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All local municipal governments should advocate to the Ontario government to change some of their misguided policies they implemented within the Residential Tenancies Act, such as the vacancy decontrol rule, which allows landlords to increase the rental price of a unit as much as they want to once a tenant leaves.
The major problems are that municipalities in Ontario will continue to experience landlords that are incentivized to push out, and continue to evict long-term tenants so that they can get someone else into that vacant unit that will be paying a substantial increase in rent to them of at least $1,000 and possibly more per month than what the previous tenants were paying in rent.
As far as building more so-called affordable rentals, this will be defeated, as landlords will be continuing to evict tenants, and for every 10 rental units or more that are built as an affordable unit, it will not increase any affordable housing.
Applications to the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board to evict tenants for renovations or repairs have surged, causing tenants who are low-income to lose their housing and risk becoming homeless. A report prepared by the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario says that there has been a 294 per cent increase in landlord applications to the Landlord and Tenant Board to evict tenants since 2016 in order to convert, demolish or extensively renovate.
Doug Abernethy
Gravenhurst
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