With many Montrealers still moving into and settling their new homes following Moving Day on Saturday, housing and tenants-rights advocates say renters need transparency so they know whether they are getting a raw deal from their landlord.
"We want a public register of rents all over the province, so the tenants know what the past tenants actually paid," demanded housing advocate Maxime Roy-Allard on Sunday. "Now they don't know anything."
The website Myrent.quebec has a community-generated database where anyone can outline what they currently pay in rent and utilities at their current address. Because it is user-compiled information it includes for comparison only a fraction of all the apartments actually being rented in the city, and as it is not linked to any government or organization, it is impossible to ensure the information is accurate.
"There's not many numbers on those sites unfortunately," admitted Roy-Allard.
He and other housing advocates are pushing for Quebec to follow the lead of Ontario, which recently introduced new laws limiting rent increases to address skyrocketing real-estate and rental prices in Toronto.
"We want Quebec to follow Ontario's example," said Roy-Allard. "In Ontario every apartment is under rent control which would oblige the landlord to follow in what they are allowed to increase. In Quebec it's a free for all."
Landlords have been against having a database to look up rent prices, but Hans Brouillete with the Quebec Landlords Corporation is also not on board with any rent control.
"It makes me laugh when we heard those people saying Ontario is better," he said.
He says Quebec landlords are more interested in changing the law to allow for security and key deposits to be taken from new tenants.
"We have landlords who prefer not to rent their apartments instead of being challenged by the tenants who want to challenge the rents," he added.
The Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU), a social housing advocacy group, argues it is tenants that need the help, that the housing crisis of the early 2000s has merely morphed into another problem.
A FRAPRU spokeswoman says instead of being unable to find a home, as it was in years past, a number of tenants are forced into living in substandard situations, over their budgets, away from their loved ones or without community services.
Last year in Quebec, the vacancy rate remained at roughly 4.4 per cent.
—with files from CTV Montreal and La Presse Canadienne