Bill 184: Wrong Bill, Wrong Time

Update

While not surprised, the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) is disappointed with the passing of Bill 184, Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act, 2020. It received Royal Assent yesterday and its amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 (RTA) are now in effect. The Bill was pushed through the legislative process, without meaningful consultation or consideration of the concerns raised by tenants, at a time when the health and livelihoods of tenants have been hit hard by the pandemic crisis.

Contrary to its title, Bill 184’s amendments to the RTA will not protect tenants from bad faith evictions and will make it easier for landlords to evict tenants without a hearing. It will also limit tenant’s ability to raise defences at arrear hearings and subject former tenants to hearings at the Board without proper service of legal documents. These changes will exacerbate the ongoing affordable housing crisis and make tenants more vulnerable to evictions and homelessness.

The pandemic crisis has revealed the extent of the affordable housing crisis in cities across the province. The affordable housing shortage is a public health crisis we can no longer ignore. We know that difficult times lie ahead for the majority of tenants living on lower incomes in this province. We will continue to push for the protections that tenants need to access safe, secure and affordable homes.

Original Campaign – Tell Ontario to Scrap Bill 184

Low to moderate income tenants in Ontario face daily struggles to pay the rent and life’s other expenses. This is because rents in this province have been on a constant rise. Many tenants will point out the state of disrepair in their homes while paying exorbitant monthly rents.  Rising rents are the result of laws that put landlords’ interests first, including the right of landlords to rent gouge on tenant turnover.

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has laid bare the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, made worse by these policies. Yet, in the middle of the crisis, the Ontario government has decided to push through Bill 184, Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Communities Housing Act – a collection of pro-landlord amendments that will impoverish and displace tenants.

The only tenant protection in Bill 184 is in the title. This Bill is out of touch with the challenges faced by tenants, especially as the pandemic crisis has deepened their vulnerabilities.

Many organizations have signed an open letter, Bill 184: Wrong Bill, Wrong Time, voicing their deep concerns with Bill 184.

We urged the government to scrap the Bill and instead take the following actions:

1.  Update the purpose of the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) to include improving public health in Ontario and recognizing the progressive realization of the human right to housing as enshrined in the federal legislation.

2. Extend the current eviction moratorium until the pandemic and the post-pandemic recovery period are over to ensure enough time for employment rates and other economic indicators to return to pre-COVID-19 levels. While urgent matters with serious health and safety implications continue to be heard, Ontario must commit to keeping people housed.

3. Amend the RTA to provide direction to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) for mediated repayment agreements that are feasible and will not push tenants into homelessness or continued poverty.

4. Provide the LTB with direction on providing relief from eviction due to circumstances caused by the pandemic crisis. Good tenants that lost their employment, faced illness or had to take care of their children out of school should not be punished because they faced financial hardship during this pandemic.

5. Re-institute effective rent control and alleviate the greatest source of anxiety for tenants even before this pandemic crisis – the unaffordable rents that skyrocket every year, displacing people from their homes and communities.

If you agree with these recommendations, send an email to Ontario’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to show your support.

 

 

Tell the province it's time to restore real rent control

 

Tell the province it's time to restore real rent control

Say Yes to Fair Rents! was a campaign run by ACTO in summer of 2023.

Picture this. You live in Ontario. You get paid and realize this month’s rent is almost due. And it’s no big deal! You are confident you can pay your rent on time and in full. Once the rent is paid, you’ll easily be able to cover your other necessities – like food, transportation, daycare, and cell phone bill – with some left over to save and some to do something fun.

Sounds nice, right?

This shouldn’t seem like wishful thinking. Ontario should be a prosperous place for everyone, where all residents have access to an affordable, safe, and secure home in a community of their choosing – regardless of their income.

And yet, in 2023, a life like that is out of reach for many Ontarians – especially for those who rent their homes.

Background

Using Toronto as an example, a renter must now earn $98,000 / year to comfortably afford the average asking price for a 1-bedroom rental in the city. But according to the 2021 Census, the median total income of renter households in Toronto was $65,500.

The math does not add up.

The Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation has long maintained that housing is only affordable when it does not exceed 30% of your gross annual income. Anything beyond that is considered unaffordable. Of the top 20 most unaffordable metropolitan areas in Canada, 12 are in Ontario, with the top five being Peterborough, Oshawa, Barrie, Toronto and Kingston.

This didn’t just happen. It’s the result of a 30 year experiment in housing policy that has failed. The province has the power to do something to fix it, and it’s time for them to step up.

Why restore fair rent control?

Most existing units in Ontario are protected by a type of rent control; meaning the landlord can only increase a tenant’s rent each year up to the limit set out by the province. It used to be that rent control applied to all units, even ones that were turning over. However, in the 1990s, the policy of “vacancy decontrol” was introduced. Rental prices have soared ever since. A CMHC report found that in 2022, vacancy decontrol sharply increased rents for two bedroom apartments that had turned over by 26% in Hamilton, 17% in Ottawa, and 29% in Toronto – compared to 1.2% for existing units with sitting tenants.

Rent control also doesn’t apply to rental units that were first occupied on or after November 15th, 2018. For those unfortunate tenants, they have no protections at all. Their landlords can raise the rent by however much they want. And raise it they do – landlords are raising prices by sometimes hundreds of dollars a month, well beyond what their tenants can afford.

Why is Ontario in this mess? Well, the idea was that getting rid of effective rent controls would encourage the development of rental housing because it would be more profitable for developers to build it. And if the market was flooded with all these rentals, it would keep rent prices low.

Did it work? Absolutely not. Check out this graph of “housing starts.”

Vacancy decontrol was introduced in 1991, and we can observe that the construction of rentals takes a dramatic nosedive in the years afterward. Instead of having more rentals than we know what to do with, we have nowhere near enough, and what is being constructed isn’t affordable to most renters. In this kind of housing environment, landlords win and renters lose. These policies treat housing as an investment for profit, rather than a right for every single person. Ontario’s weak rent regulations are part of what makes it so alluring for big financial investors, who are snapping up available affordable rental housing to unceremoniously kick long-standing tenants out and jack up the prices. Rinse and repeat.

Want to learn more? Check out our new report: Housing Hardship: How Ontario’s Renters Struggle to Keep a Roof Overhead.

 

 

Tell the province it's time to restore real rent control

Say Yes to Fair Rents! was a campaign run by ACTO in summer of 2023.

Picture this. You live in Ontario. You get paid and realize this month’s rent is almost due. And it’s no big deal! You are confident you can pay your rent on time and in full. Once the rent is paid, you’ll easily be able to cover your other necessities – like food, transportation, daycare, and cell phone bill – with some left over to save and some to do something fun.

Sounds nice, right?

This shouldn’t seem like wishful thinking. Ontario should be a prosperous place for everyone, where all residents have access to an affordable, safe, and secure home in a community of their choosing – regardless of their income.

And yet, in 2023, a life like that is out of reach for many Ontarians – especially for those who rent their homes.

Background

Using Toronto as an example, a renter must now earn $98,000 / year to comfortably afford the average asking price for a 1-bedroom rental in the city. But according to the 2021 Census, the median total income of renter households in Toronto was $65,500.

The math does not add up.

The Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation has long maintained that housing is only affordable when it does not exceed 30% of your gross annual income. Anything beyond that is considered unaffordable. Of the top 20 most unaffordable metropolitan areas in Canada, 12 are in Ontario, with the top five being Peterborough, Oshawa, Barrie, Toronto and Kingston.

This didn’t just happen. It’s the result of a 30 year experiment in housing policy that has failed. The province has the power to do something to fix it, and it’s time for them to step up.

Why restore fair rent control?

Most existing units in Ontario are protected by a type of rent control; meaning the landlord can only increase a tenant’s rent each year up to the limit set out by the province. It used to be that rent control applied to all units, even ones that were turning over. However, in the 1990s, the policy of “vacancy decontrol” was introduced. Rental prices have soared ever since. A CMHC report found that in 2022, vacancy decontrol sharply increased rents for two bedroom apartments that had turned over by 26% in Hamilton, 17% in Ottawa, and 29% in Toronto – compared to 1.2% for existing units with sitting tenants.

Rent control also doesn’t apply to rental units that were first occupied on or after November 15th, 2018. For those unfortunate tenants, they have no protections at all. Their landlords can raise the rent by however much they want. And raise it they do – landlords are raising prices by sometimes hundreds of dollars a month, well beyond what their tenants can afford.

Why is Ontario in this mess? Well, the idea was that getting rid of effective rent controls would encourage the development of rental housing because it would be more profitable for developers to build it. And if the market was flooded with all these rentals, it would keep rent prices low.

Did it work? Absolutely not. Check out this graph of “housing starts.”

Vacancy decontrol was introduced in 1991, and we can observe that the construction of rentals takes a dramatic nosedive in the years afterward. Instead of having more rentals than we know what to do with, we have nowhere near enough, and what is being constructed isn’t affordable to most renters. In this kind of housing environment, landlords win and renters lose. These policies treat housing as an investment for profit, rather than a right for every single person. Ontario’s weak rent regulations are part of what makes it so alluring for big financial investors, who are snapping up available affordable rental housing to unceremoniously kick long-standing tenants out and jack up the prices. Rinse and repeat.

Want to learn more? Check out our new report: Housing Hardship: How Ontario’s Renters Struggle to Keep a Roof Overhead.

 

Unanimous Supreme Court of Canada decision a justice win for renters

Toronto, ON – March 18^th, 2024 – The Supreme Court of Canada (“Court”) released their decision on Yatar v TD Insurance Meloche Monex. The Court unanimously ruled that the Ontario Court of Appeal (“ONCA”) erred in restricting access to judicial review to “rare cases” where there is a limited right of appeal on a decision. This decision means that renters will continue to be able to bring a judicial review that examines questions of mixed fact and law, irrespective of whether they have pursued an internal appeal through the Landlord and Tenant Board (“LTB”). This is a victory for renters and improves meaningful access to justice in our legal system.

The difference between internal reconsideration and judicial review

For cases that pass through the LTB, there is an internal mechanism to request reviews on decisions made by the Board’s adjudicators. The Residential Tenancies Act also provides for a right of appeal to Divisional Court, but only on a question of law. Many decisions made by the LTB do not raise purely legal questions, however, and are better characterized as questions of mixed fact and law. In addition, the majority of renters that appear at the LTB are self-represented and have difficulties describing a legal error to the Court even when one exists. That is why many people affected by LTB decisions need access to judicial review.

When Yatar first passed through the Divisional Court, the court ruled that individuals should not be allowed to request judicial review except in “exceptional circumstances.” On appeal, the Ontario Court of Appeal held that judicial review could only be exercised in “rare cases” where applicants had an internal reconsideration option. This greatly restricted legal avenues for renters to pursue justice.

The Court has found that a right of appeal does not, on its own, preclude an individual from seeking judicial review. This decision means that judges, while they have the discretion to hear a judicial application on the merits and decline relief, do not have the option of declining to consider solely on the basis of the quality or quantity of an internal review mechanism of a tribunal. Renters are, therefore, free to bring a request for judicial review at any time where LTB decisions contain errors that are not appealable.

“This is a really promising decision,” says Rosalea Thompson, staff layer with the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (“ACTO”), one of the interveners on the case. “It supports the rights of renters living on low incomes to have meaningful, adequate options to challenge unreasonable decisions.”

“Given the severity of the housing crisis in Ontario and the erosion of renters access to justice, this is a really positive outcome,” says Douglas Kwan, Director of Advocacy and Legal Services at ACTO. “It reinforces the idea that tribunals are subordinate to the courts, who have the constitutional responsibility to preserve the rule of law so that renters’ rights are protected.” 

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About Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario

The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) is a specialty community legal clinic with a province-wide mandate to advance and protect the interests of tenants living with lower incomes. ACTO specializes in housing issues related to tenants. ACTO also provides legal information and assistance to self-represented tenants appearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board through the Tenant Duty Counsel Program (TDCP).

N11 - What is it? Your rights...

 

Your landlord wants you to sign a Form N11 “Agreement to end a tenancy.” Should you?

May 22, 2024 Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario

What is a Form N11?

A Form N11 or “Agreement to end a tenancy” is a form that both a landlord and a tenant can sign to mutually agree to end an existing tenancy in Ontario.

The most important thing for a renter to know is they do not have to sign a Form N11 if they do not want to end their tenancy and leave their home, no matter what their landlord says. Signing an N11 is supposed to be a voluntary decision.

Renters should also be aware that signing an N11 limits your rights with filing a Form T5 “Landlord gave a Notice of Termination in Bad Faith” against your landlord after the fact. It can also void your right to compensation if a landlord says their family or a purchaser wants to move in. In that situation, your landlord should provide you with an N12 form – not an N11. Therefore, you should only sign an N11 if you want to move out and end your lease early.

Landlords should use the proper notice eviction form

Different types of evictions require different notice forms. If your landlord says they are moving into your home, or a purchaser is moving into your home, they should be sending you a Form N12 “Notice to End your Tenancy Because the Landlord, a Purchaser or a Family Member Requires the Rental Unit,” instead of an N11. Form N12s do not require you to sign anything. However, with this form, tenants are entitled to compensation in the amount of one month of rent.

Similarly, in cases of extensive renovations, repairs, or conversion, the landlord must provide the tenant with a Form N13 “Notice to End your Tenancy Because the Landlord Wants to Demolish the Rental Unit, Repair it or Convert it to Another Use.” The landlord must also provide compensation (and proof of a building permit) if they need the tenant to vacate the unit for extensive renovations. By law, tenants also have the right to return, by which they can inform the landlord in writing of their intention to move back into the unit (at the same rent) when the renovations are completed.

If you have fallen behind in your rent payments and your landlord wants to evict you, your landlord should be serving you with a Form N4 “Notice to End your Tenancy for Non-payment of Rent.” Again, a Form N4 does not require you to sign anything; and it allows you to void the notice and stay in the unit if you pay all the rent owed.

Remember, your landlord cannot legally evict you themselves, even if they give you a notice of eviction form. The landlord must first be issued an eviction order by the Landlord and Tenant Board. Afterwards, a landlord may then take to the Court Enforcement Office (Sheriff) to enforce the eviction. If you receive any type of eviction notice from your landlord, it’s really important to read the documents carefully and get legal advice right away.

Why some landlords might be pressuring their tenants to sign N11s

Sky-high rents and a lack of affordable housing units means that the rental housing market in Ontario is exceptionally challenging for most tenants; and financially lucrative for most landlords. This context is critical to understand because some landlords are attempting to pressure or manipulate their tenants into signing Form N11s.

Landlords do this because they know they could make more money on their unit if they can get their old tenants out, thanks to a rent control loophole called vacancy decontrol. Vacancy decontrol allows landlords to charge whatever amount of rent they want to a new tenant.

This lack of vacancy control in Ontario means rents have gone up anywhere from 10-30% each year. Asking rents for a 1-bedroom unit across Ontario now average $2,191 per month. However, the median income for renters across Ontario hovered at just $3,433 per month (as of the 2022 census). To afford the average asking rent, Ontario renters would have to pay over 60% of their income towards housing costs – markedly increasing their risk of homelessness. In order to afford the average 1-bedroom in Ontario, renters would need to be earning ~88,000 per year. Most homeowners don’t even have incomes that high, let alone the average renter.

That’s why renters need to think very carefully about whether or not they should sign a Form N11, especially if they’re been living in the unit for a long time. It will be difficult – and in some cases, impossible – to find a similar sized unit in the same community at an affordable rent. Under the law, renters have the right to stay in their homes until their tenancy is terminated by the Board. A landlord’s quest to make more money shouldn’t force them to give up their rights as a renter.

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Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario

The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) is a specialty community legal clinic, funded by Legal Aid Ontario, with a province-wide mandate to serve low-income tenants across the province. The clinic also coordinates the Tenant Duty Counsel Program (TDCP) across Ontario, which provides legal information and assistance to self-represented tenants appearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board.