As the province’s average rent price for a one-bedroom apartment continues to creep above a range many of us can reasonably afford on our own, landlords continue to search for alarming ways to appeal to prospective tenants who might be strapped for cash.
Adjust your filters on rental websites like Facebook Marketplace or Kijiji, and you’re bound to come across at least a handful of listings that fully invade the tenant’s privacy.
In just the past year, landlords have gone to great lengths to earn additional income, including stuffing mattresses at the tops of staircases, renting out beds smack dab in the middle of kitchens, and even packing room to the brim with shared bunk beds.
The latest disturbing listing to emerge from Ontario’s rental market is a shared room in Kitchener for $485 per month for one male or $450 for a couple.
3 men sharing a bedroom for $485 a pop in Kitchener…
byu/mybluntside inSlumlordsCanada
The listing boasts the home’s proximity to transit connection points but glosses over the fact that tenants will have to share beds within less than a foot of each other.
The ad was quickly reshared on Reddit, where users shared their horror at a landlord packing a room with three beds with little to no privacy for the future tenants.
“Not the Goldilocks and the Three Bears setup,” one person joked.
“The ad game is absolutely on point. Rethinking renting? Yes. Absolutely,” another person wrote, referring to the ad that popped up above the listing.
Other horror rentals in recent weeks include a landlord in Toronto’s Rexdale neighbourhood attempting to rent out half of their own personal bed for an undisclosed rent price, a laundry room-turned “studio“ in Brampton for $550 a month, as well as a mattress packing into the corner of a living room in Ottawa for a staggering $500 per month.