Photo by Hayden Petrie

“This is not a scam,” I read the email aloud to my partner. “We are seniors looking to move to Nova Scotia and have a 2-bedroom plus den.”

The sender had reached out after reading an opinion piece I wrote for Family Day, responding to headlines about Canada’s declining birth rate. In the article, I shared our situation: we’re a couple in our mid-thirties postponing having children because… money, with housing costs—particularly rent—being the main concern. We currently live in a one-bedroom apartment and are searching for an affordable two-bedroom, admittedly an oxymoron in Toronto.

The couple who emailed lived in Oakville and offered a lease takeover, one of the few remaining ways to find relatively affordable rent, in early 2024. Their place was perfect on paper: 1,200 square feet with a dishwasher, parking space, and storage unit for $2,400 per month. However, it was on the side of a highway, with a 30-minute walk to the GO train for an hour’s commute into the city.

I was relieved when they emailed a few weeks later to say their daughter was moving in. Even though we won’t find anything like it in Toronto for the price, for us, the savings weren’t worth a two-to-three hour commute or being disconnected from our friends, community, and a walkable neighbourhood.

My partner and I don’t belong to the work-from-home pyjama class; we’re part of what political economist Ricardo Tranjan calls the “tenant class,” also the title of his 2023 book. Tranjan aims to re-politicize housing in Canada, questioning whether it should serve profit and wealth or provide homes for people. His thesis is clear: we can’t have it both ways.

Tranjan likens the power dynamics between landlords and tenants to those between bosses and workers. Just as workers must sell their labour to survive, tenants must pay whatever rent a landlord demands to secure a place to live. Landlords, who can evict tenants and raise prices, wield a similar power to bosses.

The financialization of housing is a key driver of rising rents in Canada. In 2020, more than one in five houses in B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were used as investment properties. Ontario is at the forefront of this trend, with investors owning 56.7 percent of newly constructed condos in Toronto and nearly 40 percent of all properties built after 2016.

Tranjan’s most radical argument is that, despite popular discourse, there is no housing crisis. He rejects the term because it suggests the system once worked but is now failing everyone. “We have a housing system that is structured around profit creation and wealth accumulation,” Tranjan tells This Magazine, “and it’s working really well for people who are very influential and really close to power, to make sure nothing that we do changes that.” Simply put, real estate in Canada is treated as an asset to make money, and not for housing actual people, which can lead to higher rates of evictions, unreasonable rent hikes, poor building maintenance and other problems.

Although Canada officially recognizes housing as a human right—we even signed a fancy United Nations paper saying so—housing is increasingly becoming a privilege, and it seems tenants are the only ones working to correct that in a meaningful way.

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In April, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, where Tranjan is a senior researcher, released a report calling for rent control across Canada, using Ontario as a case study. The report shows that rents in Ontario are increasing at a rate three times higher than the province’s 2.5 percent cap. Landlords exploit loopholes like Above Guideline Increases (AGIs) to raise rents beyond standard limits, passing the costs of property improvements onto tenants. New units are exempt from rent control, as are vacant units, which had an average rent increase of 36 percent in 2023.

This isn’t just an Ontario story. From 2022 to 2023, rents across Canada surged by 22 percent, resulting in the lowest national vacancy rate since 1988. Only five provinces and one territory have rent controls on occupied units, and just two have controls on vacant units. Alberta, where there is no rent control, has seen the fastest-growing rents. PEI is the exception, having imposed a temporary rent freeze last year.

In May, I wrote another opinion piece about renting, responding to the federal budget’s purported focus on supporting Canadians, especially younger generations facing unattainable homeownership. The budget allocates $15 billion to the Apartment Construction Loan Program, an initiative that has mostly produced above-market rentals for seven years. Instead of addressing rising rents, the government proposed a renters’ Bill of Rights that would allow tenants to see a unit’s previous price and have rent payments count toward credit scores. While seemingly progressive, advocates argue it would penalize low-income renters struggling with rising costs. As a renter who’s never missed a payment, the proposal feels like a hollow gesture—good credit won’t help me pay for a mortgage I can’t afford. Meanwhile, measures like increasing borrowing limits from RRSPs and extending first-time mortgage amortization periods favour lenders and developers, cost individuals more, and conveniently leave a crucial question unanswered: How can we save for a down payment when our rents are skyrocketing?

This time I received an email from a landlord: “Please do your research better before misleading readers. Your actions and wishes [for rent control] will only force small landlords to sell their rental properties, decreasing the number of rental units.” My knee-jerk reaction was to thank this reader for affirming my opinion: meaningful protections for renters could free up supply by disincentivizing multiple property ownership. Despite our antithetical positions, this interaction reflects a broader conflict: the false equivalency between tenants’ and landlords’ financial security.

For landlords, a house is an investment; for tenants, it’s shelter. Comparing renters’ basic needs to landlords’ financial interests is misleading. Why does this landlord feel deserving of high returns but immune to market risks and regulation? Rent control is essential to keep the housing market fair and accessible. This emailer might argue that rent control disrupts the free market, but the current system forces even high earners to compete with middle and low-income renters, driving inflation and interest rate hikes that hurt everyone. It’s also reducing access to affordable housing, and leaving little social housing for the unhoused. Large and small-scale investment strategies fuel this cycle, worsening unaffordability, rental scarcity, and growing homelessness.

With 66.5 percent of Canadians owning homes and 40 percent of federal MPs invested in real estate, the landowning and landlord class wields formidable economic and political power, holding 90 percent of the country’s wealth. By failing to intervene in this so-called crisis, governments have left renters to fend for themselves.

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In some places, tenants are succeeding in taking matters into their own hands. Ontario’s first anti-renoviction law came into effect in Hamilton over the summer. If a landlord wants to renovict, they have to apply for a construction licence within seven days, a contractor needs to sign off saying the renos require tenants to move, and then, once changes are made, landlords have to let the same tenants move back in, and at no added rental cost. They may also have to help them find somewhere else to live while the reno happens.

Hamilton’s new renter protections were partially due to work by ACORN, the nationwide tenant advocacy group, and inspired by a similar policy established in Burnaby, B.C., which has gained recognition as one of the strongest tenant protections in Canada. This success in Burnaby, also championed by ACORN, includes vital components such as financial support during temporary relocations, compensation for moving costs, and protections against unjust evictions. These victories show that tenant organizing has the power to push political leaders to protect affordable housing.

Tenant organizing is building momentum across Canada. Rent strikes in Toronto have challenged some of the largest corporate landlords, while the Vancouver Tenants Union has protected renters from unfair eviction. In Quebec, one of the largest and longest-operating tenant associations is fighting for robust rent control and a ban on Airbnb. In Ottawa, tenants in the Herongate neighbourhood have filed a human rights case against “demovictions.” ACORN has secured hundreds of millions in repairs, prevented displacement, and achieved protections like landlord licensing and stricter rent controls.

People are also adapting to rising rents by seeking shared accommodations and connecting online to find housemates. The Instagram account @coolpeoplehouses lets users share sublets, rooms for rent, and lease transfers, and helps people bypass the hell that is navigating ever-tightening listings by passing along below-market rents. The page resembles a patchwork of ISO (in search of ) posts—a collage of kitchens, bedrooms, and living rooms from across the GTA. While a room can still occasionally be found for under $1,000, the average price for September listings was just below $1,200.

The Instagram account works in tandem with the app Housemate Space to help people find compatible roommates, similar to online dating. The founder, who prefers to remain anonymous, launched the app in 2020 after a co-living relationship turned sour. “I wanted to create a solution that made it easier. I saw an opportunity to create a community-based platform where people could connect and find compatible housemates, not just housing,” they explain.

In 2023, Rentals.ca reported a 27 percent rise in shared listings, with a 78 percent spike in Ontario alone. Housemate Space allows users to create profiles, which are then matched with potential housemates based on compatibility factors, while @coolpeoplehouses serves as a marketing page for sharing listings. The founder spends about 20 (unpaid) hours per week managing both platforms and believes it’s worth the effort. “People are looking to save on rent while also seeking more meaningful connections with their housemates,” they say. Feedback from users has shaped the platform’s evolution: “Initially, we focused on helping individuals find places, but as we listened to the community, it became clear there’s a bigger need in the multi-tenant housing sector.”

Interest in shared living extends beyond grassroots efforts. On a larger scale, organizations like Youthful Cities, a think tank, envisions co-living as an alternative for young renters. Their Toboggan Flats project aims to convert vacant office spaces into affordable communal apartments for young professionals in Canada, inspired by successful European co-living models. With office vacancy rates rising in cities— Toronto’s reached 18 percent this year, the highest since the 1990s—they aim to create as many units as possible across the country and are currently scouting for buildings in major cities like Calgary and Ottawa. Once secured, the first co-living space is expected to be ready within 10 to 14 months, much faster than usual office-to-residential conversions, as they can retain the existing mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, thanks to shared kitchens and bathrooms.

People are also, of course, connecting through groups like Montreal’s Chez Queer on Facebook, as they have been for years, to find the right housemates. And, anecdotally, in Toronto at least, more people seem to be hiring real estate agents to find them a place that may not be easily found otherwise. In these cases, the onus to pay the agent is on the landlord, not the prospective tenant.

While these strategies offer creative ways to navigate the housing market, they individualize the problem, leaving renters to find personal fixes without addressing the systemic forces driving up prices. My partner and I don’t want to live with roommates as we raise a child, and even for young professionals who might benefit from co-living initiatives, what awaits them when they outgrow shared living arrangements if housing costs keep rising as they have for decades?

What’s needed is collective action. In his book, Tranjan mentions how the labour movement historically offered essential support and solidarity for tenant organizing, but that this has diminished over time. He noted in an interview that in Latin America, in Portuguese, Spanish, and French, the term “housing movement” is as familiar as the labour movement. Barcelona plans to ban short-term tourist rentals by 2028, and France and Spain have implemented rent caps. These examples show that change hasn’t resulted from benevolent governments acting out of goodwill, but from being pushed by organized political pressure.

Rising rents are often attributed to market forces and low supply, overlooking how landlords profit from the housing shortage. The notion that we can build our way out of the housing crisis is repeated endlessly—and likely will continue to be—but it only preserves the status quo for property owners. Simply adding more housing won’t fix an unfair system. Without widespread, organized challenging of harmful policies and financial incentives that favour developers, the divide between renters and owners will keep growing, no matter how much new housing is built.

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Last summer, my partner and I went to view a two-bedroom in our neighbourhood, where we hope to stay, close to our work, friends, and daily routines. The middle-aged couple who owned it seemed like “good landlords.” The unit was listed just under $3,000, slightly below the average for a two-bedroom. The previous tenants had just bought their first home (perhaps helped by paying lower rent). The other two units in the house had been occupied for over 10 years. They told us they’d received 4,000 inquiries, and we joined a line that stretched down the block.

While we waited, I thought about those two emails: a landlord’s entitlement to profit at our expense and fellow tenants offering solidarity. Their need to clarify “This is not a scam” reflects the inherent exploitation of our current system. As the line grew behind us with other couples our age looking for a two-bedroom—for more space, an office, or, like us, a room for a child—I turned to my partner and said, “This is a scam.”