Click the link above to listen to the audio file!
The ruling Ontario Progressive Conservative Markham – Unionville’s conservative Member of Provincial Parliament Billy Pang, invited his constituents to participate in an online roundtable meeting focused on landlord and tenant matters this Sunday, March 24th from 3:00 – 4:00 pm
The purpose of the meeting was to “provide an opportunity for residents to voice their insights and concerns regarding the rights and responsibilities of both tenants”.
Vice Chair Rose Marie presented Small Ownership Landlords Ontario Inc. (Solo) position on the issue. Here is the full transcript of the Solo presentation at the meeting.
Hello everyone.
My name is Rose Marie and I am a resident of Markham and the Vice Chair of SOLO, Small Ownership Landlords of Ontario.
Good afternoon MPP Pang and guests.
Legislative and policy changes are needed via the Ministry of Housing, the Attorney General and the Landlord Tenant Board if there is any desire to stop the erosion of your largest section of housing providers in Ontario who are small landlords who provide approximately 47% of rental housing. Sixty percent (60%) of applications are for non -payment of rent.
Since 2020 there have been 14 petitions on change.org asking for changes to the legislation and the Landlord Tenant Board. They have all been ignored. There are two similar petitions that have been presented with similar ideas.
One was in December of 2023 initiated by Paul Robillard of Ontario Landlord Help and the most recent petition initiated by Christopher Seepe. has 30,000 signatories. Since 2020 there have been more than 4 billion dollars in rental income losses to housing providers.
To reduce the backlog and streamline the LTB procedures, SOLO has a flow chart that we’d like to send to you later and we agree with the petitioners that these are the changes needed.
Number one, divert L1 applications to an expedited stream. The L1 application where the tenant does not respond could be given an ex parte eviction order immediately. This would avoid the need for hearing thousands of cases. The benefits would create change of behavior, have a significant impact on the number of backlogged cases, reduce the number of adjudicators which would be a substantial savings on running the tribunal, reduce police costs and tax revenue loss to the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), stop the opportunity for “cash for keys” extorsion that has been prevalent due to the delays at the Landlord Tenant Board. This would be a better way.
Point number two, professional tenants. A professional tenant is someone who defrauds multiple landlords repeatedly in the tens of thousands of dollars. The files are noted in LTB records. However, their previous rental history is not permitted to be provided as evidence for current rent arrears applications. If L1 applications were diverted to an expedited stream, change of behavior would occur and repeated nonpayment of rent would not keep occurring. In these cases, expert eviction should be automatic.
Point number three, the Bankruptcy Act. If a tenant claims bankruptcy prior to being evicted for nonpayment of rent, the tenant’s debt is wiped out to zero and they can also continue to live in the property.
No other business would have to endure this type of penalty. if a vehicle has non -payment, it is removed. If a phone has non -payment, service is discontinued. It is incomprehensible that a housing provider would not get back possession.
I’d like to thank you for allowing me to present. I do have a few more points that will take me over the three minutes. And I just wanted to mention that we have other issues where tenants who are receiving benefits from Ontario Works (OW) and Ontario Disability Supplement Benefits (ODSB) are not paying their rent through the housing allowance that they workers are acting as gatekeepers even though policy 10 .1 clearly states that landlords housing providers can request that the housing alliance can be paid directly to them.
Fire departments and by-law departments are threatening or levying fines on homeowners for infractions that they have no control over. Tenants are permitted to move in additional family members or guests when this was never agreed to with the housing provider.
This is particularly problematic when the housing provider is paying the utilities and lives upstairs or below the tenants. Housing providers are deciding to get out of the business due to these pitfalls.
We feel we cannot trust the government to protect their housing providers. We are in a housing crisis and we need an Ontario MPP to champion the changes needed. My last point is in 2020 during COVID, a group of Markham housing providers had to hire lawyers when they could not get access to timely justice for $110,000 to go to divisional court.
There are resources now that are helping many landlords such as Openroom.ca. If you’d like to contact solo we can give you additional resources that can help you but the main thing that we need is legislative changes.
Thank you for allowing me to make this presentation.
