Winnipeg Free Press
I opposition, Premier Gary Doer said he would consider lifting rent controls. In government, he handed that issue to Consumer Affairs Minister Ron Lemieux, who said he was studying it as part of an impossibly complicated review of "housing," which he indicated would include everything from homelessness to - no exaggeration - fading paint on suburban apartment buildings.
Needless to say, Mr. Lemieux has not gotten to the bottom of the huge pile of problems he is busily identifying, and the likelihood is remote that he ever will find a policy that fixes everything, perfectly and all at once.
Despite his monumental work in progress, however, and despite the fact that rent controls are a key piece of the jigsaw he puzzles over, Mr. Lemieux has boldly decided that rent controls are here to stay.
This is bold because the simple fact of the matter - and perhaps that is why it escapes Mr. Lemieux's grandiose ambitions - is that rent controls have stifled the rental market in Manitoba. No new apartment buildings have been built in memory, maintenance of many existing buildings has slipped, as has their value, with the result that property taxes have shifted from apartments to owner- occupied houses. In addition, and perhaps more shamefully, much of the inner-city housing stock is so rundown as to be worthless and there exists no incentive to renovate.
Another simple truth is that you get what you pay for. Manitoba's rental housing stock is an obvious example of that. But again, this appears too basic for Mr. Lemieux to comprehend.
In the presence of rent controls, landlords have said, and have shown, that they will not risk capital on construction. In the presence of rent controls and the absence of new construction, vacancy rates have fallen to historic lows and a housing shortage is headed in the direction of a housing crisis.
If the private sector will not build the housing that is needed because the government refuses to make it profitable, that leaves only the government to build housing.
That would be very bad policy and terrible news for taxpayers.