Tenant advocates in Toronto prepare for a rally Wednesday outside the constituency office of Michael Ford, a Progressive Conservative MP and nephew of Prime Minister Doug Ford.
It is one of eight demonstrations planned by ACORN, a tenant rights advocacy group, for February 21 outside PC MPPs’ offices across the province.
They are pushing for stricter new rent control policies, which they say are necessary given the unprecedented pressure on Ontario’s renters.
“Tenants are under attack,” said Marcia Stone, vice president of ACORN’s Weston district. “Make sure regular people can afford to live in these buildings.”
Michael Ford is the MP for York-South Weston. Stone says he was targeted because his constituency has a high proportion of rented housing.
According to Statistics Canada, nearly half of all housing in Toronto is rental housing, and about five percent of that is in Ford’s constituency.
Barrington Lue Sang is a paralegal who usually represents landlords. He says current rules that override rent controls for newer apartments have encouraged developers to build more rental apartments. (Mike Smee/CBC)
Under current provincial regulations, landlords can only increase rent by a maximum of 2.5 percent, but there is no limit if the building was built after November 2018 or if an apartment has been vacated.
ACORN says it has also seen a sharp increase in the number of requests for so-called Above Guideline Rent Increases (AGI) in recent years.
AGI requests are made by landlords who wish to request an increase of more than 2.5 percent.
If a landlord can prove that a higher increase is justified by improvements made to the building – such as renovating a parking garage, modernizing a lobby or increasing security measures – he can increase the monthly rent by up to 5.5 percent.
But ACORN organizers believe that rent control should apply to all apartments, whether newly built or recently vacated. They also call for a freeze on AGIs.
The number of AGI applications received by the province’s Landlord and Tenants Board (LTB) increased from 404 in the 2020-2021 fiscal year to 613 in 2021-2022 and 605 in 2022-2023, according to the Ontario Tribunal’s 2022-2023 annual report.
Landlord vs. Tenant
According to ACORN, landlords too often make only minimal improvements and then apply for an AGI. Although the LTB does not provide these figures, ACORN managers report that they learn from experience that applications are rarely denied.
Barrington Lue Sang, a paralegal who specializes in working with landlords, disputes this.
“I think if you ask any landlord who has contacted the LTB, they will disagree,” he said. “The main purpose of the board is to protect tenants.”
Sang says the lack of rent controls for buildings built after 2018 is a policy worth maintaining because it serves as an incentive for developers to build new rental housing.
“It definitely works,” he said.
A spokesperson for Michael Ford, minister of citizenship and multiculturalism, told CBC Toronto in an email that the Ford government’s policies have led to unprecedented growth in the number of new homes being built, with a record 19,000 new rental homes being built in Ontario in 2023.
“We will continue to take meaningful action to make housing more affordable for hard-working Ontarians, while facilitating the construction of more homes and rental apartments to address the ongoing supply crisis,” the spokesperson said in the statement.
Ford’s spokesman also wrote that the government had “strengthened protections against evictions due to renovations, demolitions and landlord-occupied properties.”
From the three-bedroom apartment he shares with his parents in Ford’s constituency, Michael Cuadra says he does not experience a system that is fair to tenants.
Michael Cuadra, who rents an apartment in MP Michael Ford’s Etobicoke constituency, says he will attend Wednesday’s rally to protest what he says is an unfair system for setting rents in Ontario. (Hugo Levesque/CBC)
Cuadra says he will attend Wednesday’s rally because he currently pays $1,575 a month, but his landlord recently told him his rent will rise to $1,650 thanks to an AGI.
Cuadra says the reason for the AGI was roof and elevator repairs.
“There has to be some kind of balance between how much they can raise my rent and the ability to keep the building in good condition,” he said.
“It feels like they are taking all the advantages and benefits and I am left with the bill.”
