Finding a place to live as a student in Kingston is brutal—and it’s only going to get worse.
Most houses in Kingston’s “ghetto”—University District—are in rough shape. Students have grown accustomed to living with mold, rodents, broken appliances, and decaying infrastructure.
Lease agreements are an additional issue. Those on the hunt for housing should expect ridiculous—and illegal—provisions in some rent contracts: no pets, no guests, and even no guitar playing.
It’s understood across campus that one’s primary goal is to find a lease. Any negotiations or specific requests are left until after the contract is signed. The last thing landlords want is to find themselves renting to students who know their rights.
Despite facing these harsh realities, most students remain undeterred.
Indeed, demand for student housing is as high as ever, and with enrolment numbers at Queen’s increasing year-over-year, there’s no sign of it slowing down anytime soon.
It seems Queen’s students prefer to adhere to the three golden rules of real estate—location, location, location. A broken dishwasher and a negligent landlord are worthy sacrifices if it means living closer to campus.
Unfortunately, none of these problems are new. Queen’s students have been subject to shoddy living conditions and exploitative rental agreements for decades.
Back in the ’90s, Queen’s students faced a similar housing crisis. At the time, students were seen as risky tenants and local landlords had little incentive to offer them leases. In 1999, the University responded by implementing the Landlord Contract Program (L), granting landlords special privileges if they rented to Queen’s students.
Ontario lease agreements are governed by the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA). Under the RTA, tenancies end if the tenant chooses to move out or if the landlord evicts the tenant.
Evictions are a formal and lengthy process, and the Landlord Tenant Board (LTB) has the authority to evict tenants only if landlords provide a legal justification. If no eviction occurs, a one-year lease will automatically convert to a month-to-month agreement.
However, under the L, Queen’s exempted landlords from the formal eviction process. Students are required to sign an eviction agreement alongside their lease, forfeiting their right to appeal to the LTB. The rationale behind this provision was to prevent tenants from staying in units reserved for students after they graduate.
The eviction exemption provided by the L also meant that students’ leases couldn’t be converted to month-to-month agreements. If they wanted to stay in their homes, they had to resign a new lease and eviction notice each year.
The L did provide students with some perks not included in the RTA. Typically, when new tenants move into a rental unit, landlords are allowed to increase the rent as much as they please. The L forces landlords to adhere to the annual provincial limit regardless of whether new tenants had moved in. Additionally, the L required landlords to have their rental units examined and certified by a property inspector to ensure they complied with city standards.
In many ways the L was a success. Today, virtually every house and apartment within a 10-minute walking distance of Queen’s functions as student housing. Students are no longer seen as risky tenants, but instead as profitable opportunities.
On the other hand, the L undermined student tenants’ rights and landlord ability.
Notably missing from the L were any means of enforcement if tenant rights were disregarded. Students continued to live in unaffordable and substandard housing, and the University displayed little effort in informing students of their options in cases of landlord misconduct.
After 23 years, Queen’s terminated the L in December 2022. In a statement that announced the conclusion of the L, Queen’s Community Housing claimed the program no longer provided demonstratable benefits to student tenants.
The news was bittersweet. Students are no longer forced to accept lease agreements in which eviction is always a threat. However, without the L, landlords in the University District are no longer subject to real rent control. They may once again take advantage of the fact that many students don’t know their rights and facetiously cite the now-defunct L’s exemptions to illegally evict tenants—a practice student tenants have already reported experiencing.
Given its recent dissolution, we have yet to see the full impact the absence of the L will have on the student housing market in Kingston. At the same time, newer students are navigating this reality.
Under the L, my previous house’s monthly rent was $5,600, where each bedroom cost $800 per month. After moving out in May, the new tenants told us they’re paying $7,000—a 25 per cent increase. That’s ten times the 2023 provincial 2.5 per cent increase limit.
The fallout of the L impacts all tenants regardless of if they’re students.
In a recent report by the Social Planning Council of Kingston & District (SPCK&D), tenants shared that landlords outside of the L have forced tenants to leave after their one-year lease ends under the guise that the landlord decides if they can re-sign. This illegal practice has become increasingly common, allowing landlords to discriminate against tenants and evict them for profit.
If nothing is done to remedy the situation, exorbitant prices will become commonplace across campus. We have already seen tenants local to Kingston priced out of the downtown area. Sooner or later, the majority of students will be forced to move out of the University District, and the student community will be increasingly segregated by wealth.
There’s still hope. The university can—and should—step in. One solution could be to create a reformed L that emphasizes ability and conflict resolution. It should include rent control, annual property inspections, and limit landlord power over tenants. A new L should also establish a formal procedure to involve the University in student-landlord disputes, similar to the grievance arbitration process employed by labour unions.
Students also need to empower themselves and stand up for their rights as tenants. Ignorance works in favour of landlords exploiting tenants’ lack of legal literacy. Queen’s landlords are too comfortable pushing students around and presuming students won’t push back.
Students can’t afford to be uneducated or lenient. A good place to get informed is through Queen’s Legal Aid’s informative guide to student tenant rights. For more complicated questions, QLA also offers free legal services for students.
It’s becoming harder and harder to justify the increasingly poor conditions and high rent that come with living the student life—all while Queen’s profits from ever-increasing enrolment caps. Instead of washing their hands of student housing, Queen’s must clean up the mess it has helped make.
Our silence won’t protect us. Ultimately, for change to occur, students need to take action. It’s high time for us to make our voices heard, which means working with the University to address the student housing crisis before it’s too late.
Dylyn Reid-Davies is an MA candidate in the sociology department, and Mitchell Lupa is a fifth-year political studies student.
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Matthew Lupa
This article changed my life
Frank
Maybe queens alumni should be buying these places and fairly rent to students