The Commons Human Resources committee began hearings this week on corporate landlords and the taxation of real estate investment trusts (REIT). .According to Blacklock’s Reporter, one MP criticized the hearings as an attempt to unfairly “demonize private sector landlords.”. Scott Aitchison .Hearings follow the committee’s adoption of a motion by New Democrat MP Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody-Coquitlam, BC) to “examine the issue of financialization of the housing market including corporate ownership of single-family homes, rent gouging, renovictions and the impact of real estate investment trusts on the rental housing market including, but not limited to increased rental rates and loss of affordable housing units as well as the tax treatment of real estate investment trusts.”.“We are trying to demonize private sector landlords,” Conservative MP Scott Aitchison (Parry Sound-Muskoka, ON) earlier told the committee..Issues of rents and evictions “are absolutely 1,000% provincial jurisdiction,” said Aitchison..“I am not going to start telling the provinces how to handle their landlord and tenant boards now,” said Aitchison..“We should focus on why, in fact, after promising literally billions for the last seven years, the situation is worse than it was seven years ago. I think this is a partisan effort to try to demonize certain groups of people when we really should be focusing on what we can actually do.”.In 1993, the government decided to give REITs special tax treatment..The trusts own around 200,000 rental apartments, making up 20% of commercial units nationwide..The Cost of Removing Tax Exemptions for Real Estate Investment Trusts report by the Parliamentary Budget Office on April 3 revealed that removing these tax exemptions would cost the trusts $54 million annually..The Federal Housing Advocate suggested several significant changes to the regulations in a series of reports, including implementing national rent controls, expropriating property, prohibiting the sale of private property to commercial landlords, and other proposals..“Profits for shareholders and executives are achieved by extracting more from tenants through higher rents and are often reliant on displacement,” said one report The Financialization Of Multi-Family Rental Housing In Canada..The report recommended Parliament “expropriate housing owned by financial firms that violate human rights,” “regulate lending institutions to suspend lending to entities that contravene human rights including the right to adequate housing,” “prevent the sale of housing to financial firms,” “stop subsidizing financial landlords with CMHC preferred lending” and “require public pension funds to promote the social good.”
