By Judith Monteith-Farrell, NDP MPP, Thunder Bay Atikokan
For millions of Ontarians, rent is due. For a lot of people, the COVID-19 pandemic has left them without a way to pay it.
COVID-19 is a public health crisis of monumental proportions. But it’s also an economic crisis — and renters with little wiggle room in their monthly budgets are especially vulnerable to the storm. People who have lost income as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic are losing sleep worrying about eviction, about how they’re going to keep putting food on the table, and how they’ll still cover the rent cheque this week.
Yet the province doesn’t have a plan to protect renters.
Rent deferrals could put both tenants and landlords into crisis. After months without regular income, how can we expect tenants to pay back all the rent they owe? How will many landlords cope?
It’s time for a rent subsidy so that people can not only get through the month, but make it to the other side of this crisis without the crushing debt of months of unpaid rent behind them.
Tenants who have lost income should receive an 80 per cent rent subsidy, to a maximum of $2,500 a household a month, for up to four months.
And there should be a complete, legal ban on evictions, lockouts and disconnections — including business tenants — for four months. No landlord should be legally allowed to attempt an eviction or threaten tenants with eviction or a utility shutoff during the pandemic.
People also deserve a six-month rent freeze that will bar landlords from increasing rents during this crisis, or in its aftermath, as people are trying to get back on their feet.
A rent subsidy, a ban on any threat of eviction, and a rent freeze – that’s how Queen’s Park can have people’s backs.
My office is hearing from tenants and landlords that they simply can’t make it through without help.
Landlords want to help their tenants but are worried about how they will keep up with their own bills.
Calls and emails like this are heartbreaking.
On Friday, Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, Steve Clark wrote that he wants landlords to be “as flexible as possible when it comes to collecting rent.” But relying on the generosity of landlords is not a plan- particularly when landlords aren’t given additional resources to help tenants, and tenants are waiting for help from their government.
The COVID-19 pandemic has left us with an economic crisis for renters, and we must act now.
It’s time for a rent subsidy.
