Chris Thompson is prepared to fight to the end to contest what he says is a rental price increase with little notice – and he’s encouraging others across New Brunswick to do the same.
“If I have a court order, I’ll leave. But I will fight to the end,” he said.
“We need to care about our community and fight for each other.”
Thompson had just moved in with his girlfriend, whose full-year fixed-term ends Aug. 31, when he says they received a text from the landlady of the Fredericton duplex saying they’d have to fork over more money and start paying utilities come September — or leave.
Rent would go from $1,395 to $1,495 but they’d also have to start paying utilities, Thompson said. Because of the addition of utilities, he believes the total increase in monthly payments is above the consumer price index, which would entitle them to apply to have the increased cost spread out. Most importantly, however, is that an increase in rent requires six months’ notice.
Thompson alleges that the landlady argued that because it’s a fixed-term lease, they have to take her offer or leave it. Global News has attempted to contact the landlady but had not received a response by publication time. Even in a non-fixed-term lease, however, tenants can only be pushed out in specific circumstances.
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A provincial spokesperson said fixed-term leases are “covered under the Residential Tenancies Act and are subject to all the same tenancy protections as non-fixed term leases.”
“The main difference in the tenancy is that the tenant and landlord are locked in until the end of the tenancy, as indicated on the lease. There is no notice required to terminate the tenancy at the end, because the end date is agreed upon when signing the lease.”
Under the Residential Tenancies Act, last updated in 2023, Section 11 says that even in a fixed-term lease, the landlord “shall not increase the rent” unless notice is given “which is not less than the notice period prescribed by regulation,” the notice of increase is in a separate document, and the increase is “reasonable in relation to that charged for comparable units in the same geographical area.”
Thompson acknowledged that he’s in a privileged position: he and his girlfriend have been paying a fair price for the unit, they both have steady jobs, they have no children to support and he has contacts he can reach out to for support. He worries that others in less fortunate circumstances could get taken advantage of.
“With things getting so expensive and all the nice things I just talked about, it’s not that I’m barely scraping by, but I can’t save up money like I used to. No one can,” he said.
“And so if I have all these advantages, there’s people who are signing the lease agreements out of fear that they’ll be thrown out, guaranteed. They need people to represent them.”
Thompson says he and his girlfriend put in an official complaint on Friday after he claims a phone call with the landlady proved fruitless the evening prior.
Nichola Taylor, the provincial co-ordinator at ACORN NB, says issues surrounding fixed-term leases in New Brunswick are uncommon because they’re not very widespread. However, she said her colleagues in Nova Scotia have suggested that landlords are using term leases to “intimidate tenants either to stay and have higher rent increases or to use it at their disposal to get rid of tenants.”
“Any tenant in that position is going to be fearful because, as you know, affordable apartments are almost non-existent now throughout the province.… It shows the massive imbalance of power between landlord and tenant, that the landlord has the ability to use these loopholes to their convenience.”
Taylor believes fixed-term leases, which she says were meant for short-term rentals such as students, should be scrapped altogether.
“If you’re talking about someone who wants to live there for a considerable amount of time, it’s like having them on that cliff edge of ‘You know, I can take that away from you whenever you want.’ And when the rental market is as bad as it is, and there’s hardly any apartments out there that’s affordable, this has a very big impact on people who are on low to moderate incomes because their choices are very scarce.”
Thompson believes the language in the Residential Tenancies Act is “a mess,” which is “causing some vagaries around it.” Still, he praised the changes made last year to Section 11 of the act, which he says he will be using to make his case.
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