A government plan for rent controls in Toronto is “alarming” and not the answer to the city’s hot housing market.
That’s the view of Benjamin Tal, chief economist of CIBC, who says that “such policy will mostly hurt the people it’s trying to protect” based on historic evidence.
Tal says that the GTA needs more rental units and rent control, while addressing the short-term issue of rising rents, will dissuade developers from building new rental stock, exacerbating the long-term problem.
The economist highlights the example of New York which he says is almost constantly undersupplied and has widespread rent control with rents of those properties not under the rules surging.
