A CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF RENT CONTROL IN SELECTED JURISDICTIONS: GERMANY AND CANADA IN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

It is axiomatic that the role adequate, healthy, and affordable housing plays in human life 
cannot be overemphasised. At first, housing was seen as a commodity that was available only 
to those who could purchase, and this put the financially handicapped at a disadvantage. 
However, the world underwent a series of wars, which served as eye-openers to the countries. 
Consequently, housing moved from being a commodity to a socio-economic right. The height 
of things was the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 Pandemic alongside the overcrowding 
practice by many countries in the world. Consequently, various legal frameworks were put in 
place to ensure the facilitation of this socio-economic right, but this has been undermined by 
neglect from many countries. Essentially, among the issues related to housing, rent control is 
crucial. There has always been a tussle between landlords and tenants on balancing their 
proprietary interests and fundamental rights, respectively. Against this backdrop, there have 
been some underlying theories that justify the need for government rent control mechanisms 
to resolve this clash of interests. On the other hand, some countries adopted legal frameworks 
to settle this structural and legal pandemonium completely. Flowing from this background, 
this paper employs a doctrinal method to critically appraise the rent regulation mechanisms of 
Germany and Canada, and comparatively highlights their approaches to rent control. At the 
end of the work, practical recommendations such as the adoption of flexible, contextresponsive rent regulation models and the need to strengthen institutional enforcement,
among others, are provided that can be used by less advanced countries to make their rent 
control mechanisms more effective.