In the 18 months she has lived in her apartment, Alice Lee, U3 Arts & Science, reports that her water has been shut off 13 times. Most recently, she turned on the tap to find it running yellow. Lee lives in a building owned and managed by InterRent, a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT)—a type of company that owns and operates for-profit real estate. She explained that the building’s maintenance worker was unequipped to deal with the problem.
“He came into our apartment and didn’t have any tools, he just had a can of WD-40,” Lee said. “It was the same when we had problems with our electricity.”
For the past three years, McGill Athletics has partnered with InterRent, a relationship set to end in May. Through the agreement, InterRent served as the university’s official private student housing partner, and funded renovations to the Athletics student lounge. The partnership has been featured on InterRent’s social media as part of a broader push to market themselves as community builders.
However, Lee’s experience points to a broader issue. A survey conducted by ACORN Canada found that up to 80 per cent of tenants with financialized and corporate landlords—like InterRent—reported urgent repair needs, with overall worse living conditions than those renting from private landlords.
REITs are rapidly expanding their share of Canada’s rental housing market, growing from zero rental units in 1996 to roughly 200,000 by 2021. Over the same period, their total assets ballooned from $80 million CAD in 1993 to $76 billion CAD in 2021. REITs raise capital from investors, purchase rental buildings, and distribute profits as dividends. Unlike most investment trusts, they benefit from a tax structure that allows them to avoid paying taxes on income distributed to investors, which makes them particularly appealing as investment vehicles.
Critics argue that this model is further transforming housing into a financial asset rather than a basic need. REITs are a driving force behind the ‘financialization’ of housing, which tenant unions, academics, and the Canadian Human Rights Commission have identified as a threat to the human right to housing.
In a written statement to The Tribune, Anna Kramer, assistant professor at the School of Urban Planning who researches housing, explained that financialized landlords often increase rents and lead to evictions.
“The financialization of housing is exacerbating the precarity of tenants,” Kramer wrote. “By buying up apartment buildings and using strategies such as neglect, superficial renovations and above guideline rent increases to push out long-term tenants, they are raising rents rapidly and setting precedents for other landlords to follow.”
The Federation of Metro Tenants’ Association further explained that InterRent uses the term ‘repositioning’ to describe this process of replacing lower-income, lower-paying tenants with higher-income, higher-paying ones. In the company’s 2024 annual report, InterRent CEO Brad Cutsey stated that 90 per cent of the company’s portfolio has been repositioned, enabling the company to “attract stronger residents.”
Tenants have pushed back against these strategies. In 2018, long-time residents of an InterRent-owned building in Hamilton went on a seven-month rent strike in response to rising rents and poor conditions. The action resulted in reduced rent increases and some repairs, and no tenants were displaced.
Kramer reaffirmed InterRent’s role in the broader housing crisis in Montreal.
“Although Montreal has some of the highest tenant protections and rent control de jure, de facto rents are rising much faster than inflation and the set guidelines for increases,” Kramer wrote. “Rents in Montreal have increased by 70 [per cent] between 2019 and 2025, and evictions have surged 40 [per cent] over the last two years alone. Given these trends, McGill’s partnership with Interrent REIT is a slap in the face to students and tenant solidarity in general.”
In a written statement to The Tribune, McGill’s Media Relations Office (MRO) stated that the university will provide more details at a later date.
“In 2023, McGill Athletics signed a three-year agreement with InterRent REIT property at 625 rue Milton, to serve as a student-housing partner of McGill Athletics and Recreation, for current and returning students. As this agreement has now expired, the University will have more to say in due course.”
Lee explained that she initially believed renting in a large apartment building would provide more reliable services. While her building management has attributed the water disruptions she has experienced to problems with the city system, she has never been able to find any record online of outages in her area. To students considering renting in a building like this, she suggests caution.
“Be careful [….] You think, because you’re signing up for an apartment building with utilities […] that you’ll have everything provided for you and then you overlook some of the details […] and they’re probably, definitely, overcharging you for what you’re going to get,” Lee said.