Fixed-term leases: N.S. Tories won’t fix loophole landlords use to evict at will

It’s a problem we see or hear about every day. Tents in the park, people living in cars, being evicted or worried they won’t make rent. This week and beginning today, we’re looking at the scope of the problem, how we got here, who can fix it and how. 

Jennifer Corbin was cornered.

Her landlord showed up in her driveway and it quickly became clear why. The single mom and her three children needed to find a new home.

It’d been barely two years since the family moved into the three-bedroom apartment in Fairview. At the time, Corbin was happy just to have a roof over her family’s head and a place she could afford. Her rent was $1,400 a month.

Now her landlord Scott Donkin and his partner Theresa MacLean wanted the family out and soon.

More from our weeklong series on the housing crisis: Perfect storm of factors contributed to Nova Scotia’s current housing woes

The question was: How soon? MacLean was willing to let Corbin decide a move-out date. Corbin stalled for a few moments, she said. Then the couple decided for her: Dec. 31. MacLean pulled out a lease and told Corbin to sign it. She did.

“What was I going to do?” said Corbin. “I felt like I had no other choice.”

She signed the lease back in August. Since then, she’s been looking around for another place to live.

“There’s no way I’m going to find a place. There are so many people looking all the time and there’s nothing out there that I can afford,” Corbin said.

“It’s terrifying.”

A fixed-term lease

Corbin signed a fixed-term lease. That type of lease is defined under the Nova Scotia Residential Tenancies Act as a lease “entered into for a fixed period of time, which includes the day of commencement and the day of termination stated in the lease.” What they actually do is provide a simple and obvious way for a landlord to get around the province’s rent cap, say housing advocates.

“It’s a glaring loophole that undermines that value of rent control and security of tenure,” says Mark Culligan, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid Service.

Throughout the housing crisis, housing advocates have been urging the province to close the loophole, with no success. Those groups include the Nova Scotia Action Coalition for Community Well-Being, ACORN and Students Nova Scotia.

The New Democratic Party introduced a bill that would have banned landlords from hiking rent above the two-per-cent rent cap after a fixed-term lease ends. That was dismissed by the Tory majority. Meanwhile, the province isn’t tracking the number people on fixed-term leases. We asked for whatever data it has but a spokesperson for Service Nova Scotia said the tenancies program only has information “based on cases that apply to the program.”  

Dalhousie Legal Aid has lobbied the government to follow British Columbia’s lead. In that province, the landlord is required to reoffer the unit to a tenant once a fixed-term lease is up. The only way the landlord can kick the tenant out is if they move in themselves.

Uneven balance of power

But the Conservatives rejected that idea, too. Fixed-term leases have been causing problems for tenants for years, says Culligan. The pandemic exacerbated the rate at which landlords were turfing tenants out using fixed-term leases. He points out that almost every other jurisdiction in the country that has rent control has taken steps to regulate fixed-term leases. That’s because they are an easy route for landlords to avoid legal restrictions on rent increases.

Fixed-term leases tip the balance of power even further in the landlord’s favour, Culligan says. Tenants are often afraid to assert their rights, out of fear that their landlord will simply get rid of them. “As the vacancy rate declined, tenants, especially low-income tenants, lost meaningful consumer power, says Culligan. “They can no longer command decent conditions or proper management in the way that they used to by deciding to move out of unit or declining to take a unit.

“Once you are in a fixed-term lease, that severely restricts your ability to enforce your rights to make complaints, contend illegal rent increases. … Your landlord has the right to arbitrarily decide not to enter into a fixed-term lease.”

That was the case for Corbin. She gets $700 a month in housing benefits that help cover her rent. When she first moved into her apartment, the landlord was receiving the money but not taking it off her rent.

Corbin confronted her landlord, but she continued to pay the full amount. It was only after someone from Nova Scotia Provincial Housing Agency got involved that her landlord refunded her the money.

From that point, Corbin feared it was just a matter of time until she lost her apartment. She said she’s reported issues to her landlord, including the electric heat in her home not working, but didn’t push hard for fear she’d lose her place.

“I was stressed out because I always thought he’s going to hold this against me.

Another tenant

She wasn’t the only tenant in the building who’s had issues with their apartment.

The landlord had tried to evict a single mother with three special-needs children because she was behind on rent. He succeeded at the tenancy board level, but the mother appealed the eviction in small claims court last spring. She argued she was holding back part of her rent for several months because her unit had plumbing problems and the front steps were dangerous.

She won the appeal, and was awarded a one-time abatement of $2,500.

We reached Donkin and put Corbin’s accusations to him. Donkin wouldn’t comment on that but said Corbin could take her concerns to the tenancy board. Corbin has already done this. She expects to have a tenancies board hearing sometime in mid-January.

Tammy Wohler, a Nova Scotia Legal Aid lawyer who deals with tenancy matters, says she sees landlords routinely using fixed-term leases so they can skirt the rules and evict tenants for no reason.

“Fixed-term leases do not provide stable housing. (They) only benefit landlords seeking to avoid the rent cap and other tenant protection,” she said.

“With a fixed-term lease, a landlord can effectively evict, with no grounds, even the ideal tenants, simply as a means to increase profits. We see landlords offering to renew the fixed-term lease of existing tenants, but with increases that violate the rent cap. If the tenant objects to the increase, then the landlord simply decides not to renew the fixed-term lease.”

No plans for change

Colton Leblanc, the minister responsible for the Residential Tenancies Act, says the province has no plans to tighten the rules around fixed-term leases. He said it’s on the tenant to know what kind of lease they’re signing.

SaltWire asked whether that’s reasonable given the power imbalance.

The minister responded but didn’t really answer the question. “What I would say is the solution to our housing crisis is more housing supply. The solution to the housing crisis is more places that Nova Scotians can call home.”

He said he supports the intended use of fixed-term leases where “it’s a mutually agreed upon date of starting the lease and terminating the lease. That includes people who move to the province for a work placement or school.”

That’s an argument that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, says Culligan.

“The minister has taken the view in the past that fixed-term leases have their benefits. For example, they help tenants who are here temporarily for work or school.

“Not only was this view subsequently contradicted by the actual submissions of Students Nova Scotia, but it ignores the actual benefits of the proposed reform.”

He points out that the B.C. model would still allow students and temporary workers to enter into fixed-term leases, but it would also allow them to renew those leases if they chose to extend their tenancies.

“In effect, the proposed reform provides tenants with all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks of the current system.”

It would also save people like the Corbin family from being pushed out of housing they can afford.