While federal policy makers deliberate over the best way to fix the crisis in the housing market, the battleground over affordable rental units in Ottawa is getting uglier.
“We’ve had tenants send us video recordings of their landlords being really intimidating on the phone,” said city councillor Ariel Troster. “There was one elderly woman who was given an eviction notice, supposedly for property damage, because her pillow exploded in the dryer.”
Across Canada, demand for rental housing is rampant, while supply has never been tighter.
The nationwide average rent for a two-bedroom unit increased by eight per cent in 2023, while vacancy rates decreased to a record low 1.5 per cent, according to Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation data. In Ottawa, the price increase was four per cent over the same period, with a vacancy rate of two per cent.
The trendlines are creating a tenuous ecosystem for tenants clinging to the last vestiges of affordable housing, making renters desperate to remain in units still protected by rent control, particularly low-income, elderly and vulnerable tenants.
At the same time, there’s been a dramatic increase in renovictions – when property owners can evict tenants, renovate, and then increase rent. In Ontario, landlords must submit notices, called N13s, to local landlord-tenant boards.
The advocacy group Acorn Canada reported earlier this year there was a 545 per cent increase in N13 notices in Ottawa between 2017 and 2022. N13s also include property owners who seek to demolish their properties.
Another issue in Ontario is there are no limitations on rent increase when a unit changes tenants, meaning consistent turnover allows landlords to maximize profits by repeatedly raising rents in line with the soaring market rates.
Tenants who live in two downtown Ottawa buildings on Bank and Nepean streets are among those who have been locked in bitter disputes with property owners who have served eviction notices. The Bank Block Tenants, a coalition comprised of tenants and community supporters, has been resisting eviction by staging public demonstrations and seeking legal recourse to remain in their homes.
Coalition member Ben Emond alleges that Smart Living Properties, which bought the two buildings in 2022 and served eviction notices to all tenants, has engaged in questionable behaviour with the aim of convincing them to leave of their own accord.
“We’ve had fake … forms submitted to our vulnerable and elderly tenants saying that they had not paid rent when they had,” said Emond. “They’ve installed cameras on our building, on the Bank Street side, to spy on us.”
Smart Living has refused all requests to meet with the tenants’ group, said Emond, a resident of the Bank Street building.
"The affordable homes we live in will be gone forever if Smart Living Properties has their way" - Ben Emond, Bank Block Tenant representative
In Ottawa, calls are escalating for a city bylaw to protect against renovictions, following initiatives in Toronto and Hamilton, Ont.
Toronto city councillors recently passed a bylaw that will require landlords to apply for a $700 per-unit renovation license, as well as provide tangible evidence that proposed work is so extensive that it necessitates tenants leaving their homes.
Troster, whose Somerset ward includes the affected Bank block buildings, said she has been “working to try to get a renoviction bylaw passed in Ottawa.”
Acorn, which has also called for a bylaw, staged a demonstration in downtown Ottawa on Friday to reinforce its lobby effort.
Gabby Horan, a property manager and member of the Ottawa Regional Landlords Association, pointed out that repairs and updates are a necessary part of building maintenance.
“Here in Ottawa, we have a lot of older buildings … heritage buildings need upkeep,” said Horan. “In the media, people say ‘I’ve been here so and so many years.’ Well, yeah, the number of years you’ve been there it should be falling apart.” Horan specified that speaks from her own experience and not for all Ottawa landlords.
Ottawa tenants are not completely without recourse when their landlord deems a unit or building in need of repair. N13 language stipulates that if tenants provide written notice of their intent to move back into the unit, the landlord must provide them some degree of compensation, or a secondary unit where they can temporarily reside.
However, many landlords will instead pursue an N11, which is a mutual agreement between the landlord and tenant to end a tenancy, sometimes with a negotiated buyout. Often, both sides are eager to avoid the landlord-tenant tribunal process, which Horan said “takes forever” and involves adjudicators who “don’t necessarily know the business problems of the landlord.”
The Bank Block Tenants also have little use for the tribunal, Emond said.
“The landlord-tenant board encourages us to settle,” he said. “Whatever they mean by settle, no amount of money that any of us get could ever replace the fact that the affordable homes we live in will be gone forever if Smart Living Properties has their way.”
Horan acknowledged the plight of the tenant. ““To be fair on the other side,” she said, “where are these people supposed to go?”
Sarah Sproule, a director at Community Legal Services Ottawa, stressed that renovictions are often used as a means to an end.
“We also see what would be a purely bad faith renoviction where the N13 is given and rather than doing a massive renovation, the landlord does a smaller repair, smaller improvement that wouldn’t actually require the tenant to leave,” said Sproule. Ontario’s lax rent control laws are a crucial driver of the current climate, she added.
Rent control is a subject of ongoing debate in Ontario, amplified in recent years after Premier Doug Ford instituted his controversial build exception, which excludes any residential unit built or occupied after Nov. 15, 2018, from provincial rent control standards.
“If we got rid of the 2018 build exception and we implemented some controls on what a landlord can charge when there’s a changeover in tenants, I think it would put more incentive on landlords to keep good tenants,” said Sproule.
Ian Lee, a housing economics expert at Carleton University, cautioned that rent control may not be a sustainable solution. “Rent controls are very, very destructive and create shortages,” said Lee. “I think rent control … disincentivizes the building of rental properties.”
However, Lee is not unsympathetic to the perils that tenants face when exposed to soaring rents. He just proposes an alternative solution. “What this argues for is subsidizing the tenant instead of regulating the price of the product in the market,” he said. “It can be done through the income tax act. It’s very easy to subsidize the person whose rental payment exceeds a certain percentage of his or her income.”
For those facing eviction, including the Bank Block Tenants, time and nuance are not on their side and solutions, for them, must be rooted in one basic principle.
“The rent of the unit should not be something that the landlord can just think upon as a commodity, given the fact that people need somewhere to live,” said Emond. “It’s a human right, for this to be commodified to this extent is disgusting, and it’s immoral.”
