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NEWS: An attempt to stem renovictions (Oct./Nov. 2024)

November 8th, 2024 · No Comments

City council works to develop a new bylaw 

By Meredith Poirier

In response to repeated outcries from tenants the city is developing a legislative framework to help protect them. 

Many tenants fear being forced out of their homes, regardless of how good a tenant they are or how long they’ve lived in the building. There are very few protections in place for renters. Right now, a major issue affecting renters in the city is renovictions. Renovictions are evictions of tenants under the guise that  renovations or repairs are needed for the unit. They may also include not allowing a tenant to come back to their unit post-renovation, raising the rent after repairs, or not actually completing any renovations.

Currently the City of Toronto is developing a new bylaw that is aimed at supporting tenants and stopping renovictions from happening. The bylaw is being modelled after successful initiatives in other cities, particularly Hamilton. Ontario’s bylaw will take effect on Jan.1, 2025. Presently, the city is seeking feedback, via an online survey, from tenants and landlords, as well the general public and organizations that support and work with landlords. The insights and opinions garnered from the survey as well as from the public drop-in sessions will inform the development of the bylaw and the city will report back with the proposed bylaw by Oct. 30.  While the input from renters and landlords is important, the “proposal would have to receive the support of the majority of council, ” explained Dianne Saxe, city councillor, University-Rosedale.

A few components of the bylaw include requiring landlords to apply for a renovation licence within seven days of issuing an N13 notice. An N13 notice is legal notice to end a tenancy due to renovations or repairs. N13 requests have increased during the past few years by 300 per cent; however, it is not clear which of these N13s were under bad faith and led to renovictions. Under this proposed bylaw landlords would also be required to submit more sufficient documentation and would be prohibited from beginning renovations until a licence has been  obtained. . Bylaws like this are crucial in supporting tenants given the precariousness of being a renter. Rebecca Gimmi, a renter herself in the City of Toronto and a tenant advocate, is cautiously optimistic about this proposed bylaw. “It shows a growing understanding of the complex solutions needed to address our housing crisis. One crucial component is to maintain and protect existing units with rent control and support tenants’ rights to return to their units. The proposal does seem to move towards exploring these goals,” said Gimmi. However, some concerns she has are how this bylaw will support tenants facing demoviction and how it will be enforced. She says that currently “it is very difficult for tenants to report bad faith evictions or track multiple-offending landlords.” 

Tenants aren’t the only ones with concerns about the efficacy of this potential bylaw. Some city councillors believe that any issues related to housing should remain under the realm of provincial responsibilities and that complications could arise if renovictions and the consequences of them are now a municipal responsibility. However, others argue that renovictions are already a municipal issue. Renovictions often lead to homelessness, and in Toronto over 7000 individuals are homeless. This is already a major issue in Toronto, with a lack of housing and support available for these individuals. An increase in unhoused people adds stress to an already buckling system.  

While many landlords may have concerns about this new bylaw as well, their concerns don’t quite line up with those of renters and local politicians. Katherine Wauthier, a community legal worker and representative of Landlord’s Self-Help Centre, is concerned that the bylaw will add pressure and financial constraints to the “already cash-strapped landlords who are just trying to make ends meet.” The Landlords Self-Help Centre works with clients, many of whom are “seniors, newcomers [to Canada], and people with disabilities,” explained Wauthier. The centre is a clinic, funded by Legal Aid Ontario, that only works with the small landlord community, which essentially means landlords who own houses, duplexes, and other residences of that nature. Wauthier also explained that there is already an act in place, the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, which aims to protect tenants from bad faith renovictions.

Regardless, tenants in Toronto need help. “Tenants are half the population of Toronto and we’re living in too precarious a position to not be a part of the discussion [on] how to fix the housing crisis,” said Gimmi. 

City staff will present final recommendations regarding the proposed by-law on October 30 to the city’s planning and housing committee.

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