For many, the Mayor’s Task Force on Community Housing couldn’t come soon enough.

The task force’s report is out and Mayor Mike Hurley says policies are being developed as soon as possible – including several to try and help make rentals more affordable.

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In the meantime, things still suck for Burnaby renters

The website Padmapper released a new report that says Burnaby ranked as the third-most expensive city to rent in the nation in July, and that the price of one-bedroom units in this city remained flat at a median of $1,570, while two-bedroom units fell 1.7% to $2,280.

Falling is good, I guess, even if it’s just a fraction.

“Overall, 5 cities experienced an upward trend last month, 4 downward, and 15 remained stable,” said the Padmapper report. “Similar to the previous month’s report, more than half of the total markets were flat, which is surprising since it is hot moving season right now. Meanwhile, year over year growth rates told a different story as 11 cities experienced large, double digit growth rates. This suggests that while the Canadian market overall has gotten much more expensive in the past year, it seems either a price ceiling may have been hit in a lot of these cities, since they aren’t growing as much month on month, or the demand is finally beginning to taper off.

“In our top cities, Toronto reached another peak with one bedrooms hitting $2,300, while Vancouver rent was stable on a monthly basis but up 10% year over year. Besides Kelowna and Hamilton dropping one spot each, the rest of the top 10 stayed unmoved. In terms of year over year changes, Kitchener had the largest one bedroom rental growth rate, up 15.9%, while Québec’s rent took the largest rent dip, down 11%.”