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Non-profit Vivre en Ville launched a new rental registry in Ontario last week. It is an extension of the one that they launched in Quebec last spring. The way it works is that it allows anybody to enter how much they're paying in rent. In other words, it's a crowdsourcing platform.
The site then displays this information on a map so that everyone can see current and past rents. The data points are all anonymous and no personal information is linked to them, but the idea is to "preserve affordability in the residential market by providing access to important rent information."
Obviously, the thinking is that greater transparency will lead to more affordable housing. Presumably because you'll now be able to see if you're somehow being bamboozled, among other things.
I'm not 100% convinced that this will be the case, but I am of the general opinion that more transparency and more information is better than less transparency and less information.
I also find it interesting that there seems to be a lot of people willing to take the time to share this kind of information. According to the Toronto Star, they launched in Ontario with over 3,000 rental inputs. And according to their website, the full registry has over 40,000 inputs.
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