The Yukon Residential Landlord Association wants to make a major point crystal-clear, says president Lars Hartling.

“Eviction without cause in the Yukon does not exist. It is really important to understand the rules,” Hartling told the Star Monday afternoon.

He was responding to comments made at a news conference the NDP held last Thursday.

MLA Emily Tredger and two residents of a 10-unit apartment building at 602 Cook St. discussed how all the tenants have been instructed to move by Sept. 30.

None have long-term leases.

Reporters were told the Cook Street tenants’ one- and two-bedroom units will be re-rented for an additional $500 to $600 per month respectively.

“I was given two months to pack up 20 years of my life,” tenant Darlene Pollard told the news conference.

Hartling expressed sympathy with the tenants’ plight.

“It’s very unfortunate for them that this has taken place. This situation should never have been allowed to happen,” he said.

“We don’t need market-wide legislation, but specific programs to help those people.”

But, in the cases of month-to-month agreements, he stressed, both the tenant and the landlord have the legal right to withdraw from what he called a contractual arrangement.

“There is no notice without cause, but an end to a contractual agreement,” he said.

“Those leases will exist in perpetuity until someone ends them, and 99 per cent of leases are ended by the tenant; their lives have changed, they bought a house .... ”

The Cook Street building’s former longtime owners sold it about a year ago to retire, one of the tenants told last week’s news conference. He said he pays $1,080 per month in rent.

To Hartling, that suggests the former owners were essentially “subsidizing” the tenants for many years – a situation that had to change after the new owners took over, he argued.

“The previous owners had a different situation,” he said. “We all know how sticker-shock and inflation is hitting us.

“The person buys the building and has to make a viable return on his investment. So this course of action (the planned higher rents) needs to take place.”

Every few years, a 20- to 30-year-old apartment building will require renovations that will cost tens of thousands of dollars per unit, Harting said.

In 2021, as a condition of the NDP’s formal support of the minority Liberal government, a system of rent caps was introduced. This year, landlords can raise rents by a maximum of 3.3 per cent.

The Cook Street building’s current owners have told some tenants the caps are playing a role in the evictions, reporters heard last week.

The association was not consulted about the implementation of the caps, which, Hartling said, hurt the marketplace.

“People have had to work around that system to make their business model viable,” he said.

“If consultation had taken place with our association, we could have helped them (the government). A lack of consultation is not good policy.”

Yukoners are witnessing a rental market that has “seized up” due to confusion about the laws, he added.

“A lot of the landlords are not business owners, but Mom and Pop operations. (Caps) are adding more fuel to the fire and making the market seize up.”

About a month before the caps were announced last year, he said, he knew of two local apartment buildings that were for sale.

“They were posted on a Friday night and were sold over the weekend. Lawyers were working all weekend like crazy.”

Now, he said, a building put up for sale would take considerably longer to sell under a rental caps regime.

“We need to know with certainty what rules we are going to play by.

“We need good social policy in place that is not brought in for populist political reasons but which is well-thought-out and will let residential landlords flourish and allow the market to move ahead as needed,” Hartling said.

“We don’t need media stunts.”

The evictions the NDP highlighted represent “just a fraction” of the number of local rental units, he added.

The botom line, Hartling said, is that “nobody wants to evict people. I have 74 units, and 99 per cent of the people are great.”

Pollard and Richard Lawrence, the other speaker at last week’s news conference, “were great tenants,” Hartling added. “They sounded like perfect tenants.”

He said he has had conversations with landlords who opted to sell off their properties as a direct response to the rental caps, he added.

“If you upset people enough, and they can’t make their properties a viable business model, they walk away.

“If I can’t keep control of my asset, who would invest in a market like that?”

A spokesperson for the Cook Street building’s owners told the Star last Thursday she would have no comment on the evictions until after she had consulted her lawyer.