N.B. tenants, landlords wait weeks for decisions as record number of disputes clog system

A growing backlog of cases at New Brunswick's Residential Tenancies Tribunal has left people who are challenging their 2023 rent increases mired in lengthy waits for decisions on what they will have to pay for housing this year.  

That is despite pledges by government as recently as this month that reviews and  judgments on rent increases will come quickly.

"We have a standard of service that we set for ourselves that our team needs to meet," Housing Minister Jill Green said in the legislature last week.   

"For disputed claims where the landlord and tenant don't agree — and rent increases would be one of them — our standard case is to make a decision in 45 days."

But figures the province supplied to CBC News show that the 45-day standard is regularly being exceeded by tribunal officers as they cope with stacks of applications from tenants unhappy with their rent hikes.

As of March 31, data compiled by the tribunal shows it had 94 rent increase challenges under investigation, including 18 that had been filed back in January. Those cases would have been opened between 59 and 89 days earlier.  

A further 28 cases started in February were also still being worked on, many close to or already past the 45-day deadline.

Green is the minister responsible for the Residential Tenancies Tribunal, which decides on the reasonableness of rent increases.  

She was being questioned about workloads facing tribunal officers since the province announced the end of a cap on rent increases in the province for 2023. 

Green said everything is being done to keep rulings on a schedule. 

"We will continue to work with [tribunal officers] to ensure they can continue to make decisions in a timely manner so there is no impact on tenants or landlords," she said

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But that's not been everyone's experience.

Janice Percy received notice in March of a $200-per-month increase from her Quispamsis landlord and decided to move rather than fight it. Neighbours who did approach the tribunal for help with their increases told her they had been warned about long delays, she said.

"Apparently, they have so many appeals on file that it's going to be months before they ever hear back," Percy said.

In late November, Green announced that a rent cap limiting the increases that landlords could charge in 2022 to 3.8 per cent would not continue in 2023.   

Instead, landlords could ask for any increase to bring an apartment up to current market rents.  

That triggered a wave of rent increase notices from landlords to tenants and a record number of appeals to the Tribunal by tenants for help.  

In January, February and March of this year, 189 applications arrived at the Tribunal from renters looking for assistance with a rent increase notice.  It's more than the entire number of applications received in 2021 and a 43 per cent increase over the same three months in 2022.

That has been a problem for a body that struggled last year to keep up with its workload, even when it was significantly lighter.

Green told the legislature last week that the tribunal took an average of 47 days to deal with rent-increase-type cases that came forward in 2022, more than its own target for the year.

Angus Fletcher, with the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants Rights, said tenants dealing with notices of large rent increases need as much time as possible to make housing arrangements for themselves given the scarcity of vacant and affordable alternatives.

"It's vital to get a timely response," Fletcher said.

"If you're contesting an increase, you're probably not going to start looking for a new place until you're certain that things have concluded one way or another."

The tenancies tribunal has the power to decide whether a proposed rent increase from a landlord is too much given rents on comparable apartments in a given neighbourhood. It is also in charge of deciding if an increase above inflation should be implemented over multiple years.

Green told the legislature the tenancies tribunal had been given a $200,000 (13 per cent) increase in its operational budget this year to do its work, but she was prepared to allocate more resources if required.