A number of low-income renters in Moose Jaw may be one step closer to homelessness after four apartment buildings in the city were bought by unnamed investors represented by Regina’s Zarkor Property Management Limited. At the end of November, Zarkor Property Management advised tenants that their rent will increase, for some by more than 60 per cent. While they originally gave five months’ notice, Zarkor has since been required to abide by the legal requirement of six months’ notice.
The rent increases are the latest in a series of developments that have drastically reduced the supply of low-income rental housing in Moose Jaw. According to estimates by the city, fire destroyed 21 suites on South Hill in December 2008; 12 low-income suites were demolished for development of the highly debated $61 million Multiplex site; and 21 suites in two historic River Street hotels were demolished for a development project by Little Chicago Development Company Inc.
Many of the tenants facing rental hikes receive social assistance and disability support, and, without large rent supplements, will have difficulty paying the extra rent or finding another place to live. The vacancy rate is 0.9 per cent in Moose Jaw, the second lowest in the province after Regina, and there are no major plans to build low-income housing in the city.
Saskatchewan Social Services Minister Donna Harpauer was recently at a federal, provincial and territorial housing ministers’ meeting in Quebec and does not think that the low-income housing situation will improve any time soon. Nor does she appear to see any role for government in providing low-rental housing.
“The industry is saying that it is not cost-effective or to recover the cost takes too long and we currently have a market for higher-end housing,” she said. “There’s more of a profit margin on it and you don’t have to wait for revenues. You build it and it’s an instant sell.”
Making noise
Dave Nicholson has been living in a one-bedroom apartment in the recently acquired Slade apartment building for five years after moving from another low-income apartment in Moose Jaw that he called “hellish.” He’s concerned for his friends and acquaintances in the Slade and the lack of options they’ll face if they can’t meet the increase. Other low-income housing in the city is “very unhealthy,” he said. “This is one of the few good ones for low rental.”
Nicholson, who has been publicizing the increase via online forums and his website, was not successful in getting Zarkor to repeal his 62 per cent rent increase (from $385 to $625 a month), but he was able to get Social Services to increase his disability payments to cover the new expense.
“I seem to have gotten Social Services to pay for the difference for myself because I made a lot of noise,” he told The Sasquatch in a telephone interview. “But it doesn’t seem like they’re going to be paying for anyone else.”
Market value
The three downtown buildings that Zarkor Property Management now oversees are the Avalon Apartments containing 24 suites; Selkirk Apartments with 26 individual suites; and the Slade Apartment building that has 27 suites. They also took over an apartment building in Sunningdale, a Moose Jaw suburb.
A representative from Zarkor told The Sasquatch that the owners of the buildings do not have plans to turn the buildings into condos, as some rumors suggested, and that the increases were needed to bring the apartments up to market value. “The old owners were just not giving rent increases and those rents were quite a ways below market,” she said. “They’re still actually below the average rent in Moose Jaw,” she continued.
Whose Responsibility?
Providing people with affordable housing is the government’s responsibility, not Zarkor’s, said the company’s representative. “The government should be lobbied to increase those amounts [of social assistance]. That’s not enough for people to live on . . . and those buildings can not operate on that kind of rent.”
Most of the buildings’ tenants who depend on social assistance receive a disability rental housing supplement that tops off at $175 per month. Moose Jaw has a relatively low cost of living compared to other cities and towns in Saskatchewan and falls under Tier C of the provincial shelter allowance (Regina falls under Tier A). A single, unemployable person receives an additional maximum of $307 in shelter allowance.
A representative from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Social Services said that there is other assistance available that would help meet basic needs like food and transportation. That amount is calculated through factors like income-to-rent ratio and type of disability, but there is never much money left over, she conceded.
There are few protections for low-income renters in the province. Saskatchewan does not have a law that caps the amount that a landlord or building owner can raise the rent by, as long as the tenant is given six months notice before the increase takes place. And while rent increases are only allowed once per year in some provinces, according to the department of the Attorney General, “any rent increase can only be served six months after the last rent increase was served or the start of the tenancy,” so that renters face the possibility of two rent increases in a single year.