A landlord hiked rents again and again. Canada's housing agency rewarded him every time

Everything seems to be getting more expensive. Food, gas and housing prices are on the rise while paycheques are slow to keep pace. 

The CBC News series Priced Out explains why you're paying more at the register and how Canadians are coping with the high cost of everything.

In the year after the final tenants living in a rundown pair of apartment buildings on Victoria Road in Dartmouth, N.S., left for good, many of their units have been transformed with granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and subway tiled kitchens.

Those renovations have also seen advertised rents double, far beyond the reach of former residents like Edward Greek, a 58-year-old on social assistance who lived for six years in a $550-a-month bachelor unit.

Since his eviction in late 2020, he said he has stayed in 10 different places, including a spell at a homeless shelter and at three different hospitals due to medical issues.

"I've been shuffled around, shuffled around, shuffled around," he said. "It was very hard on me."

It is one of the latest in a string of so-called renovictions in the Halifax area by Adam Barrett, the 36-year-old head of BlackBay Real Estate Group Inc. There's indications it's earned him a big payday. After refinancing the Victoria Road properties, mortgage documents suggest one of his companies has pulled out upward of $1 million in profit.

But listed in those records is another notable piece — one that's received little public attention in the debate around the escalating rental crisis in parts of Canada. Each time one of more than a dozen BlackBay apartment buildings has been renovated and rented out at much higher rates, the company has been rewarded by a federal Crown corporation whose stated goal is to "make housing affordable for everyone in Canada."

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation plays a large role in the financing, and refinancing, of apartment buildings across the country, from small, six-unit properties to high rises that house hundreds upon hundreds of people.

It does so by insuring tens of billions of dollars worth of mortgages for eligible multi-unit rentals. That lowers the risk for banks and other lenders, enticing them to offer building owners lower interest rates, higher loan amounts and longer periods to pay the money back.

But the Victoria Road project illustrates how that financial support system can become uncomfortably intertwined with situations that seem counter to the purpose of CMHC, and even to the mandate of the federal minister who has overseen the housing agency since 2019.

In December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed Housing Minister Ahmed Hussen to develop a plan to prevent renovictions, and devise a post-renovation surtax for cases where rent increases are deemed "excessive."

Tammy Wohler, a Halifax legal aid lawyer who has represented hundreds of renters in residential tenancy cases, calls CMHC's role in renovictions "tragically ironic," given its affordable housing ambitions. 

"The push for affordable housing should not take affordable housing away from those already living in it," she said.