City News Everywhere: Residents urging Kitchener council to implement bylaw to halt renovictions

Residents and advocates in Kitchener are pleading with city council to take action against landlords who are using renovations as an excuse to evict them from their homes in order to turn a profit.

The process is known as a renoviction when a landlord evicts a tenant by claiming they will complete renovations, which range from complete overhauls to a simple paint job. The price of the unit will often increase, sometimes dramatically, when the landlord begins to search for a new tenant.

A group of delegates attended a City of Kitchener council meeting on Monday to urge councillors to enact a renoviction bylaw, putting a hurdle in place to make it more difficult for bad faith landlords to evict tenants in cases of renovation.

“From Newfoundland to B.C., there’s a phenomena of individuals investing in high-rise, low-rise buildings and using the scheme of renovation eviction to make people homeless,” said Dr. Richard Christy of Wilfred Laurier University, who spoke in support of renoviction victims.

Dorinda Kruger Allen is a tenant at 250 Fredrick St., an apartment building near downtown Kitchener. Kruger Allen noted that in late 2024, the ownership of the building she lives in changed hands, and the new owner is in the process of evicting all tenants to perform a variety of upgrades to the building, most of which are cosmetic.

According to Kruger Allen and Meg Walker, a supporter from the Social Development Centre Waterloo Region, the owner of the building is an investor named Michael Klein. In a report published in October, ACORN Canada linked Klein to renovictions happening in 21 buildings across seven Ontario cities, including Kitchener, Cambridge and Guelph.

The report claims that Klein “buys reasonably affordable housing on the private market, mass evicts long-term tenants and replaces them with new tenants he can charge more due to Ontario’s system of vacancy decontrol.”

“Why aren’t we doing anything locally?” asked Walker. “We could be doing a number of things to stop bad faith landlords like Michael Klein, including working directly with the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario and other municipalities who are passing renoviction bylaws to build legally-binding and enforceable renoviction bylaws.”

A number of Ontario cities have passed or are in the process of considering bylaws that make renovictions more complicated, including Toronto, Ottawa, London, and Hamilton.

Starting this month in Hamilton, all landlords need to apply for a renovation license within seven days of serving an N13 notice to tenants, a legal eviction notice. This legislation gives the city more oversight and control over would-be renovictions.

Kruger Allen claimed that many of the other tenants in her building are incapable of seeking legal action in order to fight against potential renovictions.

“Quite frankly, I don’t know how they sleep at night,” said Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic about bad faith landlords.

Although Mayor Vrbanovic and a number of councillors agreed that the provincial government holds the power to enact change in the fight against renovictions, the discussion will come back to council on Feb. 10.

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Article by Josh Piercey for CityNewsEverywhere