Mixed reaction to new renting bill

There's mixed reaction to a new piece of legislation that was introduced Thursday at Queen's Park by Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark.

Entitled the 'Helping Homebuyers Protecting Tenants Act', its part of a plan by the province to build 1.5 million homes by 2031.

"Our government has made real progress in tackling Ontario's housing supply crisis," said Clark to reporters afterwards. "Over the past five years, we've introduced a bold and transformative set of measures and we're starting to see it grow and have a positive impact."

"To make it easier for renters, we're introducing changes that would give tenants the right to install air conditioner units, subject to certain rules, we're also proposing to strengthen rules around no-fault evictions due to renovation, demolition and conversion, as well as evictions for landlords own use. Finally we're proposing to double maximum fines for offences under the Residential Tenancies Act to make them the highest in Canada," said the minister.

The province is also looking to invest $6.5 million to hire 40 new adjudicators in the province and staff, in a bid to clear some of the backlog.

"These are major new protections for renters, they're policies that all parties should be supporting," Clark added.

Reaction to the proposed legislation, which has only gone through 'first reading', appears to be not going over well with all stakeholders.

"I've looked it over and it's really not serving the landlords purpose whatsoever. Things like relieving the rules on air conditioners in tenant spaces, what's that got to do with anything we're dealing with? That serves no purpose. The cost of the backlog of evictions are going back as far as 2020, our paralegal says 2022, they still have yet to address that and yet they've already made statements that they're addressing 2023 evictions. It's just not right," said Ray Goulet, a landlord and president of the Greater Sudbury Landlord Association.

"Landlords are sitting on 10, 15 and 20 thousand dollars in arrears, all they want to see is an eviction because it's very clear the tenant is unable to pay that," he explained.

Goulet says it's been frustrating to see adjudicators work out payment plans, where they pay additional amounts each month to the landlord when they can't pay the initial rent they owe per month.

He says rents are high for a reason, utilities have gone up, property tax has gone up and it's becoming more and more difficult for landlords to get ahead.

"We're seeing upwards of 300, 400 dollar increases in our gas bills, hydro is going up, how do we get compensated for that? On top of that, the losses we are seeing in rents … the adjudicators aren't addressing that," he said.

"I think it's the policies of the LTB to be more effective, they've got the money, they got the adjudicators, so start addressing the 2020, 2021 cases and the adjourned cases where landlords have had to refile paperwork," Goulet told CTV News.

It's been encouraging news for the Sudbury Community Legal Clinic which called these changes a step in the right direction.

"In terms of the changes to tenant protections, I think there are some positive changes … I'm happy to see the proposed changes around 'renovictions," said executive director Allison Woods. "Any investment into the Landlord Tenant Board is a good thing, I was particularly happy to see part of that was adding some operational or back office staff. That's one thing you hear from tenants is you can spend the whole day on hold and there's not a lot in terms of emailed response times. A lot of people have a tough time getting a response from the board."

Woods adds she would also like to see a commitment to addressing tenant applications to the Landlord and Tenant Board. She says it needs to be balanced in addressing the concerns with both landlords and tenants.

"I think it’s also crucial to include rent control and commitments to increase affordable and rent-geared-to-income housing. Even with the small increase to ODSP, the shelter allowance for a single person on ODSP is 522$/month and OW is 390$/month. A commitment to increase the housing supply in Ontario does not solve the housing crisis unless the commitment includes truly affordable units and rent-geared-to-income units. So many community members are already priced out of the rental market and simply increasing the housing supply does not solve the housing crisis," she said.

Executive Director for the Homelessness Network Ray Landry comes at it from a similar position to Woods.

Landry says the changes aren't going to address anything but it's a step forward.

"We're happy with the general announcement that there will be more LTB adjudicators in Ontario and we hope that some of those will be present, in person in Sudbury," he told CTV News.

The homelessness advocate says Sudbury is not immune to some of the issues that are being faced in the province.

Stricter rules protecting people is a good thing.

"It's a step, hopefully a step that will improve the disputes resolutions across tenants and landlords. That it will provide quicker access to clear decisions so that people will know what steps should be taken," he said.

It's unclear if any of those new positions will be in Northern Ontario. CTV News did reach out to the minister's office repeatedly for clarification.

Minister Clark is also steering clear of any discussion on rent control, telling reporters they want to build on their success and not go back to 1990 when 'there was no construction in Ontario.'

Clark was also asked about concerns as to whether the legislation is painting all Ontario municipalities with the 'same brush.' In his news conference, he replied with all of Ontario is good to grow, whether you live in the Golden Horseshoe or not.