Presto Shills For Big Oil

Presto Manning was on CTV Question Period this morning shilling for Big Oil and whining about the Alberta Royalty compromise produced by Eddie Stelmach.

CTV's Question Period: Preston Manning, Fmr. Reform Party leader

Presto was following up on criticisms he made earlier this week in a comment piece he wrote in one of them 'damn eastern newspapers'; the Globe and Mail, aka Canada's National newspaper. Preston Manning: The Stelmach royalty uncertainty principle Which of course is owned by the same folks who own CTV.

Presto has upset folks even on the right like Neil Waugh at the Edmonton Sun. Whose side is Presto on?

Presto engaged in some political prestidigitations on Question Period about how this will hurt Eddie in the polls when the election comes. And as usual with the rose coloured glasses of the Calgary right wing he predicted that it won't benefit the Liberals or NDP or even the would be right wing rump parties, but rather it would be because conservatives will stay home.

Manning added it's becoming increasingly unlikely that Stelmach and the Conservatives will win another election unless the "government demonstrates a capacity it hasn't shown thus far."

"I don't see votes going to the Liberals or the NDP, I think their biggest danger is another 150,000 people staying home who voted Conservative the last time," he said.

Well at least they have homes. It's not just the royalty deal that is driving a stake in the heart of the Tired Old Tories it's stories like this Halloween surprise.

Drastic rent increases at a Fort McMurray complex are renewing calls for rent control.

"The province needs to step in. Every other province has some form of rent control," said Rob Picard, angered by his skyrocketing rent.

On Halloween night, Picard was spooked by an 86% increase to his rent. The three-month notice means the rent on his two-bedroom 700-square-foot apartment in the River Park Glens, also known as the Syncrude Towers, is jumping from $1,425 per month to $2,650.

"I work for Suncor. I make good money, but I can't afford this. The illusion that this is Fort McMurray and everybody can afford this is just wrong," said the heavy equipment operator.

He's not the only one complaining.

Gunner Antos has a two-bedroom apartment in the same building and will see his rent go from $1,500 a month to $2,700. Those prices could even drive highly paid workers away.

"They're crying for workers and they're raping us," said Antos.

"You've got people who have jobs living in tent cities. They have people with jobs living in the bush."

Service Alberta spokesman Eoin Kenny said the government is not looking at rent controls at this time.

The apartment building has about 500 units, although some are individually owned.

"With this type of hit, even though I work for Syncrude, I may be forced to take a room this late in life," said Gerald Morrison, who has lived at the complex for more than 20 years.

"I always thought Fort McMurray was fair and square, but they're gouging now."

The landlords left a note on apartment doors Wednesday afternoon saying the change will be effective Feb. 1.

Mr. Morrison said his three-bedroom apartment is going from $1,800 a month to $2,950 - without utilities - despite a leaky roof, carpenter ants and unpainted walls. Two years ago, his rent went from $1,100 to $1,500, and then to $1,800 last February.

David Campkin said the one-bedroom apartment he and his wife share rose to $2,250 from $1,450. He said the unit's condition is "absolutely appalling" with a carpetless concrete floor and none of the promised security.

The provincial Residential Tenancies Act passed in April requires landlords to give tenants three months' notice before raising rent once a year. River Park Glen appears to have met the conditions.

There is no ceiling on rent increases in Alberta, where a sizzling economy is attracting workers from outside the province and making affordable housing scarce. A government-appointed committee suggested rent controls to Premier Ed Stelmach earlier this year, but he rejected the recommendation.

Lets do some quick math shall we. 500 units X $1500=$750,000. Rolling in the dough while not providing tenants with repairs. Can you say high rise slum lord.

Another whiner from Alberta is Harpers pal the ex-CEO of Encana, Gwyn Morgan
who also published a comment attacking the royalty compromise in that same eastern rag. The irony is that populism was what got Presto elected and made the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party possible. And Gwyn makes the same case that Presto does in attacking Farmer Ed.

Populism tramples principle in Alberta

GWYN MORGAN

From Monday's Globe and Mail
October 29, 2007 at 6:30 AM EST

Experience has taught me that populist politics are seldom principled. It's not that populists don't want to do what's right and best; it's just that if a choice has to be made as to which has priority, what is popular wins.

The second matter of principle Mr. Stelmach's government has violated is reneging on oil sands royalty commitments under which capital has already been invested. Except in the case of Syncrude and Suncor, the money was invested without a contract binding the government to honour the terms.

Nonetheless, investors rightly see this unilateral change as a clear case of doing what is popular rather than what is right. And in terms of doing what is best, the damage to Alberta's reputation certainly illustrates the wrong choice.

Industry is still in shock, but the computer models used to compare before and after investment feasibility are grinding away. Companies with investment opportunities outside Alberta will be looking at them a lot closer. The natural gas drilling and development service sector was already suffering, so expect an even worse downturn. New project decisions in the oil sands will have to factor a much higher government take into a business already replete with risk.

Mr. Stelmach states: "I'm confident we've made the right decisions for today and for Alberta's future."

As for me, I continue to believe that populist politics are seldom principled.

Populism is what kept Ralph in power for years. Of course in Ralph's case that was populism that benefited the oil boys in Calgary. So that was principled.



SEE:

Income Trusts; Predatory Capitalism

Stelmach's Royalty Give Away

Made In Calgary Homeless Plan

The Sky Is Not Falling

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Made In Calgary Homeless Plan

No rent controls. A bungled boondoggle of subsidies to renters. And now a corporate committee to deal with homelessness in Alberta sometime in the next decade.

Alberta's government has announced it's forming the Alberta Secretariat for Action on Homelessness to help end the problem over the next 10 years.

Premier Ed Stelmach says in a release that while that may be an ambitious goal, it's one that the government needs to strive for to help those in need.

The secretariat, which will include representation from across the province, is expected to be working by April.

It will be headed by Yvonne Fritz, the government's associate minister of affordable housing and urban development.

The government says issues such as a budget and membership will be worked out over the next few months.

Last January, a committee that includes some of Canada's biggest corporate leaders formed with the aim to wipe out Calgary's homelessness problem over the next decade.

Calling any announcement on the issue a good one, Calgary Homeless Foundation president and CEO Wayne Stewart said he's hoping Stelmach will focus on long-term sustainability.

Stewart said his group has been working on a 10-year plan to eliminate homelessness in Calgary and expects to release its preliminary findings in January.

This is not a solution to the problem of affordable housing it is just another Tired Old Tory form of the old poor laws updated for the 21st century. Where the old poor laws produced workhouses run by the Church, we now have corporate philanthropists coming up with housing solutions, but no cheap housing while the condo conversions boom and tent cities for the homeless spread across the province.

Premier Ed Stelmach unveiled an initiative Monday to build 11,000 new affordable homes in Alberta over the next five years.

Eleven thousand homes is a drop in the bucket. What we need is the end to condo conversions, rent control and the creation of mass public housing NOW; town houses, row housing and apartments subsidized by the provincial and federal governments.

About 2,600 people in Edmonton and 3,400 in Calgary don't have a place to live, according to the last count of the homeless population in 2006.

Both major cities have seen an increase of at least 20 per cent in their homeless populations since 2004.

Add to that the fact that Syncrude alone is looking to hire 5000 workers to live in Fort McMurray a 11,000 homes across the province is a joke.

Not only is the oil boom in Alberta causing a labour shortage, but Syncrude faces a host of retirements, with an attrition rate of eight to nine per cent, he said.

"We're trying to get up to 5,000 employees," said House, adding the company now employs some 4,600 people.

Exciting as all this might sound, he was finding few takers at the CASTLE event.

"Housing cost is the number one deterrent," said House.

In labour-starved Fort McMurray, he said, "you can work at a Burger King and make $15 an hour.

"But in order to afford the housing, you'd better work a lot of hours," he added. "A person making $15 could not survive alone."

SEE:

This Is Better Than Rent Controls?

Stelmach's Robber Barons

And New York Has Rent Controls

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Stelmach's Robber Barons

Speculators, the lowest and sleaziest form of capitalist, in Alberta's hot housing market, are now the beneficiaries, not of social embarrassment and ridicule as they once were, but of the protection of the State.

Moral betrayal at Monarch

Shock that low-income housing is sold after being built on subsidy

The Stelmach government needs to close a loophole in its tenancy law that let owners of Red Deer's Monarch Place bypass a mandatory one-year's notice before turning the affordable-housing project into condos, said Red Deer-North's Conservative MLA.

Tenants in Monarch Place believed they'd have 12 months before their homes became condos. But they instantly became condos in July; once the units are sold, tenants have 90 days to clear out.

How, many want to know, can this happen?

"You can convert a rental premise to a condominium without any notice to the tenants, as long as you're not asking the tenant to leave in order to accomplish the condominium conversion," says Eoin Kenny, a spokesman for Service Alberta.

"In this case, they weren't asking the tenant to leave. They were merely selling the suite."

The numbered company that bought Monarch Place -- a subsidiary of Everest Developments Ltd. in Edmonton -- never told residents its plans for the complex. Registered documents show surveyors began devising the condo plan for the firm on March 11, four months before it took possession.

Residents thought they'd get one year's notice before a condo conversion, a requirement the Stelmach government recently imposed. But 1327545 Alberta Ltd. legally avoided giving any notice, through a provision that lets it convert and sell units as long as it doesn't clear out the tenants.

Many residents say they don't know who their landlords are. Haut said he has never spoken with the buyers.

Richard Cotter, the Everest subsidiary's lawyer, said his client was unaware Monarch was an affordable-housing complex until after it made its purchase deposit and condo plans.

In July, the company took possession and sold all units to condo investors. Rent increases and for-sale signs soon arrived.

Of course there is federal and provincial funding for affordable housing, but no controls to stop it from being condo-ized.

Since the Canada-Alberta Affordable Housing Program Agreement 
was signed,more than $98 million has been allocated towards the creation
of 3,683affordable housing units throughout the province. Federal and
provincial contributions to affordable housing projects are enhanced by
contributions from other partners including municipalities, local community
housing authorities, non-profit organizations and private sector companies.

Without regulations to control condo speculators, and rent controls in place there is no such thing as affordable housing for anyone in Alberta.

Bridge to Community: The Affordable Housing Crisis in Alberta, a documentary by Brent Spiess, takes an in-depth look at the housing issues in Calgary and how the boom is leaving some people behind. But while Calgary is the film’s focal point, Spiess hopes that Albertans in general can benefit from the film and connect with the issues presented.

“We think the issues here are pretty much the same as they are in Edmonton or Grande Prairie or Red Deer or Fort McMurray,” Spiess said.

In May 2006, the average price of a resale home in Calgary was $358 214, up 43.6 per cent in one year. Similarly, Edmonton experienced a 22.9 percent increase that same year, as average sale prices hit $242 936. The market has had a tremendous effect on renters, and it was in this context that Spiess began the year-long process of making his documentary.

Like his predecessor, King Ralph, Eddie is kicking the poor and disabled when they are down.

While the citizens suffer at their hands the Stelmach regime dodders on protecting special interests like housing flippers and other real estate speculators.

leading Keynes to make his famous observation (in his General Theory):

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. And his reference point was the 1920s, when speculation, frenzied though it already was (especially in the USA) was, by comparison with its post-World War II evolution, embryonic.

What's more important than housing for Tories? Why golf courses. That is after all where the business of government gets done.

Alberta's Progressive Conservative government allocated more than $7 million in grants to golf clubs over three years, and almost all the money went to courses in Tory ridings.

More than half of the money was allocated in 2003, the year before the last provincial election, according to public government documents.

See:

Pay 'Em What They Want

And New York Has Rent Controls

Stelmach Blames Eastern Bums

He Can't Manage

Drumheller Bell Weather

Stelmach Tanks

Alberta Deja Vu

Padrone Me Is This Alberta

Income Trusts

Housing


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REIT Spells Rental Rip Off

There are renters in Alberta to be exploited yet through rent gouging.

Alberta's CEO Ed Stelmach refused to bring in rent controls as advocated by his appointed public committee on housing, because it might impact the 'free market'.

His in-action on the rental crisis in Alberta has influenced the market, in favour of the REIT's and against the interests of those he is elected by the worker/consumer/taxpayer/citizen.

GE snaps up Dundee's eastern properties

LORI McLEOD

Globe ad Mail, Print Edition 05/06/07 Page B4

Dundee Real Estate Investment Trust is selling two-thirds of its properties to a division of General Electric Co. for $1.5-billion, amid a wave of consolidation of Canadian real estate trusts and assets.

The trust decided to sell its Eastern Canadian assets in the belief that properties in Western cities such as Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver will continue to perform well. For example, Dundee expects to raise rents in Calgary by about 50 per cent when they expire, compared with 20 per cent for the current portfolio over all.

Dundee is the second largest REIT owning and profiting from apartment and real estate investment, behind Boardwalk. And like other REIT's they are busy transforming exiting apartments into Condo's they can sell off in the Alberta's hot market.

This is the Income Trust business transforming itself once again back into a private capital enterprise.

Income Trusts are a ponzi scheme where upon private capital moves into the public market, profits in barely legal schemes in that market, and then when it is no longer to their advantage they return again to the shadow world of private equity hedge funds.

Just how questionable these schemes are can be told in the Dundee offer which changed in the headlines in a few hours. Prior to the article above an earlier edition of the Globe and Mail carried this headline; GE buys properties from Dundee REIT for $2.4-billion

Which is a lot more than $1.5 Billion apparently finally settled on. Which may explain this;Investors question Dundee's asset sale

PROPERTY REPORT

REIT watch

June 4 close

Weekly change

Y-to-d total return

Dundee

$39.96

4.10%

5.80%

REITS success relies upon their making steady earnings distributions to their shareholders. Those earnings are made off the back of renters.

And it is clear that thanks to Ed Stelmach the Canadian REIT's look at Alberta as the sole base for their business in Canada. Which is scary for working families in Alberta as we have found out this past year.

The changes made by Stelmach in only allowing a rent increase once annually, with no cap on its size means that the REITs look forward to even bigger profits next year when they can charge 50% mark ups on their rent like they did this year.

The smart real estate money is heading West, which is not to say that GE fumbled the ball by snapping up Dundee REIT’s Central and Eastern Canadian investment properties for $2.4-billion, including debt, but rather Dundee’s decision to keep its bricks and mortar located primarily in Alberta.

For that reason, Desjardins Securities analyst Jeff Roberts is recommending Alberta-centric real estate stocks like Melcor Developments Ltd., Mainstreet Equity Corp., Genesis Land Development Corp. and Boardwalk REIT, all “top pick” rated.

For investors who like distributions and dividends, his “top picks” include Boardwalk REIT, with a 34 per cent total 12-month expected return; Calloway REIT, offering a 33 per cent total return; and First Capital Realty Inc., 26 per cent.

This is the so called free market, which you can regulate, the Alberta Government as usual just doesn't want to be bothered because after all they are partners with business. And business calls the shots in their partnership.

So no one should be surprised when Dundee REIT looks forward to raising rents 50% next year, thats the regulation the Ed Stelmach created for them.

See:

Income Trusts

Housing




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Tax Subsidies vs Rent Control

Ok explain this one to me. The Stelmach government refuses to adopt Rent Controls since that would of course be socialism and interference in the 'free market'.

On the other hand giving developers cash bribes aka tax breaks, socialism for the rich, is of course not interfering in the free market.

Premier Ed Stelmach is refusing to put rental caps to a free vote in the legislature.

He said his government is studying incentives for developers, including tax breaks

Developers like Boardwalk REIT which raked in massive profits last year and in the first quarter this year because of Alberta's overheated housing market.

And who are rubbing their hands with glee at the profits they will continue making without having to build a single apartment building.


See:

Just Say No

No New Apartments in Alberta

Inflation In Alberta

Housing


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Our Pal Ed

Lame duck Premier Ed Stelmach is our pal says the Biggest Landlord in Canada....

"We are extremely pleased," whooped Boardwalk president Roberto Geremia.

"Though confronted with intense pressure from the media and opposition parties," he continued, "the provincial government has remained steadfast in its stand against legislated rent controls."

CEO Sam Kolias said Boardwalk was now "poised to generate significant gains," and reminded unitholders that "today's most exciting investment story surrounds our Alberta portfolio," which he described as "really hot."

And Edmonton in particular, where 32% of Boardwalk's apartment units are concentrated and the vacancy rate is running under 1%, is "poised to generate significant gains over the next coming months."

Then Kolias rolled out the happy numbers for the cheerleading stockies listening on the conference call.

Funds from operations were up 25% over the same three months in 2006. Distributable income per unit was up 27%. Rental revenues were up 15%, while net operating income of $51 million was up 19%.

Happy days are here again. And probably the most important stat of all was Boardwalk's "outlook and guidance" prediction that distributable income will climb from $1.87 to as high as $2.04 per unit in 2007.

"We're being thoughtful in the amount we are increasing rents," he continued.

"Although the market can bear more," Kolias sighed, "we do realize that our customers are the most important thing that we have."

H/T to West of the Fourth who discovered Neil Waugh is as Socialist.

Something I have pointed out over the past couple of years about Neil.

After you suffer thirty five years of an incompetent One Party State, socialism actually looks good.

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Rent Control Filibuster

The Liberals and NDP filibustered the Alberta Legislature last night when the Tories tried to sneak their toothless rent control bill through the Legislature.

Tories refuse rent debate

Marathon debate over soaring rents keeps Alberta legislators up all night

Canadian Press

Published: Thursday, May 10, 2007

EDMONTON (CP) - An overnight debate in the Alberta legislature over new housing legislation had NDP Leader Brian Mason ordering pizzas and Liberal members stashing food.

Mason says he felt like a kid at a sleepover as he ordered fast food for his NDP colleagues and shared food with security staff. Liberal Leader Kevin Taft didn't join the marathon debate about whether rent controls should be brought in, but his members stashed food in the assembly to keep up their strength.

Government whip Frank Oberle said rent controls would stifle construction of new housing units, so the legislation that eventually passed second reading did not include them.

It instead limits rent increases to once a year, increases fines for landlords who ignore the rules and give tenants more notice when their apartments are being converted to condos.

Opposition politicians say that's sadly inadequate for thousands of people facing huge rent hikes, forcing some to leave Alberta in search of cheaper housing.

Rent legislation debate goes overnight (9:35 a.m.)

edmontonjournal.com

Published: Thursday, May 10, 2007

EDMONTON - In a rare move, the Alberta legislature sat all night to debate the Conservative government's controversial rent legislation.

The New Democrats introduced an amendment about 8:30 a.m. today to bring in rent guidelines. The amendment is still being debated.

Liberal-sponsored amendments to the legislation - Bill 34, the Tenancies Statutes Amendment Act - were passed early this morning.

The legislation will limit rent increases to once per year and require landlords to give tenants a year's notice before turning their buildings into condominiums.

But the government has steadfastly refused to include rent controls in the legislation even though a committee recommended rent-control legislation.

The Liberals said in a prepared statement today one of their amendments doubles the fines for landlords who violate the rules on condo conversions.

The debate was continuing this morning. Live video of the legislature is available at http://media.assembly.ab.ca/livevideo.

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Just Say No

The Alberta Tories continue their war on.....affordable housing and rent controls....delegates at the Alberta PC AGM reject rent controls.

"Rent controls and all other sorts of initiatives are sort of like a drug," delegate Jon Lord, a former Tory legislature member, told delegates prior to the vote. "They're very addictive, and they're difficult to get off of once you start down that road."

So having access to affordable housing makes you like a junkie. Under the Tories you can go join all the other folks who have addictions living on the street.

But of course the fact is we have had rent controls in Alberta before, and yes they were brought in however reluctantly by this very same PC party. But of course lets not let the facts get in the way of the myth of the free market.

Even Coun. Terry Cavanagh, who once had the job of phasing out provincial rent controls, urged Stelmach to look seriously at bringing them back.

Alberta introduced rent controls in 1975, when inflation soared. Coun. Terry Cavanagh was chairman of the provincial rent decontrol board that oversaw the phase-out of the controls between 1977 and 1980.

Cavanagh said Sunday that Stelmach should consider rent controls again, regardless how delegates voted. Its something the province has to look at, when you have people whose rents are going from $550 to $1,100.

Their wages arent going up 100 per cent, he said. Its going to be difficult for them to pay.
The Conservative convention heard rent controls are addictive and, once begun, are hard to end.

Cavanagh said controls phased out in an orderly fashion when he ran the decontrol board. Landlords were allowed limited annual increases so that, once an apartments rent exceeded a certain amount, controls came off.

That way the pricier units, presumably occupied by higher-income tenants, came off controls first, he said.

You might wonder what time period the PC's are stuck in....Rick Bell in his Calgary Sun column says the chosen people who attended the AGM come from the time of Howdy Doody...that glorious post WWII boom period which had no inflation....

Talk about the blind leading the blind. The majority of the Tory party are like the Beverly Hillbillies next to Unsteady Eddie's Green Acres cabinet.

They are a good cross section of Alberta ... in 1962.

Remember they didn't even know there was a boom until last year. Their crowd has been in power so long they don't care what mere mortals think.

That's why we are treated to the illogic of Lovable Lloyd Snelgrove, the power behind the Tory throne with the fancy handle of President of the Treasury Board, shamelessly thinking if he limits gouging to once a year instead of twice annually, it's "a good start."

Lloyd is the guy who doesn't make much sense when he defends scuttling the government's own task force's idea of two-year guidelines: inflation plus 2% plus more for added expenses, hardly a draconian design.

Then he says temporary rent controls won't encourage investment in new housing. Lloyd, read the affordable housing report. A cap on rent hikes is seen as a short-term deal.

Besides, without rent controls, where's all this supposed building of rental units now?

Yep during this long boom with no rent controls we have actually seen apartment construction decline in Alberta.

So if there are no rent controls what will the government do instead to stop the gouging?

"Gouging? Landlords are gouging? That's news to me" says Honest Ed the Chief Tory Salesman

Guess he missed the Stats Can Report on housing, and all the articles published in Calgary this past year.

Stelmach must have thought he looked compassionate when he talked to reporters about how upset he is with landlords gouging tenants with huge rent increases.

"I've heard about these absolutely astronomical rent increases that really are un-Albertan," Stelmach said in advance of his speech to the Tories' annual convention in Edmonton. "We have to look after the vulnerable. A thousand- dollars-a-month increase is beyond reason."

The $1,000-a-month increase was a reference to the story, raised by Alberta's NDP during question period on Thursday, of a 74-year-old widow in Edmonton facing a tripling of her rent from $595 a month to $1,595.

Indeed, for a few moments his message was all about compassion and how his government was angry with unscrupulous landlords. And he hinted that maybe his government will revisit its opposition to rent controls depending on what happens during debates at this weekend's convention.

But then some Calgary journalists began poking at Stelmach. Why was he so upset with the story of one Edmonton woman? Didn't he realize Calgary tenants have been hit by huge rent increases for months?

That's when Stelmach unwittingly unholstered the gun and took aim at himself.

"I wasn't aware of anybody getting a $1,000 increase," he said. Bang.

The Calgary journalists were gobsmacked. They have been writing stories about Calgarians being hit by $1,000 rent increases since last August. There have been so many of those stories that journalists have stopped reporting on them and have moved on to heartbreaking tales of tenants being gouged by $2,000 a month rent hikes.

And here's Stelmach saying he's not aware of what's going on in Alberta's largest city. He tried to look compassionate but ended up looking clueless

So the Tories solution is to meet landlords and tell them gouging, whatever that is, is not nice. And then threaten them...with rent controls.....I can see Boardwalk REIT shaking in their boots right now.....

The hikes are making a mockery of Stelmach's promise to do what's right for all Albertans. In a free enterprise economy, the kind the Stelmach government supports, he's doing what's right for all Alberta landlords. The only thing guiding the economic tiller is Adam Smith's invisible hand. The problem is this hand is steering the government towards the rocks.

Stelmach has ruled out rent controls as un-Conservative. Without rent controls, however, some landlords are jacking up people's rents so high that Stelmach has complained they're "un-Albertan."

So, what's a government to do when hoisted on its own ideological petard?

It goes behind closed doors and threatens landlords that unless they stop exercising their rights in a free market economy -- the very rights that the government purports to support -- the government might have to take drastic action against landlords, including, say government sources, the possibility of rent controls.

Lots of folks are coming to Alberta to work, lots of Alberta businesses need workers, but workers have nowhere to live. One would think that this simple equation workers = renters would sink into the troglodyte Tories tiny dinosaur brains.

Housing a priority for eastern jobseekers

Which means that once again we have a government that has no plan for dealing with the boom and the resulting housing crisis. Except to repeat that famous Klein line; "let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark."

See:

Housing

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No New Apartments in Alberta

Boardwalk REIT claims it would have to raise rents to $1650 a month in order to have enough cash to build new apartments in Alberta, thus its opposition to rent control. However Boardwalk has not built any apartments, as a REIT it buys up existing properties.

Meanwhile the Stelmach government ignores the recommendations of its own public committee to implement rent controls. Claiming it would discourage apartment construction.

Except all current conversions and construction of multiple person dwellings are not apartments but condos, cause thats where the money is.

Developers have not been building rental units in Alberta, even without rent controls. Despite the rapid growth in the Edmonton area, there were 5,050 fewer rental units last year than in 1987, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

See:

Inflation In Alberta

Housing


Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Alberta, Calgary, Edmonton, Ed Stelmach, housing, rental, condominium, apartment, Boardwalk Reality, Income Trusts, rent controls, homelessness,