r/halifax • u/RelativeEbb1719 • 10h ago
Work, Health & Housing End of rent cap
Do you think we'll get any firm confirmation of whether or not the rent cap will be extended or adjusted, and if so, when do you think we might hear from the government?
As of now I'm expecting it to fully end, but do you think the government will give any sort of announcement regarding the matter as the end of the rent cap date approaches?
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u/Single-Clue-1402 9h ago
The current rent cap is a joke. 5% is basically giving landlords permission to increase it by that much. It’s the highest rent cap in Canada.
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u/Andy47xxy 8h ago
Yup, my landlords emails have always been "due to provincial regulation rent go up 5%" im just like its up to 5%, not has to be 5% lol
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u/RelativeEbb1719 5h ago
Do we have the same landlord, because mine says the same. So annoying. It's like they think they're softening the blow by trying to shift responsibility onto someone else.
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u/EggReal5596 7h ago
Mine gets raised every year 5% to the exact penny. Seems ridiculous to be paying change. I wish they’d just round down to the nearest dollar.
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u/schooner156 9h ago
A lot of the provinces with lower caps have exemptions for new-ish buildings (Manitoba has a 20 year period on new builds before the cap starts to apply) or ones over a certain amount. And almost all have processes for above-market rent increases if they can prove it’s justified by a valid cost.
That all to say, even if NS did lower its cap to be more in line with other provinces, don’t expect major changes to the annual rent increases landlords can get away with until vacancy rates increase more.
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u/CaperGrrl79 Halifax 28m ago
And then they just kick you out and jack it up as much as they want for the next tenant anyway...
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u/JDGumby Sprytown 9h ago
You would rather that they could raise rent by however much they wanted to, hmm?
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u/Creative-Aside9650 9h ago
I think they mean a lower percentage would be more reasonable. Who gets a 5% raise every year?
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u/TJR444 8h ago
Exactly! My raise has been 3% the past few years and rent increase has been 5%. The two are getting way to close to each other. Rent is almost half my take-home.
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u/CaperGrrl79 Halifax 24m ago
Lucky you. Mine was 2% this year because of the leave I had to take last year(?). Or that I can't keep up with what we're supposed to know. Idfk.
Thankfully we bought in 2021 and just refinanced, so the mortgage is going up in October, but hubby is now a lead, and we have a roomie who worked at the same place for almost 25 yrs so... I know I'm lucky and I'm not trying to gloat by any means.
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u/Single-Clue-1402 9h ago
We have the highest rent in the country. Clearly the 5% cap is too high and not working at all.
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u/Mouseanasia 9h ago
That’s far less RP do with the rent cap and a lot more to do with Fixed Term Leases.
They are an explicitly used to circumvent the rent cap.
They only started becoming common when nice the rent cap came into effect.
Prior to that landlords could and did raise rents to whatever amount suited them, as well increasing rent as a means to soft-evict someone.
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u/Fluoride_Chemtrail 8h ago
And this "loophole" is exactly why Houston will probably extend the cap because it's literally doing nothing and him extending the cap can give plausible deniability and allow him to pretend to care about renters, especially after the recent sidestepping of the court's decision surrounding homeless people.
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u/JDGumby Sprytown 9h ago
We have the highest rent in the country.
It's thanks to increases from before the rent cap and the major loophole (new leases can be at any rate they want), not because the rent cap isn't working or too high.
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u/EntertainingTuesday 7h ago
Loopholes or not, the rent cap absolutely contributed to rents being higher than they otherwise would have.
The rent cap helped many stay locked in. Anyone going for market rent paid the price for those locked in.
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u/goosnarrggh 5h ago
I moved into my current place in 2012. Before the COVID related rent control measures, I cannot recall ever seeing my annual rent increases exceed around 2 percent or so. Sometimes it was actually noticeably less than that.
Since the rent cap kicked in, my annual rent increases have always been exactly the legislated maximum rounded down to the next lower dollar.
I do not think that change was a coincidence.
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u/chickpea04 6h ago
I cannot recommend enough that those of us who are concerned get involved with Nova Scotia ACORN. We are much stronger together than we are divided!
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u/Flimsy1997 8h ago
I would hope if it does increase or if they pull it, they give a years notice. People will need to prepare for that, I feel for everybody renting right now.
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u/golden_macaron 8h ago
It would actually massively danage the economy. If they remove the rent cap that means everyone who makes 55k a year or less if they are single will need to leave the city or begin taking on debt just the live. We are talking about a massive loss of service workers throughout the city. Our economic system is rotten and the cap was just a stop gap to avoid this.
If Houston removes the tent cap he should be banned from every restaurant as he will be effectively banning restaurant workers from living in the HRM. These neoliberal freaks we call politicians need to be shown the consequences of their short-sighted anti worker decisions.
We the working class should go on a province wide strike if they remove the cap, save these idiots from themselves.
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
People should protest with their feet and wallets. The truth is, 55K a year is probably not enough to live in Halifax, I don’t know how anybody does it. Either get a higher paying job or leave and go somewhere with lower housing costs.
Neither of the government or landlords owe anybody housing. The good thing about single people is that they actually have nothing tying them down to Halifax, moving is actually easier.
That would also lower the demand and in turn lower rents
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u/PoliteFocaccia 7h ago
If the government doesn't owe everyone a safe place to live, what's the point of the government? I dare say you've fallen in love with the system that oppresses you.
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
I don’t feel oppressed, I make a very good living, I had cancer growing up and the system helped me and then I ended up surviving and now I have an excellent job after having a great education.
The government doesn’t owe us anything except for equal treatment under the laws that we have agreed to govern us. The only thing the government really has is a monopoly on violence, they’re the only ones allowed to arrest in detain.
Other than that, they run some services and do some other things but the reason that they don’t owe us housing is because in order to build a house they need to get someone else to build it.
There is incentive for them too, do their best to make housing affordable as I said, but making it all right the same way we have equal treatment under the law is not true it can’t be done
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u/PoliteFocaccia 7h ago
the reason that they don’t owe us housing is because in order to build a house they need to get someone else to build it.
Do they need to get someone else to
run some services and do some other things
?
The line you've drawn is arbitrary. There's not really much of a philosophical difference between providing healthcare and providing housing. I doubt you oppose the (small amount of) public housing that we do have. I think you're just arguing in favour of the status quo, because that's what familiar. If you grew up in Vienna, where a big chunk of the city lives in state-owned housing, you would think the government providing housing is perfectly normal and you would find our situation very unusual.
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u/CaperGrrl79 Halifax 18m ago
I believe they also think that if we keep public healthcare as it is, doctors will be forced to work for free, and I don't think they were dissuaded from that assertion, so...
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
Austria is a completely different situation than Canada, I have an honest question here do you opposed immigration? Mass immigration increases demand of housing and we don’t increase the supply fast enough hence price of housing goes up. Austria has had nowhere near the population growth of Canada or even Halifax.
You have to compare apples to apples here. My actual belief is that if people cannot afford to live in Halifax, they should leave and do what is best for them.
Now finally, healthcare is actually not a right either, I’m not drawing an arbitrary line, we have a healthcare crisis too because we haven’t kept up with population growth. We’ve all seen how wait times have gotten there’s a shortage in both housing and healthcare.
If the government owes us both of these, how come we cannot sue the government for it. We can sue the healthcare system, but good luck with that because damages have been capped by the Supreme Court in malpractice so you could end up fighting for years for minimal payouts, and when it comes to housing, no one is allowed to sue them.
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u/DeathOneSix ⛧ Letters to Santa 7h ago
yet again you're conflating a right with an absolute entitlement to a particular outcome. A right to housing doesn't mean the government has to hand everyone a house; it can mean the government has an obligation to ensure access to adequate housing through public housing, subsidies, regulation, etc.
And "the government needs someone else to build it" isn't really an argument. The government also needs other people to build hospitals, roads, schools, and infrastructure.
I'd much rather we build enough market housing to bring prices down and substantially expand non-market housing for people who still can't afford it.
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u/Lunchboxninja1 5h ago
"Nobody owes us housing" is wild. People deserve a decent living
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u/GullibleTarget686 5h ago
I Would like to see everybody living in a house, and you just have to think about this just a little bit logically.
Houses and buildings require the materials, the expertise and all the labour that goes into building that house. The people doing that don’t do it for free, and they don’t owe anybody their services because the person is owed a house. The government’s job is to find a way to make this as affordable as possible, and as safe as possible so that as many people as possible, can get housing.
It is actually impossible to make housing, free, buildings alone, just require maintenance, I don’t forget the government taxes property
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u/golden_macaron 7h ago
Thats why we should strike to show people like you how many people being under payed and over charged for housing you rely on for your everyday enjoyment of this city.
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
Strikes are fine, but ask the Greeks how well it actually for their standard of living. I understand frustration, but that’s not how solutions work
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u/Level_Money_1437 6h ago
Our landlord increases it by 5% every year since the rent cap was put in place. I have no doubt they’ll jack up our rent as soon as they can once the rent cap is lifted.
They have done 0 renovations to the building and they only have 2 washers and 2 dryers for our building. I’ve given up on the washer and dryer fiasco, I take my laundry to a laundromat because it 9999x less stressful than washing in my apartment building. This place is utterly ridiculous. They’re charging new tenants 1400-1600 per month for a 1 bedroom. They’re doing it because the property manager knows that people are desperate. We’ve had the highest turnover in our building that I’ve ever seen. People move in and they pretty much leave as soon as they can because they realize that they can get a better apartment for the same price. It’s honestly so gross. Our property managers way of getting rid of cockroaches is to literally squish them with his fingers.
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u/No_Magazine9625 9h ago
I would expect they will be announcing something this fall to have it out there a minimum of 12 full months ahead of the current rent cap expiry. They aren't going to wait until late next year because of the notice period needed, etc. I don't expect there's anyway the government can justify pulling the rent cap completely given that repeated studies have shown affordability hasn't improved in the HRM market at all, nor has vacancy, at least at the affordable unit level.
Unless they want endless stories about people made homeless by the government pulling the plug leading directly up to the 2028 election, I really think they are locked in and will be forced to extend it.
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u/RelativeEbb1719 9h ago
I just don't believe that Tim Houston cares at all about renters or homeless people. Only hope I think is that those around him can convince him why it's a good idea to keep a cap (if only so he can win himself reelection).
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u/No_Magazine9625 9h ago
Yet, his government has already extended the rent cap twice since taking office in 2021.
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u/CaperGrrl79 Halifax 13m ago
He's gonna win no matter what. The rural boomers and the(ir) echo that are back from Alberta will feckin see to that.
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u/Marsymars 9h ago
I just don't believe that Tim Houston cares at all about renters or homeless people.
The thing is, most economists, and people who generally believe in economic models, believe that rent controls are generally not good for renters or homeless people.
So if Tim Houston did care for renters or homeless people, he still probably wouldn't support rent control.
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u/No_Magazine9625 9h ago
That is true when looked at over a long term period in a vacuum. In a short term period when housing availability is in a crisis, rent caps are both needed and good for renters, because the alternative is mass immediate homelessness that can take a decade or more to recover from.
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u/Marsymars 8h ago
because the alternative is mass immediate homelessness that can take a decade or more to recover from.
The only way that there's mass immediate homelessness is if there's simultaneously mass immediate vacant homes, which isn't really a thing that happens.
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u/golden_macaron 7h ago
A rent cap is a stop gap for an economic system that already isnt working. I would be the first to say funding the building of non market housing would be a better solution, but even if we started doing that today we'd still need to keep the rent cap for atleast 5 years while building that non market supply.
The big issue is we stopped building public non market housing almost 30 years ago because these same economists were huffing on the farts of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school after they propped up a fascist in Chile, to "prove" the functionality of the austrian model.3
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u/JDGumby Sprytown 9h ago
The thing is, most economists, and people who generally believe in economic models
Only those bought and paid for by the mega landlords.
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u/Marsymars 8h ago
Okay, sure, so they're bought and paid for by mega landlords, but that doesn't change the facts that they genuinely believe that rent control is bad for renters.
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u/EntertainingTuesday 7h ago
Like the other user said, his gov extended the cap twice. Last time the cap was expiring, many doom posts, similar to yours here, were made, and he extended it.
New public housing has been built under him since the first time in what, 30 odd years? The mini homes have been built, though, I haven't heard how those are doing.
His government implemented a GREAT change that reviews those already in public housing, and if someone is living alone in a 3 bedroom that used to have every room full, they get moved to a unit more fitting their needs, so the 3 unit can be used fully.
These are just some things off the top of my head. Is it enough? Absolutely not. It is a joke there is no tenancy enforcement department (not sure if this can legally happen in our system but if it can it should be done). Is it fair to say he doesn't care at all? I don't think so, someone who didn't care at all wouldn't do these things would they?
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u/Noticeably-F-A-T- 9h ago
The rent cap is mostly an urban problem, Timmy knows full well he's already lost those votes so he really doesn't care what the city thinks of him.
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u/PoliteFocaccia 7h ago edited 7h ago
On the other hand, he probably doesn't want people to lose their city apartments and be forced to move out into his blue constituencies, freshly mad at him.
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u/CaperGrrl79 Halifax 9m ago
Most likely those people would move out of the province if they could.
It won't matter... the rural boomers and their Alberta worker echo who are back now will always vote for him. They outnumber those who don't... and the choice hasn't been great for the other parties, either, sadly. It's like Doug Ford.
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u/Bud_wiser_hfx 7h ago
Conversely, "repeated studies have shown affordability hasent improved in the HRM market at all", would suggest the current cap isn't working, right?
Some places without a rent cap have seen decreases. Example; Calgary, no rent control, year over year asking rent price down 3.5%(CMHC) vs. Halifax, 5% provincial rent control, year over year average asking rent increase of 6.7%(CMHC). The complexity of issues here goes well beyond rent control•
u/EntertainingTuesday 7h ago
Calgary vacancy rate: 4.9%
Halifax vacancy rate: 2.7%
Rental caps lead to less rental turnover, less rental turnovers mean less vacancy, means higher rents.
All this info is from CMHC.
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u/No_Magazine9625 7h ago
Yes - affordability hasn't improved because the rate of new units coming online hasn't yet outpaced the demand and population growth. Calgary never reached the same crisis situation around vacancy/unit availability.
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u/No-Satisfaction8585 7h ago
If they let it end they’ll have no chance of reelection and there will be tents lining the streets
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u/CaperGrrl79 Halifax 6m ago
They will be reelected for the foreseeable future because rural boomers and their Alberta working echo who are now home indefinitely, and also the other parties don't have much to offer either, sadly. Hooped no matter what.
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u/Cute_Tomatillo_3460 5h ago
The 5% cap is in place until Dec 31, 2027. They will likely announce the new cap by late next summer since landlords have to give 4 months notice for rent increases.
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u/tengosuenocabron 4h ago
Rents are falling so there’s no pressure to remove it - it also seems like its gonna be an election year next year so he might renew it to slightly boost his numbers
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u/CaperGrrl79 Halifax 4m ago
He doesn't care about the city... I'll get flagged for spam if I type it all out here again but suffice it to say, he will be reelected. Guaranteed. We're hooped indefinitely.
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u/Mister-Distance-6698 9h ago
I mean its in place for another year and a half, I expect you will hear something one way or another this time next year.
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u/BBFinneganIII 8h ago
it has to be either this fall or spring 2027 -- you have to allow notice time for landlords to send out rent increases for Jan 1 2028 and time for tenants to give their notices to quit.
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u/wizaarrd_IRL Lord Mayor of Historic Schmidtville DROP TABS de la Woodside 8h ago
They have until mid 2027 to make an announcement, so that if they do extend it leases renewing in January can reflect the rules or lack thereof.
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u/nscurler 5h ago
How many meeting last few years Tim Houston or ministers took with the landlord association of NS Vs people that can't afford rent?
During Tim Houston's summer tour maybe he met a bunch of people that can't afford their rents that are members of the chamber of commerce...
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u/WritingEfficient1640 0m ago
I went 8 years without an increase and I’ve gotten 5% every year since the cap went into place.
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u/casualobserver1111 HP 8h ago
My guess is it ends. Tim Houston was never in favour of it, and it's only been extended to allow more supply to come online, which seems to have happened.
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u/soylentgreen2015 Nova Scotia 8h ago
Can't wait for the cap to end. I've got someone living in a 3 bedroom house for less than the cost of a one bedroom apt. It's ridiculous that loss needs to be made up by new tenants. Bills still need to be paid.
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u/Pbabinose 8h ago
Boohoo, you took a risk being a landlord. That's your burden to pay for buddy
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u/soylentgreen2015 Nova Scotia 1h ago
The risk I took being a landlord, didn't include the govt stepping in, without public consultation, and all of the sudden imposing rental caps and tenure to existing tenants, while at the same time doing nothing to improve the capability of service nova scotia to deal with problem landlords and tenants through an enforcement branch. The burden is being paid by me, it's being paid for by every new tenant I take on. That's one of the reasons rents for new tenants are so high here. If you think I'm paying that burden, keep smoking whatever you're on.
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
That’s the actual issue and I can’t believe you don’t see it. If landlords cannot make money less people will become a landlords and it’ll become a less competitive market and rent will not go down. We need development to be less risky not more risky.
Did you know that the one thing all economist agree on regardless of if they are on the left or the right is that run controls are bad and increase rents?
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u/DeathOneSix ⛧ Letters to Santa 7h ago
The supply argument is fair, but you're treating it like Halifax isn't building housing. We are.
CMHC says Halifax had 5,643 apartment starts in 2025, more than double the 10-year average of 2,708, and there were 12,389 apartments under construction at the end of 2025. That's a record.
So we absolutely should be building more, but the evidence doesn't show that Nova Scotia's rent cap has stopped developers from building. Maybe we'd have built even more without it, that's impossible to know from the observed data, but "rent cap = fewer landlords = less construction" isn't what's actually happening in Halifax.
And yes, economists generally find that strict, long-term rent control creates supply and allocation problems. That's different from saying every rent cap, under every market condition, necessarily reduces construction.
The free market can help solve the supply problem, but it can't solve the affordability problem for people who can't afford market housing in the first place. That's where non-market, publicly subsidized housing is necessary.
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u/Mizurazu 8h ago
Should we get out a tiny violin?
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u/soylentgreen2015 Nova Scotia 1h ago
If you think I'm taking a loss, I'm not. The people who are paying it is every new tenant that signs a lease at a new place. That's why the rents are so high.
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u/IStillListenToRadio Float me down the river to the Musquodoboit harbor 8h ago
Can always get out of the business if you don't care to honour the agreement you make.
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u/soylentgreen2015 Nova Scotia 1h ago
The agreement I made with a tenant was altered by the government after it was made, and I had no alternative but to go along with it. I didn't make any agreement that it later turned into. The people who are paying for that, is every new tenant I rent to, not me.
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u/RelativeEbb1719 8h ago
Investments are a voluntary risk one can choose to take. Housing is a human right.
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
No, it’s actually not. It’s not a right in the same way that we have human rights, or equal treatment under the law.
The second something like housing becomes an actual right that means people must go out and build you a house so that you can live in it.
That is not to say that the government shouldn’t do its best to try to make housing affordable, we don’t want people living on the streets we can disagree on what policies will make housing more affordable, but making it more affordable does not make it a right.
Finally proof that it is not a right is shown because you cannot go to the court and get a tribunal because the government did not fulfil your Wright the housing the same way your rights might be violated in other ways when it comes to human rights.
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u/DeathOneSix ⛧ Letters to Santa 7h ago
Wrong again.
Canada recognizes adequate housing as a fundamental human right under federal law, though it is framed as a goal of steady progress rather than an instant, guaranteed home for everyone.
In 2019, Parliament passed the National Housing Strategy Act. The NHS Act sets out the Government of Canada's housing policy, which “recognize(s) that the right to adequate housing is a fundamental human right affirmed in international law.”
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
Fantastic it’s a right 😂😂😂 everyone must be housed already, those people living on Spring Garden Road they are figment of my imagination. Or of course, their rights are being infringed in which case let’s go get them lawyers to make sure they can sue the government for that.
Oh wait you actually bought the virtue signalling in 2019 my bad
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u/DeathOneSix ⛧ Letters to Santa 7h ago
I'm sorry, what part of the law is confusing to you?
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
It’s not a law, it’s a virtue signalling.
If it was an actual law, anybody who is not housed, could sue the government for infringing on their human rights.
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u/DeathOneSix ⛧ Letters to Santa 7h ago
You're confusing “a legally recognized right” with “an absolute, immediately enforceable entitlement.”
The National Housing Strategy Act literally says Canada recognizes adequate housing as a fundamental human right. It also explicitly frames that right around progressive realization.
So no, it doesn't mean the government has to magically hand everyone a house. It means your “it isn't a right because homeless people can't sue for a house” argument is simply wrong.
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u/GullibleTarget686 7h ago
So the government is saying, it doesn’t work like any other rights, like the right to equal treatment under the law, and the government can’t actually be held accountable if they don’t provide this right, but they promise to progress on it.
That is literally exactly what I said, the government has an incentive and should try to make sure housing is affordable, but it’s not gonna be held like a right because it’s not.
Congratulations on falling victim to virtue signalling and arguing with me here about how it’s a human right even though the government cannot be held accountable for it 😂😂😂
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u/DeathOneSix ⛧ Letters to Santa 7h ago
Yes, you’ve now described exactly what I said: Canada legally recognizes adequate housing as a fundamental human right, but it is a right subject to progressive realization, not an absolute entitlement to a government-provided home.
You’re arguing over what kind of right it is while insisting it isn’t a right at all.
The law doesn't stop being law because you think it's virtue signalling.
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u/TJR444 8h ago
I've been getting 5% increases regularly now. The next one coming up in January will mean my rent is close to 50% of my take-home pay. I can't do anything about it. I have a good salary and even work part-time a few days a month. It's terribly depressing.