Ontario Votes 2025

• Apply rent control to all buildings.
• Implement vacancy control to ensure that rents aren’t raised substantially between tenancies.
• Ban Above Guideline Increases in rent (AGIs) to close the loophole that allows for excessive rent hikes above annual rent control guidelines. 
  • For AGIs that have already been approved, the onus of enforcing rent reductions after the AGIs expire should be on the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) and landlord, not the tenants.

• Resume LTB hearings in-person and stop digital, phone and written hearings unless preferred by the tenant. 
• Overhaul the LTB as it is has become an eviction factory. Meanwhile, tenants wait three times as long to have their cases against their landlords heard. 
• Immediately triage outstanding tenant applications. 
• Rebalance the LTB by:
  • Treating tenants’ applications for disrepair and harassment as serious health and safety issues. 
  • Landlords found in serious breach of a tenants’ right to safe, adequate housing by the LTB should face more severe penalties and consequences.
  • Prioritizing tenant applications instead of evictions during a housing crisis.
  • 90% of cases at the LTB are initiated by landlords meaning there is an urgent need to remove barriers for tenants. 
• Improve tenants’ access to duty counsel, legal representation and the quality of free legal information on tenants’ rights and LTB procedures.
• Track and make publicly available data related to notices, filings and outcomes to better monitor housing loss through evictions, AGIs and disrepair.

• Retain and protect current affordable housing stock by incentifying investment in repairs.
• Give cities the explicit power to properly regulate problematic landlords (similar to other businesses) through licensing, pro-active inspections, minimum standards, strict timelines for repairs and serious penalties.
• Give cities the explicit  power to create rent escrow accounts so that tenants could pay their rent into the city when needed repairs (outlined in municipal bylaws) aren’t being done. This would allow cities to use that money to complete the repairs.

• Introduce a renoviction ban based on the model in BC. This would mean banning evictions for cosmetic renovations. If structural renovations are needed then the landlord must: 
  • Prove the renovations require the unit to be vacant 
  • Provide tenants temporary accommodations or a rental top up
  • Cover moving costs
  • Allow tenants to return after renovations at the same rent

• Stop predatory corporate landlords from using N12 eviction notices (landlords’ own use) to renovict tenants by: 
  • Increasing notice and compensation requirements
  • Banning the use of N12s by corporate landlords and in multi-unit buildings
• Change the process for filing and proving a bad faith eviction case at the LTB as the burden currently rests primarily on the tenant 
• Ban “cash for keys” or voluntary evictions and strongly enforce.

• The current housing supply being built isn’t affordable. We need affordable (30% of one’s income) and accessible housing for those in core housing need and a real plan to get it done. That means:
  • Investing in the development of non-market rental housing including social housing, non-profits, co-ops and land trusts to eliminate the province’s 136,600 long waitlist for affordable housing. 
  • Supporting the acquisition of existing affordable rental buildings to prevent them from falling into the hands of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
  • Giving cities the power to expand the Vacant Unit Tax beyond single-family homes to include empty apartments and commercial spaces, with no cap on the number of units it applies to in a single building. Revenues generated from VUT should fund the development of non-market housing.

• Allow for more affordable housing to be built in new developments by giving cities the power to create their own IZ programs based on local conditions. 
• Remove restrictions on IZ policies that: 
  • Prevent it from being applied citywide 
  • Cap affordable housing at 5% 
  • Allow affordable housing to expire and return to market rates 
  • Define affordable housing based on market rents instead of income

• Start a Rental Registry in Ontario that tracks the rents of individual units. Information on rents should be mandatory and publicly accessible to prevent rent gouging and enforce tenant protections.  

Stop selling government owned land to developers. Instead, hold it for deeply affordable, non-market rental housing

• Grant collective bargaining and organizing rights to tenant unions that would: 
  • Force landlord disclosure so tenants know who their property owner is, not just the property manager. 
  • Give tenant unions the ability to negotiate agreements with the landlord that cap rent increases, address outstanding repairs and/or resolve other tenant issues. 
  • Require landlords to meet with tenant unions a minimum of several times a year, and if a landlord fails to do so, tenants can petition for a rent decrease. 
  • Protect tenants from being targeted for organizing. 
  • More severe penalties and fines for landlords that interfere with tenant organizing (ex. Removing flyers, disrupting tenant meetings)

• Create a provincial registration system. 
• Restrict short-term rentals to hosts’ principal residences to increase housing supply and avoid “ghost hotels”. 
• Create a set of minimum regulations and allow municipalities to introduce stronger policies based on local conditions