Tough competition for accommodation, combined with an unfortunate series of events, has left Teresa Salvatore part of what she describes as the working homeless.
“I just feel so lost in the system,” said the administrator, trapped in an ever-tightening housing market.
Salvatore, her husband, brother and dog have been living in economy hotel rooms as they sort through a complicated legal situation that resulted in their eviction.
And despite their ability to pay, they haven’t found adequate furnished accommodation in the Barrie area where they can stay until they transition to more permanent housing and pull their own furnishings out of storage.
“There’s just no inventory,” she said. “We haven’t been able to find any place since this guy kicked us out in June.”
Barrie’s tight rental market has become even more apparent during the pandemic, say those who work in the industry.
Barrie has consistently ranked in the top-10 list of Canada’s most expensive rental markets in recent years. According to online property rental platform PadMapper.com, one-bedroom apartments were renting for an average of $1,440 in Barrie in November, ranked as the eighth most expensive city in Canada in which to rent.
The pandemic has introduced a whole new level of complication, confirmed Inna Breidburg, CMHC senior market analyst.
“Renters are under very heavy financial pressure right now,” she said.
Those who rent, Breidburg added, are often students, younger people and those who work at lower paying service jobs who have suffered higher employment losses than homeowners.
In addition, the pandemic has changed housing preferences. Many people shifting to home offices have discovered their existing home setting no longer meets all their needs.
Some are finding they don’t have to be tied to a specific geographic location if they no longer have to go to a physical work site every day.
In fact, Barrie realtors have indicated an identified exodus from Toronto, particularly from the condo market, has put Simcoe County squarely in the sights of many looking for a different place to call home, pushing up fall real estate sales here to record levels.
Breidburg says an influx of residents from Toronto and within Canada, as well as migrants and immigrants from outside of the country, has been pushing the population growth in Barrie and the demand on housing.
The demographic structure in this area is changing, too, with more millennials in their 20s and 30s calling Barrie home, she added.
The rental market here is also considered unique, with purpose-built apartments representing only 20 to 25 per cent of the rental market, compared to 45 to 50 per cent in Toronto.
That means tenants in this area largely rely on houses, secondary units in houses, condos and low-rise accommodation.
For Salvatore, who is looking for a furnished place, the pickings are slim at best. All that seems to be available to the trio is hotel rooms, which is where they’ve landed.
As parents of grown children who no longer live at home, Salvatore, her husband along with her brother are willing to pay up to $2,300 monthly for a furnished place they can call home for now.
She did have what she thought was a perfect scenario — a comfortable furnished apartment in Friday Harbour Resort along Lake Simcoe in Innisfil.
The trio and their dog initially landed there through an Airbnb listing. They were looking for temporary accommodation while they dealt with issues related to a house-buying deal.
After the pandemic essentially shut down short-term rentals everywhere in March, the unit’s owner suggested they go to a month-to-month lease, freeing the landlord from the obligation of paying fees to the short-term rental company.
But June arrived, the short-term rental business came back to life and the waterfront resort once again became an attraction.
“He said things are opening up. I can get double what you’re paying me right now. Why would I rent it to you,” she said, adding that they were given a week to move out.
When she insisted that the provincial rules required a longer notice period he summoned police and also showed up with a legal representative and a Friday Harbour manager.
“If we chose not to leave, we would be arrested and charged with trespassing,” said Salvatore.
She has since received a largely redacted occurrence review in which South Simcoe police concluded that they had no right to remove the three because it was a “rental situation”. The one-page summary doesn’t make any mention of threat of arrest and suggests that the parting was amicable.
“It worked out for everyone, and police presence was limited,” the review concludes.
Salvatore said she filed a complaint with the Landlord-Tenant Board over the eviction six months ago and still hasn’t received a date.
Delays resulting from the pandemic has pushed the timeline for hearings from the normal six- to eight-week range closer to six months or more, said her lawyer, Robert Stewart.
In addition, the provincial emergency measures included the suspension of evictions, which has since ended, so those cases are only now coming to the fore.
The Landlord and Tenant Board was previously beset with problems which observers say have been magnified as a result of the pandemic.
In an October blog post, Toronto lawyer Celia Chandler worried about its collapse “under the weight of the considerable backlog… The system was already very overwhelmed long before COVID-19 because the government had failed to fill adjudicator vacancies.
“We urge the province to find ways to clear the (Landlord and Tenant Board) backlog. But we also urge all orders of government to redouble efforts to find fast ways to house people.”
Toronto Centre MPP Suze Morrison has been pushing the political envelope, trying to have the moratorium on evictions reestablished as the pandemic continues.
Today, the NDP member who told Salvatore’s story in the house last summer as an example of what she said is a growing issue, will try to force a motion in the Legislature.
A spokesperson said the Landlord and Tenant Board started to gradually get back into action Aug. 1 after the pandemic shutdown.
According to Tribunals Ontario, it developed a plan to reduce pending applications and schedule hearings and is currently scheduling applications in chronological order based on the application type.
A spokesperson wasn’t able to say how long cases are being delayed or the extent of the backlog.
“The (Landlord and Tenant Board) encourages landlords and tenants to work together to resolve their matters. The (Landlord and Tenant Board) also offers opportunity for early resolution in the form of case management hearings for tenant and certain landlord application types,” responded Tribunals Ontario spokesperson Janet Deline in an email when asked about the length of the delay to get cases before the board.
Salvatore, meanwhile, still has no date for a hearing before the tribunal.
“What she’s gone through is appalling,” said Stewart, a general civil litigator based in Collingwood.
He maintains Salvatore and her family were illegally evicted.
Part of the problem as he sees it is that short-term rentals fall into a trough between residential tenancies law and hotel/innkeeper law.
“They don’t comply with the requirements of maintaining a hotel, but they also purport not to comply with requirements of the Residential Tenancies Act. They sort of float down the middle in a grey area,” he said.
The difference here is that the landlord went into a private arrangement with Salvatore, changing her status from that of a guest into that of a tenant that Stewart says falls under the Residential Tenancies Act. He also argues that the Innkeepers Act contains no authority for eviction.
The Landlord Tenant Board can address the issue, he said, but with the backlog there’s no option but to wait for a hearing date while Salvatore and her family continue to live in a hotel.
