#renovictions

A new report issued by a Toronto tenant advocacy group is detailing “the landlord’s playbook” on renovictions – a term used to describe the practice of evicting a tenant with the intention to renovate a unit – and providing guidance for tenants facing similar scenarios.

The RenovictionsTO report, released on Wednesday, argues these evictions are primarily used as a strategy to “permanently displace” tenants, rather than as a necessary means to renovate aging units. The move has become common in Toronto over recent years, the report states, and is often seen when low-rise apartment buildings or apartments above storefronts switch ownership.

In these cases, existing longtime tenants are often paying rent below market, creating a situation in which the landlord is able to generate significant returns by evicting the tenants and bringing in new ones on contracts with higher rental fees.

Full article

"The release of the Ontario Ombudsman’s new report on the province’s Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) warrants reflection on the primary role of the tribunal: evictions.

The Ombudsman wrote that tenants and landlords share a common interest in making the LTB run smoothly. In truth, a more efficient approach to processing cases at the LTB will only further speed up evictions and serve to facilitate the profit-making of landlords who can raise rents on vacant units once sitting tenants have been removed.

Despite the LTB’s many internal issues, the main reason the tribunal is overwhelmed is due to the sheer volume of eviction cases landlords file against tenants. Tribunals Ontario reported that in 2021-2022, 88 per cent of all applications received by the LTB were filed by landlords against tenants, and in 89 per cent of those applications (more than 48,500), landlords sought to evict tenants.

Landlords also added to the much-discussed backlog of cases at the LTB throughout the entirety of the pandemic, as the Ontario government allowed them to continue to file for eviction against tenants uninterrupted. In fact, the Ombudsman reported that during the first pandemic lockdown in March 2020, when eviction hearings were paused for a short time, the LTB still struggled to process the high number of applications it continued to receive.

The discussion surrounding the problems at the LTB often neglects to mention the political history of the tribunal. In 1997, the Mike Harris Conservative government enacted the Tenant Protection Act, which eliminated rent control on vacant units between tenants, instituting what is known as vacancy decontrol. At the same time, the law removed landlord-tenant cases from the provincial court system and created the precursor to the LTB to handle them, the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal.

During the legislative debate at the time, the minister of housing said that his government’s goal was to create favourable conditions for investment in housing. In reality, his government made it more potentially profitable for landlords to evict tenants, and failed to encourage the construction of any significant amount of new, purpose-built rental housing."

////

A friend added this:

"According to this article and the Ombudsman's report, in 2021-22, 88 percent of applications to LTB were by landlords against tenants. Of that 88 percent, 89 percent were landlords seeking evictions. In other words, 78 percent of all LTB applications are for evictions!

I can hear the cries now: "If tenants have problems, they can also file with the LTB!" The vast majority of tenant problems are immediate problems, like shit that needs fixing and harassment and illegal behaviour by landlords. Most tenant problems are not solved by the LTB and often not even solved by landlords. Many tenants fix their own problems because waiting for the landlord is a hassle. The LTB is a virtual non-factor in the lives of tenants, but the landlord's means of getting rid of tenants they don't want or who stand in the way of a profitable new redevelopment.

The above numbers put into perspective the grievance of landlords that the LTB has too long a backlog. It is the volume of eviction applications that is the source of the backlog. And by pure coincidence we've been pelted with news story after story since the start of the pandemic of the worst possible tenants living rent-free for many months while the poor landlord's family is caught in the lurch while establishing their little neo-feudal exploitation scheme. You don't even need to read the press. The Terrorizing Tenant is a story you'll hear often enough.

Are the landlords calling for the LTB to be expanded to meet needs? No, their intimate collaborators in government are seeking efficiencies! You see, the the backlog is a problem to be solved by efficiency! Never mind the avalanche of eviction applications from landlords!

How many of these evictions are the disgusting and widely-abused practice of renovictions? Aren't renovictions an unnecessary burden to the LTB? And if the LTB is so burdened, why isn't it the LTB expanded to meet the demand? None of it makes sense because what's really at play here is setting up a public institution to fail because it insufficiently serves the interests of those parasitically profiting off other people's wages and basic need for shelter.

The pattern is pretty similar in healthcare and education and numerous other public institutions that are starved into failure, populated with wrecker-managers, and then reorganized (or contracted out) in the interests of profit-seeking sections of the business class.

Combined with a raft of new developer-demanded rules on housing (the end of municipal oversight in the development of new buildings of 12 or fewer units; the end of environmental protection and conservation), the renoviction blitzkrieg will only continue to throw thousands of people out of their homes while spoiling the environment - all for the profit and power of people who are driving this province to hell.

The United Nations has publicly rebuked a multinational housing corporation for abusing the human rights of its tenants — including thousands in Toronto and Montreal.

The UN's special rapporteur on adequate housing, Leilani Farha, issued a public statement on April 29 accusing Sweden-based Akelius Residential of a practice known as renoviction.

"I have been told that Akelius purchases apartment blocks, often with tenants already living in them, and then undertakes renovations to communal areas and vacant apartments within the block, regardless of need," Farha said in the statement.

"These renovations are a vehicle for Akelius to charge substantially increased rents to both new and existing tenants, enabling it to circumvent vital rent-control regulations which commonly allow for above-control rent increases where modernization works are undertaken."

Continue Reading.