The rental conundrum

Anyone who’s ever moved to a new town knows that at times it can be tough.

You can be as confident as you like, as sure as anything that it’s the ‘right’ move, but the ‘what-ifs’ and questions continue to rocket through your head like bullets.

What if no-one likes me? Will I be able to buy my favourite tea? What if there’s some kind of global oil crisis and I can never fly home? What will it feel like?

It’s kind of like your first day at school — the nerves, the internal struggles, the sizing up of a situation and figuring out where you stand.

But when you add to that the stress and anxiety of not knowing where you’re going to live when you move to your new town ... it makes that move so much harder.

I know. I’ve been there.

When I moved to St. Anthony I was told it might be hard to find somewhere to rent. In other parts of the world you can simply contact a real estate agent, go online or check out the classifieds in the local paper.

But here on the Northern Peninsula it can be a fruitless search.

Luckily we found a place a couple of weeks before we departed Vancouver so we had a place we knew we could call home.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

In a regional centre such as St. Anthony where there is a college, a hospital, tens of businesses, and a thriving tourism industry it shouldn’t be hard to find somewhere to rent.

Why is there such a dearth of accommodation? There are houses for sale — why not rent them out?

People are scrambling for somewhere to rent and some of them are being left in the dark.

One couple I was talking to couldn’t find a place to rent while they built their dream home in town, so they’ve been living in a trailer for two years. My new neighbour just moved here from Toronto and ended up buying somewhere because, with a wife and young child, it was his only option.

Ridiculous.

Marc Bastarache manages the St. Anthony website where there’s a section for people to put up rental notices. The people looking always outweighs the availability of houses to rent and he puts it down to a lack of confidence in the area to invest in itself.

There are certainly other factors at play such as the necessity of a working knowledge of tenant and landlord rights, collecting rent and being on-call to fix problems that arise.

But a region that hopes to grow has to give itself the opportunity.

If you have doctors, professionals and students looking for somewhere to live and unable to find a home, why would they come here?

To build an economy you’ve got to invest in it.

This accommodation problem doesn’t just stop with rentals. Tourists, too, have been turned away from the area this summer because there’s simply nowhere for them to stay. The B&Bs are full, the hotels and inns are booked solid which leaves but one option ... not to come.

That means money won’t come into the local economy, potential newcomers won’t tell their friends about how wonderful it is on the Northern Peninsula because they’ve never seen it, and the tour companies won’t bring more business this way because as far as they’re concerned, there’s no point if they have to drive for hours to find beds for their charges.

For the Northern Peninsula to live and to thrive, it’s got to take matters into its own hands.

Taking the people who want to move here and giving them somewhere to live is a good start.