Agenda

Members of Council and Staff: Please keep this agenda and the accompanying material until the City Council meeting dealing with these matters has ended.

Special Assistance for Members of the Public: City staff can arrange for special assistance with some advance notice. If you need special assistance, please call 416-397-4579, TTY 416-338-0889 or e-mail phc@toronto.ca.

Closed Meeting Requirements: If the Committee wants to meet in closed session (privately),

a Committee member must make a motion to do so and give the reason why the Committee

has to meet privately (City of Toronto Act, 2006).

Notice to people writing or making presentations to the Subcommittee on the Protection of Affordable Rental Housing: The City of Toronto Act, 2006 and the City of Toronto Municipal Code authorize the City of Toronto to collect any personal information in your communication or presentation to City Council or its committees. The City collects this information to enable it to make informed decisions on the relevant issue(s). If you are submitting letters, faxes, e-mails, presentations or other communications to the City, you should be aware that your name and the fact that you communicated with the City will become part of the public record and will appear on the City’s website. The City will also make your communication and any personal information in it – such as your postal address, telephone number or e-mail address – available to the public, unless you expressly request the City to remove it.

Many Committee, Board, and Advisory Body meetings are broadcast live over the internet for the public to view.  If you speak at the meeting you will appear in the video broadcast.  Video broadcasts are archived and continue to be publicly available.

If you want to learn more about why and how the City collects your information, write to the City Clerk's Office, City Hall, 100 Queen Street West, Toronto ON M5H 2N2 or by calling 416-397-4579.

toronto.ca/council

This agenda and any supplementary materials submitted to the City Clerk can be found online at www.toronto.ca/council. Visit the website for access to all agendas, reports, decisions and minutes of City Council and its committees. Items with original signatures are kept on file with the City Clerk's Office and are available for viewing.   

Declarations of Interest under the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act

Confirmation of Minutes - July 16, 2019

Speakers/Presentations: A complete list will be distributed at the meeting

Communications/Reports

The Executive Director, Housing Secretariat and the General Manager, Shelter, Support and Housing Administration recommend that:  

1.   The Planning and Housing Committee request the Executive Director, Housing Secretariat and the General Manager, Shelter Support and Housing Administration in consultation with the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning, the Executive Director, Municipal Licensing and Standards, the Chief Building Official and Executive Director, Toronto Building and the City Solicitor to report to the Subcommittee on the Protection of Affordable Rental Housing in the first quarter of 2020 on:

a.  an approach to coordinate City processes to identify and prevent potential instances of illegitimate evictions;

b.  potential improvements to City programs, policies and processes to address evictions;

c.  potential mechanisms and data sources to track and monitor data on N12 and N13 evictions,

increases in rents above the provincial rent-increase guidelines, and changes to the short-term rental stock; and

d.  the role of the City to support tenants with disputed N12 and N13 evictions.

2.  The Planning and Housing Committee request the Executive Director, Housing Secretariat and the General Manager, Shelter Support and Housing Administration to establish a 'Protection of Rental Housing Advisory Group' consisting of staff from City divisions, people with lived-experience, tenant advocacy groups, landlords, and legal clinics to provide advice to the Executive Director, Housing Secretariat on affordable rental housing issues that impact tenants. 

3.  The Planning and Housing Committee request the Executive Director, Housing Secretariat and the General Manager, Shelter, Support and Housing Administration to work with the “Protection of Rental Housing Advisory Group” on the following matters:

 
a.  the development of public educational materials and awareness campaigns;

b.  the identification of possible changes to the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, to address illegitimate use of N12 and N13 notices; and

c.  the hosting of an affordable rental housing workshop to address the issue of tenant displacement and evictions, including solutions. 

With residential vacancy rates in the City's primary rental market at unhealthy rates and rents rising faster than wages, Toronto tenants are at a greater risk of being displaced, having to pay increasingly unaffordable rents or being forced to live in poorly maintained homes.

Due to lack of supply in the rental market, many low-income and vulnerable residents struggle to find and keep rental accommodation in Toronto.  This includes groups such as people with medium, low and fixed incomes, one income households, single women-led households, visible minorities, persons with special needs, Indigenous people and people who are homeless or lack the resources to be housed. As a result of Toronto’s tight housing market and the current legislation that regulates rental housing, there is a public interest in ensuring that residential tenants maintain their tenancies and that their rights are upheld.

This report reviews and makes recommendations concerning the growing public interest in “renovictions”, a term that refers to instances where landlords illegitimately evict tenants to undertake renovations of properties and do not provide them with the option to return so that the homes can then be rented at a much higher price to a new tenant.

This report also reviews and makes recommendations concerning the illegitimate use of N12 notices under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, which permits a landlord to evict a tenant if a rental unit is needed for the landlord's own use, that of their family or a purchaser. Specifically cases have been reported where landlords or their families never move into the rental units with such units instead re-rented at much higher rates.

To address these concerns, while protecting tenants and the City's limited supply of affordable housing, the Planning and Housing Committee established a Subcommittee on the Protection of Affordable Rental Housing in May 2019.

This report provides the public with background information in advance of the November 20, 2019 meeting of the Planning and Housing Subcommittee on the Protection of Affordable Rental on the issues of “renovictions” and the illegitimate use of N12 Notices under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006.

This report also operationalizes the Terms of Reference adopted by the Subcommittee at its meeting of July 16, 2019 and expanded by the Planning and Housing Committee on September 17, 2019.

Lastly this report recommends actions for the City to proactively identify issues impacting the security of tenure of existing tenants and report back to the Subcommittee on progress in the first quarter of 2020.

There are no financial implications arising from this report. The Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer has reviewed this report and agrees with the financial impact information.

On November 13, 2019, the Planning and Housing Committee referred the following motion by Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam to the Subcommittee on the Protection of Affordable Rental Housing for consideration at its November 20, 2019 meeting:

"City Council request the Toronto Police Service Board to investigate false "renovictions", Landlord's Own Use evictions, and other similar fraudulent activities conducted by landlords under section 380 (1) of the Criminal Code of Canada."