Toronto city staff are recommending council adopt a new bylaw to regulate renovictions.
A renoviction is when a landlord uses renovating the unit as an illegitimate reason to end a tenancy, skirt the city’s rent control rules and raise rent.
The new bylaw would require landlords to obtain a licence from the city within seven days of handing the tenant an eviction notice. Under provincial law, landlords must give tenants an eviction notice at least 120 days before the eviction date.
“Landlords that are using renovations as an excuse to evict people, you can't get away with it now,” Mayor Olivia Chow said during a press conference.
To get a Rental Renovation Licence from the city, a landlord must pay $700 per unit, and have both a building permit and a report from a “qualified person” — such as an engineer or architect — confirming the unit needs to be vacant for the renovations to occur.
If a tenant wants to return to the unit after the renovations are done, the landlord will need to either pay for temporary housing during construction or find another comparable unit.
If the landlord doesn’t provide the tenant with a new unit, the tenant would have to find one. The landlord would then pay a monthly rent gap, based on the difference between the tenant’s current rent and the average market rent for a similar unit, calculated using post-2015 data from the federal government.
If the tenant doesn’t plan on returning, the landlord must pay a lump sum equal to three months of the rent gap payment.
The landlord would have to give all displaced tenants $1,500 for moving allowances for a studio or one-bedroom unit, or $2,500 for units with two or more bedrooms.
The landlord and tenant would need to agree on the accommodation plan and a signed copy would be sent to the city as part of the licence application process.
Landlords could face a fine of up to $100,000 if found guilty of contravening the bylaw.
The city estimates it’ll initially receive applications for 160 licences but stressed that’s subject to change as available data makes predictions difficult.
City staff recommended a public communications campaign to notify landlords and tenants of the new rules.
Staff will also build a new online database of all licences to help the city track and enforce the bylaw.
The draft bylaw will go to the city’s planning and housing committee later this month, then to full council for approval in mid-November.
If approved, the new rules would apply on July 31, 2025.
Toronto’s new bylaw was modelled off a Hamilton law that will take effect on Jan. 1, 2025. After Hamilton councillors approved the new law in January, council told staff to draft one for Toronto.
Other Ontario cities, like Ottawa, London, Guelph and St. Catharines have started exploring implementing their own. London’s is expected to be in force in early 2025.
Enforcing the new bylaw is expected to require 14 new staff members, costing the city just over $900,000 for the second half of 2025 and nearly $1.8 million in all of 2026.