Rental Housing Sask. approves of SCAN officers, wants implementation

Recent amendments to the Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods (SCAN) Act by the Government of Saskatchewan are reportedly being made to address the challenge of abandoned properties that become unsafe or nuisance properties.

Cameron Choquette, Chief Executive Officer of Rental Housing Saskatchewan, joined The Evan Bray Show recently to dive into what these amendments mean.

Listen to the full interview here:

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The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Bray: What does Rental Housing Saskatchewan do to ensure it’s building the best rental housing industry for the province?

Choquette: We work with our members on any number of issues. We do a lot of Government relations and advocacy to make sure that governments here in Saskatchewan, both municipal and provincial, know what’s going on in the market and understand the policies and laws that they can institute, the programs they can implement to to build rental housing.

To give you an idea of the size of the market here in in Saskatchewan, about 35 per cent roughly of Saskatchewan’s population are renters. We represent over 60,000 rental housing units. The industry itself is over 90,000 rental housing units across the province, and that varies in Saskatchewan from mom and pops all the way to large institutional investors that have thousands of units.

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What has changed in the rental unit market over the last number of years?

Choquette: I’ve been around for five years, and in that time — and even a little bit before my arrival — we’ve seen a real focus on purpose-built rental, and what I mean by that is rental properties that are 100 per cent geared to renters in Saskatchewan. They come with amenities. They come with dog washes, clubhouses, pools, gyms, things dedicated to making these central hubs for communities.

They’re anchoring neighborhoods like they are in Harbour Landing and Greens on Gardiner (both in Regina), where we have thousands of tenants within a few square blocks, and they have their own communities, and that’s in contrast to where we typically saw mainly just townhouse developments and those 2, 3, 4, storey walk-ups built with bricks in the 1970s and ’80s. So we are really seeing a lot more investment in purpose-built rentals, catering to people who really want to rent for a longer period of time.

So there’s been a few government incentives for people that want to build purpose-built rental properties. Has that been significant for your sector?

Choquette: Absolutely, any level of government support that helps reduce the capital or the financing costs on rental properties is a big help — whether it’s federal programs through CMHC or rental repair programs through Saskatchewan Housing Corporation, all of those help rental housing providers build more units for the people of Saskatchewan, and we’re seeing that in spades.

We’ve got significant growth, thousands of units under construction in the province ready to to meet the growth-plan goal of 1.4 million people by 2030. The rental market’s a big part of that.

There have been recent amendments to the Safer Communities and Neighborhoods (SCAN) Act by the Government of Saskatchewan where SCAN officers will have the ability to target nuisance properties without waiting for a complaint to be filed. The property could be considered a nuisance due to having unsafe living conditions, squatters or excessive vandalism. How do you and the team at rental housing Saskatchewan view that legislative change?

Choquette: We’re in strong support of the SCAN program in general, we were really pleased to see in the last budget from the province, $2.7 million allocated for 14 New SCAN officers.

The devil is in the details though, on implementation. We really want to see those new SCAN officers deployed in communities that don’t have significant law enforcement teams. We want to make sure that the bylaw courts that have also been proposed by the provincial government are implemented across the province, so that the legislation actually can use the teeth that they’re putting into it right now.

But we’re in favour of targeting non-compliant rental housing providers if they are failing to comply with municipal bylaws, property maintenance issues or anything in the new SCAN legislation.

It’s important that we hold them to account to make sure that our communities are protected and that property values are maintained.

So when you say in communities that don’t have a bylaw program, are you talking about small like small towns in the province?

Choquette: I would say our smaller cities are where they’re lacking resources for bylaw enforcement. I’m headed out to Yorkton this afternoon because they’re struggling with the resources to make sure all converted dwellings in Yorkton are up to code, and they’re struggling with non-compliant property owners.

So I think the Yorktons, the Moose Jaws, the Swift Currents — those smaller cities that don’t have the resources for significant bylaw enforcement teams. If we can use SCAN officers there to complement existing systems, I think we’re going to get more bang for our buck, because those communities need those supports

What would you say is the biggest challenge facing rental housing and the rental house market today?

Choquette: It’s the cost of construction. We’re seeing significant increases post pandemic on everything from flooring to lumber, wages, everything that goes into that rental property. And unfortunately, Saskatchewan can’t compete when it comes to the Alberta rental market, where rents are higher and they aren’t paying provincial PST. So we’re actually seeing some hesitancy in the rental market because costs have increased so much and we’re still paying that six per cent PST.

That poses a challenge, because although we can build it, we need to make sure that those rents can be generated. And Saskatchewan people are pinched as it is, and the rental market can’t bear much more on the cost increase side without really hurting tenants, which we don’t want to do.

There was a change here recently, in the last few years, where social services instead of paying rent directly to those that are providing the housing gave it to the social service clients to pay the rent. And the whole reason behind it was dignity, essentially, for those people. Anecdotally, we’ve heard that has led to some of the problems we’re seeing with homelessness right now. Has that been an issue that has been discussed by your organization?

Choquette: One of my first meetings when I got hired was with then Social Services Minister Paul Merriman, and we rang the alarm bell when they were first announcing the pilot to eliminate direct rent and transition to the SIS program.

It has been nothing short of a failure and a disaster, commonly known across the country as an eviction prevention tool. Direct payment helps roofs stay over the tenants’ heads by making sure that rent gets paid on the first of the month.

Although we are certainly respectful of everyone’s self sufficiency, we’ve heard from hundreds of tenants that direct rent is a peace of mind. It’s an eviction prevention tool, and it needs to be reinstituted in Saskatchewan because it keeps those units maintained for people on social services, and it’s it’s a change that will not cost this government any money.

Instead of providing that rent directly through an EFT to the renter, let’s just change the account number and get it to the rent housing provider and keep people in their homes and prevent evictions for non payment.<

Do you expect you’re going to see that change?

Choquette: I’m hopeful that under the new social services minister Terry Jenson we can have some ongoing conversations about the benefits of amending income assistance policy, direct grants being one of them

SUMA has asked for it, we’ve asked for it, and community-based organizations have asked for it for the past five years. It’s time to make the change, and it’ll go a long way to keeping more people in their homes this winter.

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