Who’s in favour of abusing vulnerable people?
Right. Nobody, that’s who. Yet in Ontario we allow bad faith actors to kick economically vulnerable people out of their apartments to renovate quickly then jack up the rent.
That’s the subject of this week’s column.
Carleton University’s Steve Pomeroy came out with a study in 2023 showing Ottawa is losing affordable homes faster than it can build them. It comes down to 31 affordable units lost (to renoviction, demolition or other means) for each one built.
And then we wonder why so many people wind up in shelters, couch-surfing or living hard on the street.
In 2023 the Ontario legislature voted stronger protections for tenants against bad faith renovictions, but they are not yet in force. It’s right there in the Bill that those tenant protections will be enacted at an unspecified later date via proclamation by the Lieutenant Governor, which is an unusual way of doing things. Typically legislation is in force once a bill gets royal assent, as this one did. At any rate, the proclamation hasn’t happened yet and nobody can explain why. Now that we’re in a provincial election, we have the perfect opportunity to ask candidates what they’ll do to protect vulnerable people from winding up homeless — while protecting the right of property owners to ensure their buildings are properly maintained.
Coun. Ariel Troster, whose ward covers most of downtown, got council to vote — overwhelmingly — in favour of nudging the province to move and if it doesn’t, to study the feasibility of a renoviction bylaw, like Hamilton and Toronto have done.
You can watch my interview with her, which contains a lot more context and background information than I could fit in the newspaper. One stat stood out: That between 2020 and 2023 Ottawa had a 500% increase in renovictions. They can’t all have been necessary.
Candidates for office will soon be knocking on your door seeking your support. Ask them what they’ll do to restrain abusive property owners.
