The boom's toll

Magrath · 发表于 2007-5-20 07:13

The boom's toll
The trickle-down effect of the runaway housing market has a growing number of people, from all walks of life, finding themselves homeless, hopeless ... or both

Duncan Thorne
The Edmonton Journal

Sunday, May 20, 2007

EDMONTON - With two young children in tow, single mother Kelin Donnelly feels none of the hopefulness she's heard is important in the search for a place to live.

Donnelly is among 18 low-income adults attending a workshop on home-hunting at the Boyle Street Community Centre. The facilitator has just talked about the importance of confronting a crisis with optimism.

She sees no reason to be upbeat.

"I've spent the last three months looking," the 21-year-old says during a break. So far, no one has shown any interest in renting to her.

The real estate boom has its dark side. While owners can sell their properties for fat profits, or at least enjoy a sense of wealth, renters and would-be renters face soaring rents and vanishing vacancies.

On Tuesday, the the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation predicted that, as of 2008, average monthly rent will have risen by 38 per cent over two years. At the same time, the vacancy rate will drop to a 30-year-low of 0.7 per cent this year -- and then will keep going lower.

Donnelly got into her predicament after splitting with her partner. Then her son Damian, 21/2, caught pneumonia, forcing her to drop out of a job-training course.

These days she has a single room in a motel with Damian and four-year-old Christina. She's on social assistance, and collects $503 a month for shelter.

"Landlords know that if they can charge $1,000 for a place, they will be able to get it," Donnelly says.

Jennifer Hunter, housing-services team leader at Boyle Street, says the real estate boom is creating despair among clients such as Donnelly.

"I don't know what people are going to do," Hunter says bluntly.

"Landlords are not willing to work with us anymore. In the past we had quite a selection of buildings. Now they are able to fill their vacancies at high rents."

For now, many are crowding in with relatives, but that is itself a risky solution, putting family at risk of breaching tenant agreements, Hunter says.

"We are trying to help a family with nine children find housing," she says. "It's so discouraging, because what do you say?"

The new face of homelessness

People on social assistance -- with shelter allowance, including utilities, starting at just $168 a month for singles -- make up the bulk of people who come to Boyle Street for help.

But the boom, and its resulting housing crunch, has brought a new demographic to the centre.

"The face of homelessness is changing," Hunter says.

"Recently, we've had people come to us who have a decent security deposit and decent income. We are getting people from Newfoundland, Montreal and Ontario. They have money. They are getting paycheques."

What they can't find, Hunter says, are affordable suites.

She says half the calls she's had recently are from people who have places but who face big rent increases, often in the range of 50 per cent.

The government's decision to limit increases to once a year is fine but without rent control there's nothing to stop a continued rise, she says. "The issue now is, what is going to happen?"

One solution, at least theoretically, is social housing.

It's not a promising option.

Capital Region Housing, the main social-housing player, rents apartments at far below market rates to people with assets of less than $7,000, not counting car and furniture.

Some of CHR's bachelor and one-bedroom units go for about $300.

"We have about 5,000 rental units and provide rent supplements for about 1,000 more," says Kent Fletcher, general manager of the non-profit housing agency.

The catch is they're all accounted for.

Fletcher says there are more than 2,000 applicants on the waiting list, with an average wait time of two years. The list would be longer but many don't bother to register, he says.

"Definitely the number of inquiries we get on a daily basis has increased. We know that market rents in the city are increasing exponentially. People are getting more desperate."

He says the city needs more social-housing units to help keep the rents on privately run apartments in check.

The privately funded, non-profit Jasper Place Health and Wellness Centre provides laundry, showers and other services to the homeless.

Murray Soroka, its executive director, says increasing numbers of people on fixed incomes turn up at the centre after being forced from their homes by rent increases that they can't pay.

"These are people who have lived in apartments for a long time," he says. "Every month, more of them become part of the homelessness problem."

Soroka refers to the case of a mentally handicapped man whose lease is soon up. "He's scared to death because he doesn't have money for a rent increase."

Coun. Michael Phair, who spearheads housing issues on council, says fewer neighbourhoods are affordable to low-income Edmontonians.

On the move

There are no official numbers, but Phair has observed that poor people are gravitating to certain areas because they can no longer afford the neighbourhoods they once lived in.

In Oliver, where he lives, so many apartment blocks have been converted to condos that there appears to be few affordable places left, Phair says.

"I would guess that the people who have more modest incomes are finding it harder to stay in Oliver."

He believes such people are increasingly heading to low-rent areas in Abbottsfield, in northeast Edmonton, and Mayfield, to the west.

Other destinations include Boyle Street, McCauley, Norwood, Eastwood, pockets of Mill Woods near the Grey Nuns Family Medicine Centre, and the neighbourhoods off Whyte Avenue and west of Mill Creek Ravine.

In most cases, though, he expects the size of low-income areas to shrink as surrounding rents rise and condo conversions spread. "It may end up focusing on certain areas because other areas aren't available any more."

Keeping the peace

The tightening rental market has led to a rise in legal battles between tenants and landlords.

"Clearly, some landlords are clearing up their premises," says Rick Sokowlski, administrator of the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service. He says landlords are no longer willing to tolerate problem tenants.

The province developed the resolution service as an option to court. Its hearing officers, who include Sokowlski, have the powers of a judge when dealing with landlord-tenant issues.

It began as a pilot project last May for disputes within city limits. The province has decided to make it permanent and is expanding the service across the region as of June 1. It will eventually be offered provincewide.

In its first 12 months, it held about 2,500 hearings, or mini-trials.

"Landlords are sticking to the rental agreements more closely now, if tenants don't follow the rules," he says.

Hearing officers can try to satisfy both sides. Sometimes they impose "Cinderella orders," where a tenant agrees to make rent payments on time or face instant eviction -- in effect turning into a pumpkin.

But if a landlord simply wants to be rid of a tenant who is habitually late with the rent, the law is on the landlord's side, Sokowlski says.

"You can't withhold rent, even if a landlord failed to fix something."

At a recent hearing St. Basil's Senior Citizens Residence agrees to give Shirley Ilcisin extra time to find another place, in return for her agreement to pay for that time.

'It's almost an epidemic'

Ilcisin hasn't been in arrears. Instead the senior breached her rental agreement by sheltering a grandson who could not find an affordable place while out of work with an injury.

She later found a place and paid the first month's rent and damage deposit, but was not on hand to sign a lease before the landlord went on holiday. On his return she was told the rent will be $850, not the agreed $575.

"It was an awful blow."

Ilcisin can't afford the extra, so temporarily must borrow from her brother to stay in a motel.

Lawyer Andrew Bachelder represents tenants such as Ilcisin. He's seen a surge in cases, driven by the boom.

"It's almost an epidemic," says Bachelder, who is with the non-profit Edmonton Centre for Equal justice. "Tenants just can't afford the rent that is being charged right now.

"I don't begrudge a landlord making his money," he says. "But there is huge, huge gouging going on."

Landlords have been required to give six months' notice before converting an apartment building to condominiums. The province is extending the notice period to one year.

But a few apartment owners circumvent the rule by giving three-month notice of rent increases that tenants can't afford, Bachelder says. That way they can clear a building quickly.

He acknowledges some tenants risk eviction by failing to pay rent on time.

Shelters stretched

David Berger, who co-ordinated the emergency shelters this winter, says there were spaces for more than 900 homeless people, up from 600 the previous year. Even so, the overnight shelters were full.

"The big thing this winter was the in-migration of people from out of province, coming to the city and facing the stark reality of not being able to find an affordable place," Berger says.

"A person comes, may be employed but has no place to stay that's affordable, and ends up staying in a shelter."

Most shelters have closed for the summer. Sandy Ericson, who oversees the Boyle Centre's Parkland Outreach Program, says users have shifted to the valley and other open spaces.

At one time, the valley dwellers were generally aboriginals long used to living on the margins.

"Now we're seeing a lot of Caucasian people in their 30s to 50s, with a lot of skills," Ericson says. "There are lots of couples, and women."

She believes the numbers are also up. Its hard to do a reliable estimate because the campers are careful to hide.

It was hard finding places last year though, even when vacancies were higher, Ericson says.

"This year it's going to be harder."

dthorne@thejournal.canwest.com

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