Problem of rising rents

Re. Building to many rentals? (Castanet, March 18)

The reporter, at the end of the article, points out the reason we don't yet have too many rentals—(rental) rates are not falling.

I've watched rental rates skyrocket and had arguments with landlords about why. The main reason is ownership affordability. The idea of a "mortgage helper" has morphed into a "mortgage payer,” where the renter is saddled with paying the entire mortgage for the home owner.

Landlords I've spoken with have absolutely no problem with that. They claim if the renter did not pay the mortgage, they couldn't afford to buy the house. Another landlord claimed he was charging as much rent as he was to pay for the rent he had to pay while visiting his wife in hospital down in the Lower Mainland. That was in West Kelowna, an area normally known for having rents cheaper than in Kelowna at the time.

I'm seeing ads around town for many months of free rent now. But those landlords need to cut their rental rates by half, and that isn't even enough to make them affordable. Landlords in (Kelowna) seem to think they can charge the moon and it's adding to our homeless population and the working poor. Kelowna's idea of the working poor is quite a bit more affluent than other locales, simply because their jobs don't earn enough to cover rent and groceries and bills.

It isn't that (the working poor) don't have good-paying jobs, they do—sometimes two to a household. But to hear landlords put say, "just get a better job" isn't a reasonable response in the slightest.

As long as greed controls the asking price, the vacancy rate will rise. We may need to do what Vancouver has done and institute a vacancy tax to bring down rental prices.

Marilynn Dawson