In 2016, five long-time tenants at a building in Toronto’s west end were renovicted from their homes. Determined to challenge the evictions, the tenants took their case to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) arguing that the landlords violated their tenant rights by renting their apartments to new tenants at substantially higher rents and preventing them from moving back into their homes after renovations were completed. 

Despite tenants having a formal right to return to their unit, the LTB ruled that tenants of 795 College Street facing eviction for extensive renovations do not have legal recourse to move back in once the landlord rents units out to new tenants and issued a fine. The fine did not deter the 795 College landlords from renovicting tenants again in 2022. This time, however, tenants at another one of their properties, 12 Lansdowne Avenue, organized, refused to move out, and beat the renoviction by directly confronting their landlords. 

Last month, in response to the growing frustration surrounding renoviction cases such 795 College and 12 Lansdowne, Toronto adopted the Rental Renovation License By-Law to administer renovictions.

Tenant advocates celebrated the new bylaw that the city says will “protect tenants and prevent renovictions.” Mayor Olivia Chow proclaimed, “Those landlords that are using renovations as an excuse to evict people, you can’t get away with it now.”  

However, the new bylaw, which marks the culmination of five years of deliberations on renovictions at Toronto City Hall, does not actually prohibit renovictions. Municipal administration of the eviction process will likely do more to legitimize eviction for extensive renovations, and undermine tenant organizing, then it will prevent displacement.

Ontario law allows landlords to evict tenants for extensive renovations. The law does not require that the renovations be necessary, only that they are so extensive that they require vacant possession of the apartment unit. If the matter gets to a hearing at the LTB, the landlord has to demonstrate that vacant possession is required. 

Although tenants evicted for extensive renovations have a formal right of return to the unit once renovations have been completed, we have yet to hear of a single case where a tenant has been allowed to return. Once tenants move out, returning to their unit is practically impossible, and landlords bring in new, higher-paying tenants to occupy renovated units. 

The City of Toronto claims the new bylaw will protect tenants — by requiring landlords who evict tenants for extensive renovations to obtain a renovation licence after issuing tenants N13 eviction notices. 

While the approximately 60,000 units controlled by Toronto Community Housing Corporation will not be covered by the bylaw and rooming house landlords will be exempted from application fees, most landlords will be able to apply for a renovation licence by submitting a building permit and report from a “qualified person” that vacant possession is required. Obtaining a building permit is not difficult for landlords. Many landlords already hire professionals that the by-law defines as qualified who can provide the opinion to the city that vacant possession is needed to renovate. 

On November 14, during the Toronto City Council debate on the motion, Mayor Chow demonstrated her poor understanding of the issue, calling it a “loophole” that landlords are exploiting. She says she hears from tenants who have been renovicted from rent-controlled units and are now stuck in units without rent controls. “If we had real rent control for all buildings — not just the ones built before 2018 — we probably wouldn’t need to do this.” 

The reality is, evicted tenants face high rents wherever they secure a new unit because owners of buildings constructed before 2018 that are covered by the Ontario rent guideline can raise the rent on a unit without limit once the unit is vacant. 

The bylaw will also require that landlords provide alternative temporary accommodations or rental top-up payments to evicted tenants who say they want to return to their units after the renovations, similar to how the city manages tenant displacement in demoviction cases, where the city intervenes to try to manage the displacement of tenants to some extent, and works with developers to get tenants to sign agreements for compensation and replacement units once they are evicted.

Landlords will have to show the city that they have come to an agreement with a tenant regarding temporary accommodations or for “severance compensation” in cases where a tenant agrees to give up their unit. This new measure may result in tenants receiving higher buyout offers or increased financial compensation from landlords, but it is unlikely to counteract the financial incentive landlords have to push out sitting tenants and raise rent on vacant units. Landlords who flout the rules may face fines under the bylaw but, as we have seen, the threat of fines has not deterred landlords from renovicting tenants. 

As we have documented, renoviction is when a landlord tries to permanently displace a tenant from their home by claiming they need to renovate the unit. The landlord begins the process of renoviction by notifying the tenant that it wants them to move out so they can renovate. The landlord may then apply increasing degrees of financial, physical, and legal pressure on the tenant to push them out of their home. This may involve issuing formal eviction notices, but may not.

In many cases, landlords rely on extra-legal tactics such as buyouts and harassment to push tenants out. Landlords do not need to break any rules related to eviction in order to permanently displace tenants, and tenants facing renoviction may leave for a variety of reasons.

Renoviction is primarily about displacement, not renovations. 

Renovictions are not happening because landlords are trying to maintain older buildings or do necessary repairs, with tenants merely displaced as a by-product. Renovictions happen because landlords want to push out tenants who are paying lower rents so they can bring in tenants who would pay higher rents — and those landlords will often completely renovate units before renting them out to a new set of tenants. 

The new bylaw thus reinforces the misleading notion that landlords issue N13 notices because they legitimately hope to upgrade their properties for their existing tenants and that if landlords would simply follow the rules, those current tenants would not be displaced.

Toronto’s new renoviction bylaw can be understood as a state response to working-class organizing that adds a layer of municipal administration to the existing legal eviction process for extensive renovations. 

In 2019, the city responded to increased opposition to evictions and high-profile cases like 795 College Street by forming a subcommittee to examine renovictions, as well as bringing tenants and advocates into the policymaking process. 

Tenants who were drawn into the process had their participation limited to minor consultative or advisory roles, and were frustrated by the city’s apparent disinterest in taking meaningful action. Instead of devoting time and energy to organize with neighbours to fight evictions, tenants attended meetings at City Hall and prepared presentations. 

For years, the subcommittee gave tenants across the city the impression that something was being done to address the problem — and media coverage of the various meetings and city reports reinforced this impression. The city produced a tenant handbook that facilitated displacement by encouraging tenants to assert their right to return and an online tool for tenants to see if the renovations proposed by their landlord could force them to move out. 

While this was happening, tenants across the city stepped up organizing at their buildings to fight back against renoviction. Tenants living at 12 Lansdowne Avenue, 394 Dovercourt Road, 14 Wadsworth Boulevard, 2419 Keele Street, and 1570 Lawrence Avenue West, and at other addresses in less high-profile cases we are familiar with, beat renoviction by organizing against landlords. Despite provincial law recognizing their right to return, and the province twice increasing the maximum fines for landlords found to have evicted tenants in bad-faith, tenants facing renoviction understood that through organizing they could best counteract the financial, physical, and legal pressure applied by landlords seeking to permanently displace them. 

Confronted with the challenge organized tenants pose to private property and eviction enforcement, Toronto adopted a bylaw that strengthens the state’s authority to administer evictions. 

The bylaw will rely on the social power of money to facilitate displacement and undermine tenant organizing against displacement by increasing financial and administrative pressure on tenants to submit to eviction. Municipal administration of evictions for extensive renovation gives renovictions a new legitimacy and may discourage tenants from fighting back against landlords. The city’s already-underway public campaign around the bylaw tells tenants not to worry because these new rules will protect them. 

That’s why it is critical that tenants come together and develop their collective power to challenge evictions and displacement by forming organizations based in their buildings and neighbourhoods.

Cole Webber is a community legal worker at Parkdale Community Legal Services in Toronto. Philip Zigman is a co-creator of RenovictionsTO. They are the authors of Renovictions: Displacement and Resistance in Toronto.