Toronto tenants are at increasing risk of losing their rental housing through no fault of their own, pushed out by landlords seeking to renovate or reclaim properties, and the province must take action to stop it.

That is among the core findings of a new report from the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario and produced using data collected through interactions between lawyers and clients at Toronto locations of the Landlord and Tenant Board.

The report titled “We Can’t Wait: Preserving Our Affordable Rental Housing in Ontario” was released on Friday, on National Housing Day.

Among its findings, the report cites:

An 84 per cent increase in Toronto-based N12 applications seeking an eviction for landlord’s personal use — 595 up from 323; and a 294 per cent increase in N13 applications, which seeks evictions for renovations — 71 up from 18.

While the volume of L1 applications in Toronto for not paying rent fluctuated, a dramatic spike was not recorded over the entire reporting period. For most cases less than $3,000 was owed or about 2 months and nine days worth of average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto.

Landlords had some form of representation at almost 80 per cent of hearings across Ontario while less than 3 per cent of tenants had representation.

Toronto landlords and tenants could expect to wait on average 39 days in the north part of the city and 80 days in south for a hearing after an application was filed.

“We have heard nothing from the province about what they are doing for affordable housing and what they are doing to protect low-income tenants,” said Kenn Hale, ACTO’s legal director, speaking with the Star.

While the province has announced a housing plan, he noted, and there is a national strategy, neither come close meeting the amount of affordable housing stock that needs to be planned and then built. And income inequality between homeowners and renters, as the report shows, continues to rise at an alarming rate.

Lawyers employed through ACTO’s duty counsel program served close to 42,400 clients between 2015 and 2019 and what they found was broken out and reported over each fiscal year, the start of April to the end of March. The number of lawyers fluctuated between nine and 12 over the research period, ACTO told the Star.

Among the key findings was the number of no-fault eviction applications, where the tenant has done nothing to put their housing at risk such as failing to pay rent, has risen about 50 per cent in Toronto over the past four years, at 2,084 up from 1,387.

Examples of no-fault eviction applications are reclaiming the property for personal use, or removing tenants during renovations — a process that can lead to a “renoviction,” a term used by housing advocates to describe when landlords abuse the law with the intent of replacing those tenants with higher-paying ones.

The volume of eviction notices has quadrupled, the authors reported, although because actual evictions are not tracked and cannot be compared to application data there is no way to determine if each notice ended with somebody forced out onto the street.

According to the report, ACTO lawyers reported that clients had been issued 528 eviction orders, formal notices through the sheriff’s office, over the past fiscal year, compared to 135 during the first year of data collection.

ACTO wants new provincial rules placing rent controls on empty units, limiting the incentives for landlords to evict; limits on demolitions and conversions; and also a commitment to provide more funding for social housing, the creation of a central data system and a provincial eviction prevention program.

In a written response to a summary of ACTO’s recommendations, Dakota Brasier, a spokesperson from the office of Housing Minister Steve Clark, said their government was elected on a “promise to increase housing supply” and is committed to making sure both landlords and tenants are treated fairly.

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Brasier said since the decision making new units exempt from rent controls was announced last November the ministry has “seen promising signs of increased development” and between January and October has hired 12 new full-time LTB board adjudicators and is recruiting more.

Fighting back against potential abuses of provincial housing law is the focus of the city’s new protection of affordable rental housing subcommittee, which oversaw a three-hour meeting packed with emotional deputations inside a standing room-only committee room at city hall on Wednesday night.

“We see that affordable rental units are being lost every day because these current policies allow the displacement of tenants,” said Magda Barrera, a housing and economics policy analyst with ACTO speaking to the subcommittee.

Barrera said a lack of data on eviction outcomes means there is no way to know the scope of the problem. “We simply do not know what happens to tenants after their hearing.”

The board tracks case types, why a landlord applies, and if applications are withdrawn, a hearing takes place or if a matter is settled, but not what happens after an eviction is ordered.

Research that reveals cracks in rental housing policy is a core function of ACTO and that work has been put at risk through a provincial decision to slash 30 per cent of the budget for Legal Aid Ontario and which resulted in cuts to ACTO’s budget as well as the Income Security Advocacy Centre and the Canadian Environmental Law Association.