In an effort to tackle so-called “renovictions,” Ward 4 Coun. Pauline Fortin is asking city council to endorse her motion seeking a means of preventing bad-faith residential tenant evictions.
“We’re having a very real housing crisis, and we have so many homeless people,” she told Sudbury.com, describing renovictions as one reason some people end up homeless.
Renovictions are residential evictions wherein tenants are evicted using N13 notices (and L2 applications), which allow landlords to evict residents to perform renovations.
Though some are legitimate, they have also been criticized for being done in bad faith, as a means of evicting low-paying tenants and replacing them with tenants who will pay higher rental rates as a means of bypassing legislation which limits rental rate increase.
Fortin was turned onto the issue last year, when an elderly resident in Sudbury’s Donovan neighbourhood reached out to her because she’d been handed an N13 eviction notice.
The resident pays a monthly rent of $850 and didn’t want to move, even when the landlord offered her $5,000, Fortin said.
The resident was linked up with legal aid and is now appealing the eviction, but Fortin said it’s “a lot to ask a senior to go through.”
“Basically, (the landlord) just wanted the apartment so they can fix it up and rent it for a lot more,” Fortin added. “The problem is, this is affecting our most vulnerable residents.”
Within Greater Sudbury’s current rental market, where vacancy rates are hovering around 1.6 per cent and its affordable housing stock falls well short of demand, Fortin said landlords hold the cards.
“You can charge what you want, and when somebody’s been there a long time, they don’t want to leave,” she said, describing renovictions as “very traumatizing” for residents.
In her search for potential solutions, Fortin discovered a new bylaw in Hamilton, which will have property owners apply for a special permit costing $700 when seeking an N13 notice. Following this bylaw, evictions can only take place once all building permits have been secured and an engineer’s report confirms the unit needs to be vacated.
Fortin’s motion, which city council will debate during their Feb. 13 meeting, proposes that staff “explore opportunities to reduce the number of renovictions in Greater Sudbury and to present a report to Council by October 2024.”
This report will include possible actions the municipality can undertake, including bylaw amendments, building permit changes and a potential city-wide renovictions bylaw.
Sudbury.com has reached out to the Landlord and Tenant Board to see how common N-13 notices have been in both Ontario and Greater Sudbury, but this information has yet to come in. Sudbury.com will publish a follow-up story when these details come in.
Last year, The Globe and Mail reported that the Landlord and Tenant Board received nearly 1,100 eviction applications under these circumstances in Ontario in 2022, which was close to double the volume in 2019.
Sudbury.com requested a phone interview this week with someone from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. This interview request was not granted.
Instead, a written statement was sent by Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra spokesperson Justine Teplycky.
The written statement did not address Sudbury.com’s inquiry regarding how common N13 evictions are in Ontario, and Greater Sudbury in particular.
In her written response, Teplycky promoted the province’s Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act as “further strengthening protections against evictions due to renovations, demolitions and conversions, as well as those for landlord’s own use.”
Prior to evicting a tenant for a renovation, a landlord must provide proof the unit must be vacant for renovations to take place, provide written updates on the renovation and provide a 60-day grace period for the tenant to move back in once renovations are complete.
Teplycky said landlords must offer the apartment unit to the evicted tenant “at a similar rent.”
Sudbury.com requested clarity from Teplycky on what “similar rent” means and where it’s clarified in legislation.
In their response, which arrived by email 14 minutes prior to publication and was not included when this story was originally published, Teplycky responded as follows:*
"Before the tenant moves out, the tenant must inform the landlord, in writing of their intent to re-occupy the rental unit. The tenant must also keep you informed in writing of any change in their address. If the tenant chooses to move back into the rental unit, the rent cannot be more than the rent would be if there had been no interruption in the tenancy. More information can be found in Section 53 of the (Residential Tenancies Act)."*
Any tenant being evicted has the right to a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board, Teplycky said, for which funding was boosted by $19 million in 2022 to help accelerate decisions and begin addressing well-established backlogs. Another $6.5 million is being spent for an additional 40 adjudicators and five staff members.
The fines for offences under the Residential Tenancies Act for things such as bad faith evictions doubled to $100,000 for individuals and $500,000 for corporations.
Renovictions are the No. 1 thing Nickel Belt NDP MPP France Gélinas said she has heard about in recent months.
“The way the laws are written right now, it should not be happening, but the system is so slow,” she said, pointing to backlogs with the Landlord and Tenant Board as the key issue.
In one recent case, Gélinas said an elderly woman who’d lived in her rental for 30 years was paying $850 per month when she was given an N13 eviction notice.
“There are some really good landlords in my riding, but I’m getting more and more new landlords nobody knows from a hole in the ground who are doing the renovictions.”
In a written statement, Sudbury NDP MP Jamie West told Sudbury.com “there has been an increase in faceless corporate landlords resorting to predatory evictions to drive-up rent prices.”
The Feb. 13 city council meeting begins at 6 p.m., and can be viewed in-person at Tom Davies Square or livestreamed by clicking here.
*Editor's note: These lines were added shortly after this story was initially published as more information came in.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
