High rent is the number one issue for New Brunswick tenants, according to advocates and a recent survey by the New Brunswick government.
“Students, people on low incomes, people on disability pensions or other pensions are finding it extremely difficult to make ends meet,” said Matthew Hayes, a Fredericton sociologist and member of the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants’ Rights.
N.B. Housing Minister David Hickey says he is looking to address tenant and landlord issues during a modernization of the Residential Tenancies Act.
As part of that process, a survey was launched in April, asking what people would like to see change in the rules and supports that currently exist.
About 2,800 people responded, Hickey said. Sixty-seven per cent of them were tenants, 12 per cent were landlords and the rest were housing advocates and other stakeholders.
They identified some consistent problems, he said.
The most common, according to the government’s summary, was affordability. Others were delays in getting repairs done or decisions from the Tenant Landlord Relations Office and a lack of clarity in the rules around evictions.
According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which measures rent each fall, the average monthly rate in October 2025 was $1,307 provincewide (ranging from $904 in Campbellton to $1,427 in Fredericton).
That was up from $928 in 2021.
The current average, according to Apartments.com, is $1,327.
A three per cent cap on annual rent increases has been in place for two years now and has “stabilized” the rate of increase, but a lot more affordable housing needs to be created, Hickey said.
Loopholes
Hayes argues that it’s “a bit of a false advertisement,” to say New Brunswick has a three per cent rent cap.
That’s largely because a steady stream of affordable units are being “repositioned” to whatever price the market will bear, as soon as they turn over from one tenant to another, he said.
Affordable, by Hayes's definition, means units with rent of less than $1,000 per month, since almost half of tenant households in New Brunswick earn less than $40,000 a year.
The threshold used to be $750 a month, and more than 8,000 of these units were lost between 2016 and 2021, Hayes said.
He expects the 2026 census data will show much greater losses.
Big rental companies can count on about 20 per cent of their units turning over per year, Hayes said.
So, while the government works to create 573 public housing units during its mandate, the existing stock of affordable market housing, falls by about 33 units each week, said Hayes, citing a report from the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.
“We are pouring a lot of public money into a bucket with a huge hole at the bottom,” Hayes said.
He pointed to growing numbers of people who are homeless or on the waitlist for affordable housing.
The number of New Brunswickers who are chronically homeless is more than 1,000, according to the most recent figures from the Human Development Council. That's more than double the estimate from 2019.
The number on the waitlist for subsidized housing has almost tripled in that same time, to 14,000, according to the provincial government.
Fixed-term leases
Fixed-term leases are another exception to the three per cent rent cap, Hayes said.
This type of lease expires after a designated duration, as opposed to “periodic leases,” which automatically renew after the first month or year.
“We've talked to tenants who’ve been very frustrated about this, who thought that they … could predict what the rent was going to be and then discover that that's not the case," Hayes said.
Capital improvements
A third exception to the rent cap is available when a landlord spends money on capital improvements. Rent can increase by up to nine per cent, he said.
What counts as a capital improvement is ill-defined, Hayes said, and there’s no provision for rent to decrease again once those costs have been recouped.
Forced evictions
Smaller landlords can’t count on as many regular turnovers so they often resort to evictions to raise the rent on their apartments, Hayes alleged.
One tenant who contacted the coalition was “harassed systematically by their landlord to leave the apartment,” he said.
The reason given was that the apartment needed renovations because of humidity problems, Hayes said.
The previous landlord had said the work would take two or three days. The tenant would only have to clear out of one room during that time but could still live there.
“The new buyers of the building wanted to make more money off of it,” Hayes said.
“And in order to do that, they had to evict the person who was in there.”
“Eventually the landlord actually showed up and cut a hole in the middle of the winter in this guy's roof. And so he had no choice. He had to leave.”
That tenant ended up leaving the province and the country, he added.
Substandard housing
On the other end of the spectrum, lack of upkeep was another common issue identified in the survey — a close second behind affordability.
“It hits home particularly for places like my neighbourhood in Saint John, where we see a lot of substandard housing,” said Hickey.
A “major problem for tenants” that the coalition hears about regularly is the spread of pests to multiple units when problems are not dealt with promptly, Hayes said.
One person who got in touch with the tenants’ rights coalition dealt with an ant infestation for months before finally moving, he said.
Landlord perspectives
CBC News requested an interview with the New Brunswick Apartment Owners Association, now called the Rental Housing Providers of New Brunswick, to discuss the survey results and issues raised by tenants and advocates.
No one was made available, but in an emailed statement, president Tressa Bevington said the concerns cited by tenants and advocates should be taken seriously.
"Tenants are entitled to safe, well-maintained housing, and there should be effective enforcement when a housing provider fails to meet their obligations," Bevington wrote.
"Responsible housing providers support that ... and we support holding people accountable when they don’t," she said.
Good rental housing policy should also provide "fair, clear and workable rules for responsible housing providers who are maintaining, improving and investing in New Brunswick’s rental housing," Bevington said.
Landlords who responded to the government’s survey said their top issues were non-payment of rent, lengthy eviction timelines, property damage, disruptive tenant situations and rising operational costs, including property tax, maintenance, insurance and utility bills.
Bevington said the group hopes government reforms will "strengthen protections, improve accountability and create a rental system that works better for everyone."
The fixes
The minister pledged that his department would try to make it easier for people to file complaints online or by phone and get support and quick decisions from the Tenant Landlord Relations Office.
He also wants to clarify the rules to make enforcement more straightforward and might “lean on” the Public Safety Department for help with that.
The government is "considering everything" including "the ability to enforce and put in liens" if they have to go in and do emergency repairs, Hickey said.
A tighter cap
In Hayes’s view, the easiest fix, for tenants, would be to tighten the rent cap.
It could be applied to the unit instead of the lease, he said, so that it remained in effect when a new tenant moveed in.
His group would also like the size of the cap to be set by a formula tied to inflation.
“Three per cent is an arbitrary number,” he said, and not reflective of increases in costs or wages.
Hickey said new legislation would be “co-designed” with stakeholders and written in plain language.
“Our plan is to release something this fall that outlines what our next policy steps are,” he said.
