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Renovictions / 4 Toronto councillors want bylaw to tackle 'renovictions'
« on: February 28, 2024, 01:56:52 pm »Just saw this hopeful news on CityTv:
4 Toronto councillors want city to look to Hamilton's new bylaw to tackle 'renovictions'
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Ontario’s rental market watchdog doesn’t often fine landlords for evicting tenants illegally — and when it does, most fines are under $2,000, according to new data.
That has the opposition NDP crying foul, saying most fines are less than the cost of a month’s rent in Toronto’s red-hot rental market and warning lower consequences could put more tenants at risk of illegal eviction.
“The data is shocking,” said NDP housing critic Jessica Bell. “This is telling us loud and clear that the rules are not helping tenants, and they are not being enforced.”
Bell said of the 51 fines issued in the last four years, only one landlord has paid up.
Toronto is the second-most expensive rental market in Canada, with the average rent for a one-bedroom hitting $2,551 at the end of 2022, according to Rentals.ca and Urbanation. The average price of a two-bedroom hit $3,363.
Social worker Axiom Edmonds said fines less than a month’s rent aren’t likely to have an impact when an eviction could give a landlord the opportunity to set the rent higher for the next tenant.
“That’s nothing to a landlord.
A new report issued by a Toronto tenant advocacy group is detailing “the landlord’s playbook” on renovictions – a term used to describe the practice of evicting a tenant with the intention to renovate a unit – and providing guidance for tenants facing similar scenarios.
As Ontario faces a chronic shortage of housing and rapidly climbing rents, landlords in the province are increasingly trying to evict their tenants and take possession of those rental units.
In 2022, the Landlord and Tenant Board, which adjudicates rental-housing disputes in the province, received more than 5,550 eviction applications in which landlords sought units for themselves, family members or new buyers. That was an increase of 41 per cent from 2019, according to numbers provided by the province to The Globe and Mail.
a recent report from Ontario’s Advocacy Centre for Tenants (ACTO) found there has been a 294 per cent increase in landlord applications to evict tenants for renovations or conversions at the province’s Landlord and Tenant Board since 2015-16.
In most jurisdictions, landlords need the permission of the Landlord and Tenant Board before they can evict tenants for the purpose of renovations.
But many tenants may not know that, and may move out as soon as a landlord asks them to.
Tenants living in the low-rise building at 394 Dovercourt Rd. in Toronto near College Street have been enagaged in a legal battle with their corporate landlord for five years, and they just finally won the right to remain in their homes.