Rent in New Brunswick surges another 9 per cent in past year

The average cost of rent in New Brunswick in October was nine per cent above where it was last October, according to figures released Tuesday by Statistics Canada.

The increase is more than triple New Brunswick's overall inflation rate of 2.8 per cent over the same 12 months. That is making the rising cost of living especially severe for those living in apartments, according to Angus Fletcher with the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants Rights.

"The choices that surround the basic aspects of your day-to-day life get harder," said Fletcher.

"It's squeezed a lot of people. We've had to deal with both increases in rent and increases in food [costs] as well."

Once in ample supply in New Brunswick, affordable housing has become one of the province's most serious social problems.  

A rapid surge in the population of nearly 44,000 people between 2021 and 2023 has overwhelmed residential rental and real estate markets in the province. The growth has also widely outpaced the construction of new places for people to live in.

That has driven up the costs — of renting an apartment and owning a home — to levels that low- and moderate-income households are struggling to cope with.

Last week, the Canadian Real Estate Association reported the average selling price of a home in New Brunswick in October was 12.4 percent higher than a year earlier, the largest increase in the country.

In Greater Moncton, a semi-detached home that was selling for $155,000 in October 2018 now sells for $343,400, according to the association.

That price escalation has trapped many tenants in their apartments, where costs have also been rising rapidly. 

Since October 2020, the average rent in New Brunswick is now up 28.7 percent. It's the largest increase among all 10 provinces over the three-year period and nearly double the national average rent increase.  

Emily Donner is part of those statistics. She has lived in the same Saint John building for seven years and began paying a 15 per cent rent increase in October. Just before the increase began, she told CBC News it was going to be a difficult expense to absorb all of a sudden.

"I do understand that rent does need to be increased," said Donner. "But it is a lot. It is a lot for a single year."

Two weeks ago, Food Banks Canada reported the use of food banks in New Brunswick is up nearly 25 per cent this year over last year, with people who are employed making up nearly one-in-seven users.

"It's not only happening to people with the lowest incomes but those with average incomes, such as those who are working, who are seeing the purchasing power of their money decline each month," said Richard Matern with Food Banks Canada.

The New Brunswick government has acknowledged rising housing costs are not just straining household budgets, but in some cases pushing previously housed people into homelessness.  

In the legislature Tuesday, Premier Blaine Higgs said those housing problems are real but fixable and not an entirely negative development, since the population growth behind them is itself a positive event.

"There are challenges with more people in our province," Higgs said.

"There are housing challenges. There are homeless challenges. These are good problems to have but they are challenges and we will meet each and everyone of them."

In June, the province launched a housing strategy that identified the need to construct 6,000 new housing units per year in the province to increase supply enough to satisfy demand and ease pricing.

However, current figures show only 4,401 housing units were started in New Brunswick over the most recent 12 months, a decline of 122 from the year before.