To follow up the release of the tentative new rental-housing bill, the city of Waterloo held a series of open houses for the public to ask questions and provide feedback regarding the tentative bill. On January 20th I had the opportunity to attend the last of the four open houses. The first thing that I noticed was how out of place I was – with a town hall meeting regarding a bill that would affect the students living in Waterloo the most, I was clearly the youngest attendee by at least 20 years. The second thing I noticed – no one at this meeting was happy about the new housing bill.
The underlying purpose of this bill is relatively clear – although the target of the bill is to limit renters licenses to competent and deserving individuals it will also push students into high density housing within the Northdale area while city council and the apartment management companies enjoy an afterwards smoke in bed amongst their wheelbarrows of money. What hasn’t gotten a lot of attention lately is how many other people are getting a swift kick in the pants in the process, so they showed up to these town hall meetings to have their voices heard.
One group drastically affected by recent changes in municipal law are the independent landlords themselves – the maximum room allowance for a rental house will be reduced from five to three, and they will be charged thousands of dollars for new licenses that were not previously required for their rental properties. Add this to the thousands of dollars already invested in their properties and these hardworking individuals are slowly being pushed out of business. One landlord explained at the meeting that he, “cannot compete with the slumlords” that control the high-density apartment units. Many landlords are reaching a point where they are simply refusing to jump through the hoops that city hall keeps putting up and are moving on to a different means of work.
This shockwave is felt elsewhere within the Waterloo community as well – an independent tradesman spoke at the meeting and explained how this bill would put him out of business as the majority of his work is tending to repairs needed by rental properties and that this type of work within the high density apartment units is typically managed by the owner companies. A realtor also described how families who cannot afford to buy a house will not be able to find a place to rent within Waterloo due to the three bedroom restriction and be forced to leave the city. She described a scenario of RIM or Google’s executives coming to live in Waterloo and searching for a rental unit, only to find the medium-sized three bedroom units that are permitted and being forced to live elsewhere. Although I struggle to see Mike Lazaridis or Eric Schmidt calling a typical rental unit home, she makes a valid point.
What still remains the most important point from all of this is that the students are still being ignored. One student was able to speak at the meeting in defense of the student tenants but the glassy-eyed look of the councilors present drove home the fact that ‘student’ has become the latest four-letter word. Even some of the landlords present at the meeting failed to vouch for their student tenants, saying that students “have no idea what’s going on with the housing bill.” One of the council members even added the apparent fact that ‘’students like living in apartment buildings.” Needless to say there were times during this meeting where I struggled to not throw a temper tantrum.
If there is anything to take away from the bill and the meeting it’s this – rental houses will become a thing of the past, students will be forced to live in high density apartments that are less safe but twice as expensive, and several thousand students may be left without a place to live. If you are to participate in any campus initiative during your undergrad career, it’s this one for sure. There is currently a Waterloo Students Against Rent Increase Facebook group that I highly encourage you to join, and there will be more town hall meetings when the revised bill is released in April. If there’s ever been a time for the students of Waterloo to work together against something, it’s preventing this bill from passing, because quite frankly, I hate apartment buildings.
Sandra Simon
May I ask, who will be benefited by this bill.