Removing rent controls is always hard. There's no painless way to do it. But its like pulling off a bandage... sometime its a painful thing that has to be done.
Why exactly?
To make more housing AVAILABLE, so that people have more options when they chose where to live?
To correct situations where landlords actually overcharge, because they realize that because of rent controls, they won't be able to INCREASE rents, so they instead charge more on day 1?
To ensure that the units that they are in are actually properly maintained?
So that the poor can pay the rich is the best reason I can find.
You do realize (as I mentioned before) that not landlords are 'rich'. Many are middle class people, who may have renovated part of their house to rent to people for extra cash, or bought a house to renovate and rent out. And even the larger landlords are often owned by shareholders (who are often middle-class people who hold stock in real estate in their retirement portfolios.)
The poor are ABSOLUTELY being squeezed here. My friends have gone from paying 20-25% of wage on rent to 50% and still have had to leave the city.
Doug ford did not eliminate rent controls. He tinkered with them, but many/most units are still covered under rent controls. If your friends had to "leave the city", it is doubtful that "Greedy landlords profiting from no rent controls" is a major factor. The fact is, many people have to leave cities even when rent control exists.... simply because there aren't enough units available to them.
From:
https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.htmlEconomists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed, either completely or with provisos, that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.”1 Similarly, another study reported that more than 95 percent of the Canadian economists polled agreed with the statement. The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum.... Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city-except for bombing."
...
Economists have shown that rent control diverts new investment, which would otherwise have gone to rental housing...They have demonstrated that it leads to housing deterioration, fewer repairs, and less maintenance. For example...29 percent of rent-controlled housing in the United States was deteriorated, but only 8 percent of the uncontrolled units were in such a state of disrepair.So most economists (be they left wing or right wing) have decided "rent control is bad", but for some reason the Liberals and NDP think somehow they are smarter than the people who actually study economics for a living.