National Observer: Toronto councillors, housing advocates make last plea on Ford’s tenant law

The proposed changes to the law will also require tenants to provide advance written notice if they plan to raise issues of persistent disrepair during an eviction hearing in front of the Landlord and Tenant Board. Critics say tenants often rely on a shrinking Legal Aid service to navigate the complicated process.

 

Advocates have been warning for months of a looming crisis (a “terrifying bloodbath” as one put it in May) once Ford’s government lifts an emergency moratorium on evictions.

 

“I’m here with my esteemed colleagues this morning to warn anyone who will listen to us that the mass homelessness and displacement that will result from Bill 184 could be the largest human rights crisis that this province will ever face,” said Alyssa Brierly, the executive director and general counsel at the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodations.

 

“This is unconscionable and it is entirely preventable,” she said. “Everyone who stands to lose their home deserves their day in court to try to prevent that from happening.”

 

The group said 47 percent of Toronto households spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, not including arrears payments. Toronto has some of the highest average rents in the country and a very low vacancy rate.

 

ACORN Canada President Marva Burnett said half of their membership of 130,000 low and moderate income households were scared they would be unable to make rent back in May.

 

“It’s time for the provincial government to stand up for its tenants instead of its builders and developers,” she said.

 

Ford’s government had in 2018 revived a loophole allowing landlords to charge unlimited rent increases in newly-built apartment units, after the previous Liberal government had moved to cool an overheated housing market where some rents had doubled.

 

While the official Opposition NDP had sought to introduce amendments in committee last week including a ban on COVID-related evictions, those efforts were rebuffed by the Progressive Conservatives.

 

The NDP’s critic for tenant rights, Suze Morrison, said the omnibus bill also has other troubling attributes.

 

“It will also allow landlords to keep the profits of illegally obtained rent increases,” she said. “This is effectively legalizing fraud. If a landlord hands out an illegal rent increase and the tenant unknowingly pays it for 12 months that illegal increase will now become permanent.”

 

‘Feeling the weight of COVID-19’

 

Chiara Padovani, an executive member of the York South-Weston Tenant Union, got emotional describing how tenants in her area, which is located south of the 401 between old Toronto’s west-end neighbourhoods and Etobicoke, are “disproportionately feeling the weight of COVID-19.”

 

“We are home to many frontline workers,” she said. “We are the PSWs (personal support workers) taking care of the elderly, we are the cleaners disinfecting workplaces, we’re the grocery store workers at checkout, the meat packing and factory workers keeping those shelves stocked, the community workers running food banks, the Uber and the bus drivers getting us around.”

 

She said it is the people broader society have been championing for months who are finding it hardest to get by.

 

“We are the frontline heroes this pandemic has been celebrating for months, but we have always struggled to pay the high cost of housing in this city,” she said. “We are struggling to pay rent now more than ever.”

 

If Bill 184 does becomes law as currently written, Wong-Tam said the responsibility for the consequences will rest squarely with Ford.

 

“The new encampments will belong to you in Toronto, the new state of homelessness will belong to you,” she said. “The shelters that collapse under the weight and the pressure will belong to you if you add to the problem as opposed to working with the colleagues that you have to fix that.”