Local housing and tenants rights groups are calling on Quebec's minister for housing to step in and tell the rental board to reverse its decision to stop publishing suggested guidelines for rent increase averages, a decision they say will lead to abusive rent hikes.
The rental board had said that its annual list of suggested average rent increase limits was taken as the gospel and may have led to confusion since they didn't factor in information such as taxes and property repairs.
Groups such as RCLALQ say that's bunk and that both tenants and landlords have understood for years they were only suggested guidelines. They say they believe the rental board's decision is linked to the lower rent increase limits for this year.
"Instead of clarifying the guidelines and follow its mandate of providing information, the rental board has abandoned tenants by creating more confusion," said spokesman Maxime Roy-Allard.
RCLALQ said tenants now have to figure out by themselves how to calculate the rent increase averages on the rental board's complicated online form where the information required is usually in the hands of the landlord, from insurance numbers to rents in the rest of the units in the building.
"It's going to make it a lot more difficult because (tenants) don't have the information and to find the information, you almost have to have a master's degree in math to understand their formula," said Manuel Johnson, a legal aid lawyer in Pointe-St-Charles and Little Burgundy who works with tenants in cases before the rental board.
"And also to find all the different information, there's like 16 factors, even for a lawyer it's difficult to find all the information."
Johnson recommends tenants get in touch quickly with legal aid lawyers or housing rights groups if they get a notice of a rent increase so they can evaluate it because if they miss the 30 day deadline, "you're stuck with that increase."
"And don't forget, the increase is not just for this year, it's going to be for next year and next year and next year. And next year, (they'll)add on another increase and you can't go back in time and say, 'Last year's increase was too much.' It's too late at that point," said Johnson, who works with Services Juridiques Communautaires de Pointe-Saint-Charles et Petite-Bourgogne.
Housing and tenants rights groups are planning protests for next week.