Toronto city council is moving ahead with a bylaw intended to provide better protections for renters against illegal renovictions.
Council voted Wednesday to direct staff to create a bylaw that will outline and regulate the lawful procedure landlords must take to evict a tenant for a renovation, similar to a new Hamilton bylaw coming into effect next year. The city would enforce the bylaw.
Tenant advocates have said the regulatory change would prevent landlords from using renovations to evict tenants in bad faith, in order to raise the rent price of a unit.
“Renters in Toronto need to know that their homes are stable and secure,” Mayor Olivia Chow told reporters before Wednesday’s council meeting.
A staff report council considered before Wednesday’s vote said there have been “a growing trend of renovictions in Toronto, where a landlord illegitimately evicts a tenant by alleging that vacant possession of a rental unit is needed to undertake renovations or repairs.”
“Renovictions can include refusing to allow a tenant who has exercised their right of first refusal to return post-renovation, illegally raising the rent on a returning tenant, or not undertaking major renovations after evicting renters. This results in the displacement of tenants, the permanent loss of affordable market rental housing, and contributes to rising homelessness in Toronto,” the report says.
New bylaw to follow Hamilton’s lead
In the lead-up to the vote, council reviewed staff analysis of Hamilton’s Renovation Licence and Tenant Relocation By-law, which is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2025.
Under the Hamilton bylaw, a landlord will be required to apply for a renovation licence from the city within seven days of issuing an eviction notice to a tenant.
The bylaw will only allow the eviction and renovations to take place if the landlord has already secured all building permits to complete the work and provides an engineer’s report confirming vacancy is necessary. The landlord will also need to make arrangements with any tenant who wants to return to their unit once the renovation is complete.
The bylaw Toronto city staff are now developing will include similar regulations. Staff must bring a report back to council by the end of October.
Councillors debate: better protections or more red tape?
Coun. Stephen Holyday was the sole vote against Wednesday’s motion.
He said the province is responsible for housing, and renoviction decisions ought to be enforced through the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA). The city would only be adding red tape for landlords, which could increase their costs and be passed on to tenants, Holyday said. Enforcing the bylaw would also cost the city, he said.
“As much as we concern ourselves in council about the rising cost of living in this city, we’re often the makers of that problem,” he said.
But other councillors argued a lack of protections for renters is more costly to the city. Coun. Gord Perks said renovictions are adding to the city’s growing encampments and shelter demands. Those problems require city resources, he said.
Coun. Perks said the city can’t wait for the province to act. Perks said the province doesn’t employ enough staff to properly enforce the RTA, and Ontario is failing to provide the basic human right of shelter.
“It is not red tape for the city of Toronto to step into that gap,” he said.
Rental housing supply program also being discussed
Renovictions aren’t the only housing issue council is looking at Wednesday.
Council will be asked to approve a new rental housing supply program to help the city reach its rent-controlled, affordable and rent-geared-to-income rental housing targets.
City staff are recommending that the city allocate capital funding to 18 affordable rental and rent-geared-to-income housing projects, aimed at speeding the delivery of more than 2,600 new affordable rental homes.
City staff recommendations include spending more than $350 million to speed up construction of 18 projects. Officials say that could lead to thousands of affordable housing units currently in the development pipeline being built this year or next.
Under the program, the city would establish a framework for recommending capital funding for rental homes, up to a maximum of $260,000 per unit.
And it would provide incentives to not-for-profit corporations, non-profit housing co-operatives, Indigenous housing providers, the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and the Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation to support the development of new rent-controlled homes.
‘Urgent action’ needed on housing, report says
“Toronto is facing two housing crises — one where there is a lack of deeply affordable and supportive housing for low-income marginalized and vulnerable residents; and a more recent one in which rising rents have made it increasingly unaffordable for middle income earners, key workers and professionals to live in the city,” writes Abigail Bond, executive director of the city’s Housing Secretariat, in a report council is reviewing Wednesday.
“Urgent action across the entire housing continuum is required to prevent more residents, specifically renters, from experiencing housing instability and potentially homelessness; to avoid Toronto’s social service sector facing a deepening key worker staffing crisis; and to allow Toronto’s businesses to attract the workforce and labour supply they need to grow.”
The report notes that roughly 48 per cent of households in Toronto, or 557,970 households, are renters, with 40 per cent of renter households living in unaffordable housing, according to 2021 census data.
The report adds that the average rent for a two-bedroom condo apartment unit in Toronto is $3,139, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board in its Q1-2024 rental market report. This type of housing is the “main rental housing option” available to workers in the city but it comes with no rent control.
Arianne Robinson, press secretary for Mayor Olivia Chow, said in an email on Tuesday that the mayor’s key items at Wednesday’s meeting reflect her priorities to build more affordable housing and to protect renters.
“On her one-year anniversary in office, the mayor’s rental housing supply program will bring about a co-operative and non-profit housing boom, including funding for 6,000 units to the market with construction starting this year,” Robinson said.
“Her other key item moves the renovictions bylaw forward, to protect renters from unfair evictions, and offer renters more security and stability in their homes.”
Also on the agenda is a request by the city’s executive committee that council direct the Sankofa Square board of management to develop a multi-year business plan.
The plan is expected to include rebranding of the space from Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square, “enhanced revenue streams,” strategies to improve the square’s safety and reporting on outcomes of community engagement on the square’s revitalization.
In addition, council will discuss the future of Villiers Island, an area under development in the Port Lands that will receive a permanent Indigenous name this fall. A city staff report recommends a number of amendments to guide how the island will develop.
The amendments will to “permit a dense, inclusive, sustainable, and walkable urban community,” the report says.
The report adds that the amendments would enable an estimated 9,000 residential units to be built. Of these, about 2,200 to 2,700 would be affordable housing. The amendments would also permit a minimum of about 80,000 square metres of retail and office space, 7,850 square metres of community space and a Toronto Public Library neighbourhood branch.