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Following the Doug Ford government’s decision to walk back its controversial bid to potentially remove Ontario renters’ security of tenure, tenant advocacy groups are continuing to push against the province’s latest housing bill as they say it would weaken tenant protections and contribute to the loss of affordable housing. Bill 60, the “Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act,” introduced last Thursday, would restrict tenants’ right to raise new issues at a Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) eviction hearing, reduce time tenants have to repay rent to avoid eviction, reduce the time frame to request a review of an LTB decision, and remove compensation for tenants whose landlords wish to evict them so they can move into the unit if they get more notice, among other changes. Under the bill, the province would also add up to eight “temporary enforcement staff” to carry out evictions and “create authority in a future regulation” that would set limits on an adjudicator’s ability to postpone an eviction. According to a press release by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, the changes are meant to reduce delays and backlogs at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) “by improving the speed and fairness of processes” and “limiting bad actors from abusing the system” while adding measures to balance landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities. However, Dania Majid, the director of Tenant Duty Counsel at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, sees it as a continuation by the Ford government to “whittle down” tenant rights and cater to landlords and developers. “While they’re pouring millions to make a better eviction machine, no money, no support, has gone to the clinic system and other safeguards and supports in place to be able to help tenants save their tenancies,” she said. When reached by the Star for comment, a spokesperson for Housing Minister Rob Flack referred the Star to Flack’s statement released Sunday, cancelling the consultations on security of tenure. “Ontario will continue to implement common-sense reforms and strengthen the province’s rental housing market by restoring balance at the Landlord and Tenant Board, cracking down on abuse of the system, and encouraging new rental construction to make it easier for families to find a place to call home,” the statement reads. Tony Irwin, the president and CEO of the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario, said the group representing large landlords such as REITs and pension funds spends time “talking to government regularly” about what members are experiencing. “While over the last few years, we have seen improvements in terms of processing times — doubling the number of adjudicators, for example, helped bring timelines down — they’re still not where they need to be,” Irwin said, noting he believes the proposals in the bill are reasonable. Landlord and Tenant Board changes would reduce timelines, compensation Currently, tenants can raise a new issue during an eviction hearing for unpaid rent — such as maintenance problems — without prior notice if they provide a satisfactory reason for not raising them in advance. Bill 60 would remove the ability to raise issues without prior notice altogether. “Most tenants don’t even know they have this right until they get legal advice, and often, that’s at the time of the hearing,” Majid said. Additionally, a tenant would only be allowed to raise new issues at the hearing if they pay half of the unpaid rent their landlord says they owe. But that requirement is “predetermining the outcome of the case before the case has been heard,” and tenants may ultimately not even owe arrears, Majid said. So if the LTB finds a tenant did not owe money, there may have to be another legal process, which Majid foresees causing increased delays. Bill 60 would also reduce the timeline for landlords and tenants to request a review of a decision from 30 days to 15 days — something Majid said puts at a disadvantage low-income and rural tenants who receive decisions by mail, and who may only have one or two days to get legal advice and send a request for review. “This gives them no window of producing reviews of any quality that will succeed,” she said. The bill would also change how much time a renter has to pay rent to avoid eviction proceedings, from 14 days to seven. Majid said some lower-income tenants may be able to access rent banks or other special programs to help them avoid eviction, but seven days is not realistic in those scenarios. While the Residential Tenancies Act and LTB are meant to function with eviction as a “last resort,” eviction is now being treated as the “remedy of first resort,” Majid said. Currently, when landlords evict tenants for their own use — meaning they or a family member wants to move in — they have to pay tenants at least one month of rent as compensation. Bill 60 would allow landlords to skip compensation if they give four months of notice. Altogether, Bill 60 works to create a “pipeline from the Landlord and Tenant Board straight into encampments,” Majid said. “Especially in conjunction with (existing) rent-control loopholes, it’s actually going to create an even greater and faster loss of affordable housing in the province, because all this does is incentivize even more financialized investors to come in and push sitting tenants out,” she added. Mayor Olivia Chow took to social media on Sunday to say Bill 60 “still includes an erosion of renter’s rights at the LTB,” and the province should “scrap those changes, bring back rent control for all units, and strengthen tenant rights.” Bruno Dobrusin, an executive member of York South—Weston Tenants’ Union, said the LTB is already a difficult space for most tenants to navigate, and “this will just make it even more challenging,” he said. Tenant advocacy group ACORN said it undertook a campaign on Thursday that saw 23,000 emails sent to government officials opposing Bill 60, and it is continuing to put pressure on the government to withdraw Bill 60’s “cruel and harmful proposals.”
