Recently, Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) inexplicably released a blog post that was buried at the bottom of their page. They’ve since corrected that issue. The post talks about how “Fairness Should Not Be Sacrificed for Speed at the Landlord and Tenant Board” and how “automatic evictions” should not be allowed. They further express alarm that landlord associations are calling for this.
We greatly respect ACTO and have worked with them in the past. We appreciate their willingness, at least, to listen to the struggles and trauma real people are facing every day. But one challenge in all the rhetoric that passes for defence of one idea or the next is the interpretation of the idea itself. Too many simple ideas are expressed with “the sky is falling” language as to drown out the clear and reasonable idea itself.
SOLO, for example has called for the process of non-payment evictions to be administrative in nature. This is NOT automatic. This could be a reasonable timeframe of 10 days or up to 30 days. If the tenant makes no efforts to dispute, make arrangements, or request a hearing, then have the process move along. Those administrative people at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) would still have to assess the application, but a hearing would not be a requirement. For the landlords who “lie” or have, in the past, run afoul of these rules, have them placed on a list that guarantees a hearing upon requesting an eviction. Further, repeat offenders might face hearings and a fine. No bad actor should get a free ride.
This is akin to getting a parking ticket and having the denial of your plate renewal in Ontario be “automatic.” While, yes, if you do absolutely nothing, the effect will be an administrative process of problems for the plate holder after a timeframe, this is no more automatic than any other case where action is required to avoid problems (i.e. payment). The proper function of a society requires that if we, for example, can’t pay taxes, that we don’t sit and do nothing because we’re “too busy.” Call the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and arrange a payment plan. Take some action, or do nothing at your peril.
ACTO’s own blog post points out a decision by adjudicator Paul DeBueno citing the fact that, because the tenant was so busy, she couldn’t act on an eviction notice, and the resulting eviction infringed on her rights. This article cites that fact that eviction for arrears met with a low response in terms of disputes. This absurdist view (among others) has led us to where we are with millions of dollars in arrears with zero checks on this incentive to do wrong. And sometimes the answer is there looking at you: If a malicious tenant could care less about paying the rent, do you think they’d be motivated to dispute the matter?
ACTO talks about the human right of a hearing, but if they ever watched an arrears hearing today, the average timeframe is five minutes, and few are disputed. How would someone justify not paying $25,000 in rent anyway? They also say, “The City of Toronto determined that in 10% of all rent arrears evictions, the tenant owed no money or was owed money from the landlord at the time of eviction.” Set aside the fact that there is no source link to these dubious statistics, the reality is that landlords generally have an incentive to keep good tenants; even more so in a tight market where your next tenant could ruin you.
None of this, of course, relates to someone working to pay rent, even by small amounts, communicating with their landlord and finding a way to live up to the contract they’ve signed. That is not what an administrative arrears eviction would involve. What we have discussed is simply holding the scofflaws accountable so there is no incentive to maliciously withhold rent. As with everything, it’s a balancing act. Today, the balance is so skewed in the wrong direction that the worst actors now proudly proclaim their handiwork (until they do much worse) and those that are handed orders to pay have an entirely new set of protections making it either impossible or incredibly difficult for a rental operator to be made whole.
We’ve mentioned that other provinces have laws that remove incentive for bad actors. British Columbia, for example, often known as a bastion of progressive thinking, has laws that include what’s called a “10 Day Notice,” if rent isn’t paid. Do nothing; and this will escalate to an eviction.
This can all lead to vicious cycles. For example, if the tenant in ACTO’s linked article later comes to own a home of her own and she bravely takes the massive risk of renting out her basement, she’ll learn quickly the state of things. If there’s a dispute, she’s going to be forced to house her new tenant, free of rent for upwards of 12 months in Ontario.
Ultimately, like ACTO, we agree that regional and in-person hearings need to come back. We agree that they will bring about a more streamlined process and significantly reduce the LTB backlogs. In a great number of cases, were fighting for the same things.
But, just as in life, there a great number of things that should be problematic if we take no action on them. Don’t pay your credit card bill, ever; expect problems. Get a speeding ticket and ignore it forever; expect problems. We can find the right balance between fairness and removing the incentive to do bad things. It’s not where things are now, that’s for sure. Incidentally, there was a time when non-payment of parking tickets could land you in jail. We’ve certainly softened that up, but there is still and incentive to act on a parking ticket or see “automatic” consequences, as there should be.
One wonders with all this rhetoric, if those that trade in these ideas understand that they are saying small rental operators deserve no basic rights. That they are somehow less deserving of an effort to limit loses and abject ruin? When will we return to some sort of balance in Ontario’s rental market?
