Winnipeg Free Press
Monday, August 26th, 2003
Kevin Rollason
KAREN SAPINSKI didn't realize there was such a shortage of rental accommodation until she suddenly found herself in the market for a new apartment.
"I'm a middle-aged woman and I want to live in a fairly decent place, but I can't find a place," lamented Sapinski, who has to be out of her duplex at the end of this month.
"I'm competing with all of the students who are doubling and tripling up, so the homes I'm phoning are going so fast. I have six days left and I have nowhere to go."
Sapinski faces a vacancy rate that is one per cent, the lowest in recent memory. By comparison, a typical vacancy rate in Winnipeg in the 1990s was six per cent.
She has lived in the same duplex for the last 15 years without a lease. Then last month her landlord told her she had six weeks to find another place to live because he had sold her suite.
She said she is looking for a duplex or small home in the south end of the city for between $550 to $650 per month.
Whether it's students, immigrants or longtime Winnipeggers, people finding it tough to get an apartment is a familiar story to Bob Shaer, president of the Professional Property Managers Association.
Shaer said the city's one per cent vacancy rate is a historic low and when it's that low, it doesn't matter whether a renter is looking for slum housing in the inner city, luxury suites, or anything in between.
"A three per cent vacancy rate is considered a balanced and healthy market, but when it's one per cent it isn't," he said. "Not only can you not find an apartment on Pembina Highway, you're hard-pressed to find a dump in the inner city for $250 to $300."
Shaer blames rent controls for creating a stagnant apartment market, one where the majority of apartment buildings were constructed before 1960. Under rent controls, the province dictates how much landlords can raise rents, although there are exceptions for new buildings and for those that undergo major renovations.
This year, rent increases were restricted to one per cent.
"Rent controls were set up to assist the marginalized people, but the reality is they have nothing they can find in their price range," Shaer said.
"The people who are marginalized become further marginalized. The answer is not to keep rent control, but increase social assistance."
Shaer said one solution might be to have rent control, but remove it temporarily from an individual suite when a tenant moves out.
But Greg Selinger, the province's finance minister, said there are no plans to change rent controls.
Selinger said even provinces with no rent control have problems encouraging new apartment construction.
"Saskatchewan has no rent control and their apartment starts are even less than ours," he said.
"The idea of getting rid of rent controls every time someone leaves a suite is dangerous. We have an obligation to ensure people don't get pushed out of their apartments."
Selinger said that even with rent controls, the province has allowed 36,000 units to impose rent increases above the guidelines to help pay for renovations. As well, the Doer government now allows new apartment construction to have a 15-year holiday from rent controls, up from the previous 10 years.
But that doesn't help people like Sahar Shireenzada, who has been looking for housing with her mother and four sisters for more than two weeks since coming to Winnipeg from Afghanistan via Pakistan.
"I thought that in Canada we would get a nice house and not be in an area where we would be afraid of people," said Shireenzada, 17.
"There were a lot of bad people where we were in Pakistan and it was a rough area. We were afraid, so we thought it was safer here."
The hunt for rental housing is so hard the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, the province's main refugee agency, has two people working full-time on it to try to find accommodation for people coming from other countries.
Hani Alubeady, one of the housing counsellors, said while it is always hard to find housing for them, it is especially hard to find it for either single females or a family of females.
Alubeady knows of one Iranian woman, who is single, who has already logged more than 128 days on the waiting list. He said it's also tough for the six members of the Shireenzada family, because the federal government allots them only $513 for housing.
"I took them to two houses. The one needed some work, but it had four bedrooms. It was about $800 and included everything. But the first thing they thought was the street looked pretty rough. They didn't feel safe.
"They tell me they never thought Canada looked like this. I tell them, 'No, Canada is not heaven.' "
The vacancy rate makes it tough for university students.
Judith Storey, acting housing co-ordinator at the University of Manitoba, said students have been looking for housing for weeks.
"There's not too many apartments available," Storey said. "Students coming in are having trouble finding apartments.
"I can't tell if it's harder this year than other years, but our enrolment is up this year, so it should be tough. We can always use more homeowners opening up space in their house."