City Hall's looming renoviction decision — and the brewing police budget battle sequel
City Hall Watcher #296: Contributor Laura Anonen makes case for quick action on renovictions, and a look at Toronto police staffing scenarios
Hey there! You may think you have lots of time before City Hall’s budget season, but this edition of City Hall Watcher is here to remind you that winter is coming. Work is already underway on the 2025 spending plan.
Today, I’ve got two stories about things likely to be part of budget deliberations.
First, Laura Anonen looks at the City’s work to develop a renovictions bylaw. There’s a lot of talk these days about building new rental housing, but what about protecting the rental housing that already exists? Laura makes the case that a renovictions bylaw could help keep what we’ve got.
Second, I look at the staffing plan report set to be debated this Thursday at the Police Service Board. There are a bunch of scenarios up for consideration, and the cops seem to favour an expensive one. It sets the stage for a sequel to last year’s police funding battle.
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Keeping what we’ve got: making the case for a renovictions bylaw
By Laura Anonen
If you live in Toronto, you’ve heard this a lot: “We’re in a housing crisis.”
City Council has been grappling with how to solve the housing crisis for years. But a lot of the conversation has been about one thing: building more.
Building more is important, but building more alone is not going to end the crisis. The truth is we are losing affordable rental units at a skyrocketing rate. As a result, the conversation at Toronto City Hall has also turned to this question: “How do we protect the affordable units we already have?”
In Ontario, the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) sets out the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants. Under the RTA, there are rules about when a landlord can increase the rent and by how much. Most rental units are covered by rent control, but Premier Doug Ford’s government changed the RTA, so new units first occupied after November 15, 2018, are no longer covered.
But for all units — regardless of when they were first occupied — there is no rule in the RTA about how much a landlord can increase the rent between tenants. This is known as vacancy control. We currently have vacancy decontrol in Ontario.
In a tight rental market, this creates an incentive for landlords to evict tenants since once a tenant moves out, they can increase the rent to any amount. Many landlords have been using this as an opportunity to nefariously evict tenants so they can jack up the rent.
That brings us to renovictions. You’ve heard the term before. This is when a landlord says they need the unit vacant so they can renovate. They then issue an N13 eviction notice and the tenant moves out.
But in many of these cases, according to the data, the renovations are not extensive enough to require vacant possession. Instead, it’s all a ruse to evict the former tenant so they can charge more rent with a new tenant.
ACORN’s Ontario Renovictions Report 2024 used data from the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) to show the drastic increase in no-fault evictions in the province from 2017 to 2023. There were 4,067 N13s filed between 2017 and August 2023, of which 950 were in Toronto. N13s have increased by approximately 300% between 2017 and 2022 — a staggering increase.
And these numbers don’t even capture all the no-fault evictions — just the ones that made it to the LTB. Many tenants, whether because they don’t know their rights or don’t have the time and resources to go to the LTB, simply move out after receiving a notice, and that data is never captured.
Preventing this isn’t easy. Municipalities are creatures of the province and cannot change the RTA. City Council has made several requests to the Ford government to introduce vacancy control and provide better protections for tenants, but these have all been ignored.
Since the province will not tackle this issue, municipalities are now taking it upon themselves. The City of Toronto will soon be introducing a renovictions bylaw similar to a bylaw introduced by the City of Hamilton.
On June 13, the City’s Planning and Housing Committee unanimously approved the development of this new renovictions bylaw (item PH13.7). City Council then approved it on June 26 (with only one no vote, from Councillor Stephen Holyday).
The move follows the tireless efforts of tenants and advocates who have been urging the City to take action for the past several years.
The bylaw won’t change the RTA, but instead will use the City’s authority over building permits to regulate and monitor renovictions. When a landlord issues an N13, they must check off the box that says, “I require the rental unit to be vacant in order to do repairs or renovations so extensive that I am required to get a building permit and the rental unit must be vacant to do the work.” When the landlord applies for the building permit, they will now also be required to apply for a new renovation license if a tenant lives in the unit. The landlord must also provide the City with a report from a qualified and licensed expert — such as an engineer or architect — to prove the work is that extensive.
The City will also require the landlord to post the renovation license alongside the building permit, provide information to the tenant on their rights, and either provide the tenant with similar accommodations or compensate them if they need to move out during the work.
All of this will ensure the tenant has somewhere to go and will encourage the landlord to complete the work in a timely manner. The tenant also has the right to return which will be enforced by the City.
With the right design and implementation plan, this bylaw will deter illegal renovictions and will help make sure only legitimate renovation work is taking place. Landlords may also realize their planned renovation work is not that extensive and that it can be done with the tenant still in the unit.
City staff are currently undertaking stakeholder consultations — an online session will take place tonight — and a report is due at the October meeting of the Planning and Housing Committee. If and when the committee sends that report to City Council for final approval in November, a strong vote of approval — and a push to ensure the bylaw gets implemented soon after the adoption of the 2025 budget — will show that City Hall understands the importance of protecting what we already have.
Laura Anonen is a tenant advocate and East Ender. She works as a Community Development Worker at Don Valley Community Legal Services and is the current Chair of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations (FMTA). She has been working on the renovictions bylaw since 2019. You can follow her on X at @lauraanonen.
Charted: Toronto Police Budget Scenarios
Remember last winter’s big police budget battle at City Hall? There was a big PR campaign around it and everything.
Get ready for a sequel. This week’s Police Service Board meeting will contend with four staffing scenarios drawn up for the medium-term future of the city’s police force.
Here’s your cheat sheet.
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