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At least until a vaccine or treatment is found, which experts believe could take a year or more, Danison expects landlords to begin promoting measures they’re taking to stop the spread of the virus, including whether they’ve installed hand-sanitizing stations and how often they clean common areas in their buildings.

“I think landlords will start advertising that in a way we haven’t seen before,” he said. “It will be higher up in their description.”

Cleaning and sanitizing protocols likely will be top of mind for apartment hunters in the months ahead, the head of a landlord umbrella group agrees.

“I think it’s a valid question and residents or potential tenants of rental apartments, I’m sure they’ll be thinking about those things, and wondering what protocols are in place,” said Tony Irwin, president of the 220,000-member Federation of Rental-Housing Providers of Ontario (FRPO).

He said even before the pandemic was declared last month, many landlords had begun talking about new protocols to help contain COVID-19’s spread and reassure tenants, including hiring new cleaners and cleaning common areas more often.

But some measures have boosted buildings’ operating costs and may be unsustainable in the long term, Irwin said. If they became permanent, they might have an impact on rents.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen after and how we sort of go forward,” Irwin said, adding, “I think we recognize that, probably, there will be some procedures and some protocols that, probably, will be long-lasting, even after the pandemic has passed.”

jjuha@postmedia.com

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