68-year-old Marjorie Pemberton’s apartment has mice, but she doesn’t want to move because she’s afraid to sign a fixed-term lease.
“I didn’t think at 68 I wouldn’t have any place else to go,” Pemberton said in an interview Thursday.
Pemberton is a member of ACORN, an advocacy group that covers housing and tenancy issues.
She lives in the 500 block of Herring Cove Road, a set of apartment buildings that came under fire in 2021, when a CBC investigation revealed the poor conditions of the building.
But Pemberton is on a periodic lease, which means her landlord can’t evict her unless they have a reason, and they go through the proper process, and she’s afraid to lose that.
Pemberton and a few other ACORN members were protesting outside the legislature on Thursday.
The Houston government just proposed legislation to extend the five per cent rent cap to the end of 2027.
She said the rent cap doesn’t help because landlords use the so-called fixed-term lease loophole to evict people when their leases are up. Then they raise rents over the cap.
But finding a place in Halifax is so hard that people are still willing to pay the higher price, too, she said.
“Most people want a home. They don’t want a place to stay for a year, and the landlord has all the power over them,” she said.
Heather Clark, chair of the Halifax ACORN branch, protested with a few other members outside of the Nova Scotia Legislature on Sept. 12, 2024. (Jacob Moore/Acadia Broadcasting)
For the first eight years living at her apartment, Heather Clark didn’t know she was on a fixed term lease.
Clark is the chair of the mainland chapter for ACORN Halifax.
Two years ago, she realized her situation. She said that even though she’s a good tenant and pays her rent on time, if her lease is up, her landlord can simply ask her to leave, and there’s nothing she can do.
“That was very concerning to me, because I am retired, and I am on my own. And, you know, I do have some health concerns. Housing is a human right, and housing is also health care,” Clark said in an interview Thursday.
If her landlord ever asked her to leave when her lease is up, she wouldn’t have anywhere to go, she said.
Clark said she thinks the Houston government wants to keep fixed-term leases around so that, when landlords evict people, they can raise rents above the cap. She said that ends up bringing in more tax revenue for the province, too.
“They would prefer to support the landlords who are making millions of dollars off of tenants,” she said.
Seniors and any other homeowners, she said, should stay where they are for as long as they can. They’ll end up regretting the move because they’ll have to sign a fixed term lease, because that’s the norm, she said.
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