Thankfully,
Speaker:you know, we are actually seeing this play out in real time with things like rent strikes,
Speaker:clashes with police. and a breakdown of trust in the systems they need us to believe in order
Speaker:to better control us. So not only have the police cracked down in response to this, but their
Speaker:authority over us is eroding. The tighter the fist, the more that falls through and the more
Speaker:they show their violence and illegitimacy, the more people resent their place of power. It's
Speaker:why their budgets are up too. They know what's coming. But it's the left's job to make sure
Speaker:that all of that action is directed in the right way, that we're pointing up. Because if the
Speaker:conservatives are able to harness this angst that the RCMP can even smell, then that's not
Speaker:going to be good. And it's going to take measures that go far beyond any kind of renter's bill
Speaker:of rights to tame that. Because we know the ultimate goal of the liberals is not actually
Speaker:to address the economic gaps that exist. They are there to exasperate it. They are here for
Speaker:wealth accumulation, but they are also here to maintain the systems. And the systems won't
Speaker:continue to exist if the imbalance is too great. And they know this. It's this dancing game.
Speaker:And so just like Keynesian politics where... Some concessions are made and implementations
Speaker:are made by the capitalist class, but they're not really. They're not really. They usually
Speaker:chain us even more so. And that's exactly what this legislation aims to do. Much of it isn't
Speaker:even legislation yet. And so the liberals in true liberal fashion package something up real
Speaker:pretty, and they're selling it to Canadians as a solution to their problems. In the end,
Speaker:the only way to properly secure tenant rights in the way that would address the power imbalance
Speaker:that exists, you know, short of seizing the means of production and ending private property
Speaker:is tenant organizing. That means organizations like the York Southwest and Tenants Union,
Speaker:like Acorn Canada, they have branches right across the country. I will link you to these
Speaker:people in the show notes, but this is not an exhaustive list. One, because I don't know
Speaker:everybody doing everything. And two, because you have not yet created the connections yet.
Speaker:This is a growing trend. More and more people are starting to build communities within their
Speaker:apartment buildings, within their streets, within the networks of buildings and units owned by
Speaker:the same corporation. So you may not have a tenant union in your building, but I bet the
Speaker:big company... that owns your building has pissed off enough people that they've come together
Speaker:in some sort of capacity to push back. If they haven't, that's what you need to do. I've said
Speaker:it a few times. I'll say it again. I truly believe tenant and community organizing holds the key
Speaker:to the political revolution we need. Have a great day. That is a wrap on another episode
Speaker:of Blueprints of Disruption. Thank you for joining us. Also, a very big thank you to the producer
Speaker:of our show, Santiago Helu-Quintero. Blueprints of Disruption is an independent production
Speaker:operated cooperatively. You can follow us on Twitter at BPofDisruption. If you'd like to
Speaker:help us continue disrupting the status quo, please share our content. And if you have the
Speaker:means, consider becoming a patron. Not only does our support come from the progressive
Speaker:community, so does our content. So reach out to us and let us know what or who we should
Speaker:be amplifying. So until next time, keep disrupting.
