Some people in Calgary have experienced what they have been calling “Economic Evictions“.

Economic Evictions happen when rent increases by a dramatic amount, the highest I have read is 400%! Quite often these increases are intended to get rid of tennants to make way for condo conversions or the increasing affluence of workers in Calgary. For a regular condo conversion the renter currently needs to be given 6-months notice, but there is only a 3-month notice currently required for rent increases.

Read more at: Calgary Herald: Renters priced out of homes – 400% hikes leave tenants facing cold

The Alberta Government is finally looking at protecting tenants, but in a limited way. They have rejected the idea of rent controls, saying that it will limit new apartment developments, even though they haven’t been happening in almost a decade anyways.

What the Alberta Government has proposed is that landlords can only increase the rent once per year, instead of the two times they are currently allowed to do. The government states that “I don’t believe that it’s going to jack up the price, but it gives some stability for the renter to know that he does have stability for an extended period of time.”. I personally think that they are being over optimistic considering that one increase of 400% would still be a painful increase to anyone.

Read more at: CBC: Alberta moves to protect tenants, won’t curb rents

As of April, the average price to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Calgary was $675.

Technorati Tags: Calgary, rent, evictions

There has been a bit of controversy about apartments in Calgary being converted to condos. The controversy comes with the eviction of tenants from lower cost rental units to make way for the conversions. Typically tenants are supposed to be given a 6-month eviction notice for a condo conversion, however some landlords are getting around this with what they are calling Economic Evictions (which I will write more about later).

In a city where there has been virtually zero rental units built for almost a decade these types of conversions from apartments to condos are having a very negative effect on the lower to middle range of the rental market. With a rental vacancy rate around 1% the condo conversions, combined with the lack of affordable housing and new rental units being constructed, is making Calgary a very inhospitable place for lower income singles and families.

Although Townsville is not experiencing anything like this at the moment, I wonder if there are similar things happening in larger Australian cities where the market for condos and apartments is tighter?

Here in Australia we need to protect our houses from numerous pests, especially termites. But one thing that we didn’t expect to have to protect our house against was a Canadian Beaver!!!

In this case the Canadian Beaver was in fact our four year old son. For reasons that we simply can not fathom our son decided to eat the door on this particular morning! He has had some pretty strange things for breakfast before, but this is certainly a first for him…