Seniors notified of $675 rent increase face moving after 33 years in same building

A Fredericton couple who have lived in the same apartment building for 33 years are worried they'll have to move out after a new landlord gave notice of a $675 rent increase on their unit coming in April.  

Pauline Tramble, 67, and her husband Charles Tramble, 84, received a letter Dec. 11 telling them their monthly rent would be jumping from $1,000 to $1,675 on April 1 for their three-bedroom apartment.

It is an increase Pauline says the two cannot afford, although she has no idea where they will go instead.

"We were devastated," she said.

"We just can't believe that it would go up that much. You know, you could accept $100, maybe $150. We were shocked.  This is home to us. We just can't see us anywhere else."

The proposed 67.5 per cent increase comes after the New Brunswick government decided against a ban on "unreasonable" rent hikes above 30 per cent that it floated as an idea last spring.

Although opposed to rent control as a policy, Premier Blaine Higgs said in May that he had "sympathies" for tenants who experience "rate shocks" and was not opposed to banning extreme increases.

"I believe there needs to be some protection there for tenants in relation to the frequency and the extent to which a rate could be changed in a span of time," he said.

Higgs said that with more people moving to New Brunswick and driving up demand for housing, he did not want to see apartment owners take advantage by steeply raising rents.

"Did we have some cases where landlords looked at the market and said, 'Now's our chance?'" he said. "I don't want people's livelihoods and situations played with just because it's the right time." 

In a news conference on May 7, executive council clerk Cheryl Hansen, the province's top civil servant, told reporters government was open to restricting increases above the 25 to 30 per cent range but ultimately abandoned the idea.

The Trambles occupy one of seven apartments in an older building on Fredericton's Shore Street. It's a prime location in the city, tucked in behind Waterloo Row, about 500 metres from the New Brunswick Legislature as the crow flies.

The property was sold by its longtime owner in November for $455,000 but then flipped a month later to new buyers for $775,000.

The latest owner and landlord is listed as DNV Properties Inc., a company operated by Dragan and Neda Veselinovic.  They sent letters to multiple tenants in the building two weeks ago, giving notice of rent increases of 40 per cent and higher.