ottawa renovictions bylaw battle is about to begin
5 minute read
dave longchamps and nelda giroux both received n13 eviction notices for their bayshore-area studio apartments in august 2023.
julie oliver
/
postmedia
an upcoming proposal for a renovictions bylaw must include strong tenant protections — like the one introduced by hamilton last year, says a tenants’ rights group.
meanwhile, a landlords’ association opposes any bylaw that resembles hamilton’s.
renovictions occur when a landlord evicts tenants — ostensibly to renovate rental properties — but later replaces the tenants with new ones at higher rents. hamilton, toronto and london are among the ontario cities that already have renoviction bylaws aimed at preventing landlords from embarking on renovations that are unnecessary or cosmetic, or evicting tenants, then failing to complete the renovations.
in may 2024, city council asked staff to produce a feasibility study for a bylaw. in january 2025, the staff response recommended against it, arguing that such a bylaw would be expensive to enforce and that education and legal supports would provide the most benefit to tenants. hamilton, which introduced its bylaw in on jan. 1, 2025, estimated it would spend almost $950,00 a year enforcing its bylaw.
but the planning and housing committee asked staff to take a deeper look into the idea. the proposed bylaw is expected to be in front of the committee on may 20.
in a report released april 22, the association of community organizations for reform now (acorn) argues that protections for tenants in the bylaw must include requiring landlords to file an application for a renovation licence within seven days of issuing an n13 eviction notice to a tenant, along with supporting documentation such as a building permit and a report from a qualified person, such as an engineer, that says the unit must be vacant in order for the renovation to go ahead.
acorn also wants other measures, including guaranteed temporary accommodations or rent gap payments during renovations, requiring the landlord to cover moving costs and that the tenant’s right to return at the same rent be protected. penalties must be enforced for landlords who break the rules, said the report.
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“if staff’s recommendations do not include these measures and instead focus only on educating tenants about the current provincial rules, not only will the bylaw fail, it will be the weakest in ontario.”
john dickie, the chair of the eastern ontario landlord organization, argues that such a bylaw would make a handful of renters better off — but only in very short term. repairs are costly enough and take time and effort. to add more time and effort will add to the costs, he said.
“that would be at the expense of dozens of people over the next few years, and probably hundreds of people in the years after that,” he said. “to impose an onerous anti-renovation bylaw would reduce housing supply rather than increase it, and would make it more costly rather than less costly.”
in ontario, the residential tenancies act governs how and when evictions can legally occur. the landlord and tenant board (ltb) resolves disputes. ontario tenants have the legal right to return to a unit after renovations at the same rent, with allowable annual provincial increases. the landlord is also legally required to give tenants the equivalent of three months’ rent.
the provincial legislation offers protections to tenants. a bylaw may be beyond the power of the city to enact, said dickie.
to dickie’s knowledge, hardly any hamilton landlords have applied for a renovation permit under the new bylaw.
“they’re just not doing the work. they’re sitting, waiting, hoping that a new mayor and a new council gets elected or the province decides, ‘enough of this, we’re going to stop the cities from doing this.’ ”
acorn argues that the number of n13 notices that move to the ltb are “a gross underestimate of the scale of the renoviction crisis”. landlords “harass and intimidate” tenants to get a voluntary termination of tenancy, the acorn report alleges. it also claims they neglect repairs and make conditions for tenants unlivable, offering cash-for-keys or buyouts and purposely mislead tenants about their rights.
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dave longchamps, 41, and nelda giroux, 74, both received n13 notices for their bayshore-area studio apartments in august 2023. they both received and rejected $5,000 cash-for-keys offers. the cost of moving to another apartment is too high, they agree.
longchamps, who has lived in his apartment for about a dozen years, currently pays $912 a month, and says getting a room to rent would currently cost just as much.
giroux is paying $1,114 a month. the moving costs and other costs associated with moving into another apartment would eat up the $5,000 offer, she said.
after some tenants left the building and their units were renovated, the apartments were advertised for $1,495 a month.
longchamps and giroux, who are members of acorn, both say they’re fighting for other tenants who face the same stress and uncertainty over how they will afford rent.
“they have to make (the bylaw) very strong to tell landlords ‘enough is enough,’ ” said giroux, who estimates that rent eats up more than a third of her pension.
longchamps, who lives on disability benefits, says rent consumes about 70 per cent of his income.
“this affects seniors, people on disability, the marginalized,” he said. “this would help people at risk.”
according to city of ottawa data collected during the bylaw review process, city staff were aware of about 50 undocumented evictions for renovations or repairs since 2020, based on consultations with landlord, tenant, housing and community legal groups.
these are instances where the n13 notice was never issued to the tenant in the required form, or was issued and never filed with the landlord and tenant board, said the city.
“it is challenging to quantify and validate these instances because they are not formally documented, and so the full extent of undocumented evictions for renovations remains unknown.”
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according to acorn’s calculations, there are more than 500 renovictions a year in ottawa. that number is likely higher as many tenants don’t seek help, said the advocacy group.
education alone won’t have any impact on reducing renovictions, said acorn. even if tenants are more informed, they’re still on the hook for finding temporary housing at higher rents, paying for moving costs, keeping an eye on the progress of the revocations, and becoming a private investigator and searching for signs that their landlord might be trying to rent out their unit to someone else.
dickie believes city staff will recommend a “light touch bylaw” for sound policy reasons: the city wants ottawa’s housing stock to be kept up and for the city to have a good reputation for being supportive of the private landlord community.
“if you’re going to have a private rental supply, you’ve got to have private landlords. and if you’re going to have private landlords, you have to treat them decently,” he said.
“there’s close to 150,000 rental units in the city, and only 25,000 of them are social housing. there’s 125,000 rental units that are private market rental units. the city would be in a horrible state if it didn’t have those 125,000 private market rental units.”
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