A woman rendered disabled after a fall may also be left homeless after receiving notice of a massive rent increase. 

Monika Kinner fell down the stairs of her duplex after, she says, her landlord refused to install a proper railing.

She later received two consecutive rental increase memos, one for $150 and the other for $350. Kinner says both memos were given without proper notice, so she took it up with the Office of Residential Tenancies. 

After that appointment, she got her notice, but it came with a $650 price tag. 

“If there were rent caps then we could talk about it. Everything’s going up, and I know that the landlords need to charge more, because their taxes are up. I realize that. I was not against an increase, but to me, $650 is cruel.”

Kinner is unable to afford a $650 rent increase due to her disability. She is currently making just $200 a month through the Canada Disability Benefit, and waiting on word regarding the Canada pension Plan, which would allow her to live on $908 monthly.  She says she is now looking into income-based housing but has only been met with lengthy waitlists, if anything at all. 

“I have a degree in social work and human justice, so I’m quite versed at advocating for people, and now I have to try advocating for myself. It’s just dead ends, constantly.”

In an effort to establish rent and landlord guidelines, like those that already exist in six other provinces, the NDP is now reintroducing the Rent Control Act, after it died in the Legislature at the end of the spring session.