CMHC’s latest Observer article, “Accelerating rental supply: balancing development and tenant protection,” promotes government investment into the private sector and cites research disparaging rent control policies and attempting to dispel concerns about Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and private sector housing investors. Released just a day after the Balanced Supply of Housing published comprehensive research demonstrating that REITs and small-scale investors evict marginalized communities at significantly higher rates than other landlords, CMHC’s piece reads as a tone-deaf defense of financialized housing that ignores mounting evidence of systemic tenant displacement.
CMHC’s article suffers from several critical analytical flaws that undermine its policy recommendations:
- Ignoring Domestic Evidence on Rent Control: While the article relies heavily on international research to argue that rent control reduces rental supply, it conspicuously ignores Ontario’s own policy experiment. Ontario removed rent control for buildings constructed after 2018, yet the province continues to trail British Columbia (which still has rent control) in starts per capita. Impacts of rent control are complex, and have major benefits in housing systems like Canada, where vacancy is functionally zero in many cities and tenants consistently struggle to pay market rents.
- Misleading Analysis of REIT Rent Practices: CMHC dismisses concerns about REIT-owned buildings charging higher rents by arguing that these properties are “newer, larger, and include more amenities.” This analysis fails to interrogate the fundamental business model driving these higher rents: REITs frequently purchase older, more affordable buildings and renovate them specifically to displace existing tenants and command higher market rates. Research by Nemoy Lewis, Sean Grisdale, and others has documented this pattern extensively, yet CMHC’s analysis treats the outcome (higher rents in nicer buildings) as benign market dynamics rather than the result of a deliberate and well-documented displacement strategy.
- Disproportionate emphasis on the right to evict: CMHC frames tenant protection as balancing “landlord’s right to evict tenants without too much difficulty” against tenant stability, but the BSH research shows that late or non-payment of rent accounts for only 1 in 20 evictions—heavily outnumbered by no-fault evictions, which are on the rise.
- The Condo Market Reality Check: Pointing to the “short-term risk of oversupply of rental units” CMHC cites it’s own research that found that condominium apartment sales have plummeted across Canada. This research points to a decrease in speculative investor interest in the condo market hoping to make quick returns with decreasing returns. Low vacancy rates in both Toronto and Vancouver tell another story, where the limits of the secondary market in providing affordable rental units are seen. Furthermore, as Sean Grisdale shows in his analysis of eviction filings in Ontario, no-fault evictions undermine the stability of tenants living in secondary stock, including condo units. This makes a poor case for the market’s ability to provide long-term stability and affordability.
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A Fundamental Misunderstanding of Public Investment: Another shocking oversight is CMHC’s call for “deeper pools of capital with long-term horizons” to sustain rental housing supply; does that not perfectly characterize government funding? As Canada’s national housing agency, CMHC should recognize that patient public capital and investment in non-market options are the sustainable paths to addressing housing affordability.
Furthermore, non-profit providers have the ability to provide affordability in perpetuity, something that financialized landlords looking for the highest return have little interest in supplying. When considering whether to invest in rental housing where a return on investment is expected, versus housing that can operate at cost there are clear benefits to investing in non-profit housing.
Missing the Forest Through the Trees
The fundamental issue with CMHC’s analysis is the transparent support for private-sector investment without actually addressing drawbacks. The article suggests that we must allow landlords to evict and invest in these private sector solutions and also protect tenants—without proposing a single concrete tenant protection (in fact, suggesting we strip several existing protections).
Real solutions require acknowledging that:
- Financialized ownership models actively contribute to displacement, regardless of unit quality
- Public investment offers superior long-term stability compared to profit-driven private capital
- Effective tenant protection requires robust regulatory frameworks, not market-friendly compromises
The housing crisis demands evidence-based policy responses that critically analyzes the actual impact of these policies on renters, marginalized families, and the precariously-housed.
