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Drip, drip, drip.
The faucet on Alexandria’s* sink wouldn’t shut off. Maybe there was a faulty cartridge inside. Maybe it was just rust, or a calcium buildup. An average of 43,500 litres of water a year down the drain.
She called her landlords to ask them if they would fix it.
“I got told off when I asked when there would be a replacement,” she said. “I avoid them at all costs. I only ask for repairs when it’s absolutely necessary. I only stay here because the rent is absurdly cheap for Vancouver.” Still, she loves the apartment; she simply wants repairs to be done, and to see the place in good repair.
Chris and his wife lived in a newly renovated building in Hamilton, but quickly found that the landlord, who owned the building through a holding company, wasn't willing to maintain a single thing. If something wore down, the landlords would ignore calls and emails. Now, long after he’s left the apartment, the landlord is trying to get him and his wife to pay utility bills on the apartment…despite not living there. Chris wisely kept record of every interaction he had with the landlord.
The “mom and pop” landlord is often touted as the best form of living for renters. It’s achieved a mythical status, one cited by the media in articles that talk about how tough it is to be a landlord, and as a goal that Canadians used to be able to achieve, but now is completely out of reach. There are endless articles that talk about the struggling landlord, but many fewer that discuss the need for rent and vacancy control.
“Mom and pop” landlords are usually thought to be one person, maybe two people who own a building for the purpose of renting. They might live in the building, renting out their other units. Or they might live in a house down the road. The idea remains the same – someone reliable who could be considered a neighbour.
Mom and pop are going extinct
The “mom and pop” landlord is a misnomer for one simple reason: it’s probably not a family who owns the building. It’s more likely to be small investors interested in making a profit.
Ricardo Tranjan, a researcher for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, in his book The Tenant Class, says “The widespread notion of ‘struggling landlords’ is a grave mischaracterization of the rental market. In fact, Canada’s landlord class comprises wealthy families, small businesses, corporations, and financial investors.”
38 per cent of tenants are renting homes not specifically built for renting, but built to be inhabited by a family – basement suites, sectioned off houses, detached suites, etc. Most of these landlords own their personal homes as well as a second home which they can rent out above the cost of renovation and maintenance. Someone owning two homes is likely to have a personal value averaging out at $700,000 across Canada, – though this number could be vastly higher depending on where they own these properties.
More than one in five owners is an investor as well. Who we refer to as “mom and pop” landlords are overwhelmingly people who want to invest, and not the idealized live-in landlord – the investor-occupant – who cares deeply for the house. Landlords who invest in houses like this will often use the “own use” loophole to evict their tenants, and then rent it out for higher prices on the back end. Some jurisdictions such as B.C. have changed the rules so that landlords must live in the unit for one year before being allowed to put it back on the market. However, housing laws are hard to enforce.
The trendline is getting worse on private landlords. People buying houses solely for their own use are increasingly becoming few and far between. Around 67 per cent of Canadians own a house, but ownership is becoming weighted in favour of older people – Gen X and older own houses, but fewer and fewer millennials and younger own housing.
75 per cent of new housing purchases in 2023 were investors – statistics largely led by Ontario’s rates. Mom and pop are going extinct, and yet they’re still the focus of discussion by the media and the government.
The smaller time landlords are often interested in maximising their investments. They throw up drywall and turn a house into a five unit building with materials that cost nothing, and have led to a crisis where homes are often in complete disrepair, making them illegal units. One in 14 housing units are in need of major repairs, and one quarter are in need of minor repairs. 786,200 units across Canada are “not suitable” for living, with 1,127,500 in need of major repairs.
The nature of investor landlords or “mom and pop” landlords means that they face significantly less scrutiny from the government. It is commonplace in most provinces to see “illegal units”, aka secondary units. There are apartments, basement suites and the like that homeowners will put on the market without government registration. Statistics around the number of secondary units on the market are hard to find, because by definition they are avoiding government scrutiny and accountability. In 2021, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation did a study in Ontario which found that an estimated one out of six houses with a basement had a secondary unit – up to 75,000 units in the province. In Metro Vancouver alone there are an estimated 15,000 secondary/illegal units.
Bulwarks against regulation
The truth is that these landlords are a creation of the financialized housing industry, and are a bulwark to push back against government regulation. They operate as a hegemonic shield, utilized by highly capitalized corporate landlords, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), and aggressive industry lobbying groups to obscure the rapid and systemic financialization of Canada's housing stock. A REIT is a company that owns, and operates, real estate for the purpose of making money.
These landlords have teamed up with corporate landlords and REITs to create pseudo-unions which create a narrative thrust in mainstream discussion to further propagate the myth of “mom and pop” landlords.
Landlord groups such as Rental Housing Canada, Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario, LandlordBC, Corporation des propriétaires immobiliers du Québec, Alberta Residential Landlord Association, and Calgary Residential Rental Association are controlled by corporate power, but since a few members are small time “amateur” landlords, they use the reputation of the few to push for laws that benefit corporate monopolies. Industry actors shape public perception and discussion through media campaigns that are highly successful.
Danielle Kerrigan, a postdoctoral fellow in Simon Fraser University’s geography department, examined how Canada’s media frames rent control: Analyzing 52 articles from the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and National Post, they found the five most common arguments presented were: (1) it hinders supply (77%); (2) it protects tenants (31%); (3) it has no impact on supply (23%); (4) it negatively impacts tenants (19%) and (5) it harms landlords (17%).
By anchoring the public and legislative debate to the purported vulnerable homeowners, the people who are struggling to make ends meet for the sake of their family, the broader real estate industry successfully campaigns against rent control, tenant protections, and anti-speculation taxation, all while consolidating unprecedented volumes of residential property. And they do it openly, unchecked by governments that need housing investment to grow, because after decades of catering to private industry while scaling back social housing, housing represents nearly 40 per cent of Canada’s GDP. Housing prices deflating means Canada’s GDP collapses.
Montreal has the highest share of renters in large North American cities. The way the rental market is distributed is in a highly centralized domination of REITs and corporate ownership. 30 per cent of Montreal’s market is owned and controlled by 600 companies. This is despite there being 129,960 landlords in the city. Put in other words, one third of rental units are owned by 0.4 per cent of landlords in the city. And this trend is continuing.
Real estate investment trusts
The biggest perpetrator of rising rents and centralizing ownership is REITs, who have created algorithmic strategies to target neighbourhoods with early signs of gentrification. There is consistent correlation between more expensive neighbourhoods and REIT concentration. REITs owned at least 6 per cent of purpose built rental units in 2015–2019, but they are estimated now to own as much as 10 per cent.
These REITs and the investor class of landlords are constantly lobbying the government to cut GST and HST on rental development as well as accelerated eviction powers, as well as lobbying that opposes rent control. Governments across the country in 2026 are handing them what they want on a silver platter.
And it’s not hard to see why. On the Trail, my journalistic publication, has been tracking the data of which elected officials are landlords for almost two years. The data is updated weekly. As of March 2026, 45 per cent of Federal Liberal MPs are landlords, 44 per cent of Conservative MPs are landlords, and a quarter of the other parties are landlords as well. Many members are still missing, and have not fully disclosed their information.
Mark Carney’s federal government, which saw the most lobbying in the lobby registry’s history last October, is offering a 100 per cent GST rebate for new purpose built rental housing. In March, Ontario announced a massive HST rebate, which will cost the government billions and cut social services, while only benefitting developers. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador are copying the strategy. B.C. has its own version that have been in place for years now.
Rent in B.C. is still, by far, the highest in Canada.
The corporate landlords seem to have won. By using the myth of the “mom and pop” landlord, they crafted a narrative that dominates the media, and has pushed the government to give corporate welfare to both developers and landlords in an unprecedented way.
The system that has been built benefits only a few people: Corporate landlords, REITs, and developers. Meanwhile, renters are unable to make ends meet as everything skyrockets in price, from gas, to groceries, to health care, and obviously rent and mortgages.
Whether we take the “mom and pop” landlord as a reality, or we acknowledge that this landlord is a rare breed whose importance is exaggerated to benefit corporate power, the takeaway remains the same. The system is designed to extract wealth from the majority. Instead of confronting this, every government across Canada is leaning into it.
Instead of fixing it, governments everywhere deregulate with no checks to corporate profit.
Mom and pop are an endangered species that hardly exist outside our collective imagination. But at the rate the country is going, without intervention, renters may be left to go extinct as well.
*Alexandria is a pseudonym used for fear of landlord reprisal. First name is used for other private citizens interviewed upon author’s request.