Toronto tenants facing “illegitimate evictions” must be better protected by city officials who should use any local rules available to halt or block policies that put renters at risk.

That is the mandate given to Toronto’s new protection of affordable rental housing subcommittee tasked with finding ways for the city to assist renters when a landlord is suspected of abusing the provincial housing law.

“What they don’t tell you about fighting an eviction is that it takes over your life,” tenant Devon McKenzie told the standing room only meeting at City Hall on Wednesday night.

McKenzie’s landlord has been trying to evict her using an N12 notice, a part of the law that allows a landlord to take over a property for personal use. In her case the landlord owns just a 1 per cent stake in the house, which he was sold in midsummer. He then moved to use the law to evict seven tenants from two units.

Fighting the eviction has resulted in multiple hearings, constant stress and has effectively put life on hold, McKenzie said, adding there must be better safeguards to prevent abuse and stronger penalties for those who break those laws.

“These landlords simply see those numbers and the potential to make those numbers bigger not the people behind them,” she said.

Committee members Paula Fletcher, Brad Bradford and Gord Perks, will include the deputations of more than 40 people when they report back to the planning and housing committee.

In a report presented to the subcommittee, Sean Gadon, the interim executive director of the city’s Housing Secretariat, and Mary-Anne Bedard, general manager of shelter, support and housing administration, recommended that planning and housing call on city departments to team up and use every tool available to fight “illegitimate evictions,” track those abuses and support tenants. That should include a working group to manage that process, they wrote.

Ontario landlords and tenants must follow something called the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA). Any disputes are handled by adjudicators of the provincially funded Landlord and Tenant Board.

So landlords and tenants from metropolitan Toronto to Dryden, the 2016 census recorded populations of 5.9 million and 5,590 respectively, are bound by the same rules.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government is reviewing the RTA and potential legislative changes could take place in winter 2020, the Star was recently told.

The city is also seeking to crack down on something advocates call “renovictions” or the abuse of rental housing law that allows landlords to force tenants out while renovations are done. It starts with a form called an N13.

The subcommittee has identified the potential abuse of the N12 and N13 process as topics of particular importance.

Ontario housing rules limit how much landlords can raise the rent in occupied units but there is no limit to what a landlord can charge for an empty unit, one incentive to remove long-term renters. Landlords can give tenants an N13 notice to renovate. Under the law, the landlord has to provide three months of rent, or somewhere else to live.

If the rules are followed, tenants can move back in on completion and expect to pay roughly the same rent. However, there is a loophole in the law and if a landlord can find new renters and move them in, the law also protects those new tenants from being forced out.

Benjamin Pullia is one of a group of tenants who live at 394 Dovercourt Rd. who are locked in a two-year battle with the owner of the building — AIPL Canada Holdings Inc. — over whether or not they must leave their long-term rental units while repairs are done.

“Most renters are renting because they don’t have the money for a down payment or a mortgage,” Pullia told the subcommittee. Current housing law, he said, “creates second class citizens.”

AIPL had tried unsuccessfully to force the tenants out to replace knob and tube wiring. That type of work doesn’t require a building permit but the law, a board adjudicator noted, does.

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In a decision released June 10, board member Ibi Olabode wrote that if the “legislature intended that a landlord be able to terminate a tenancy and evict” without that building permit the law would have been crafted differently.

Less than two months later, the tenants of 394 Dovercourt received N13s for wiring and fire separation — the fire separation work requires a permit — with a hearing scheduled for Feb. 15, leaving Pullia and fellow tenants with the threat of eviction looming over their heads.

“I am not here to tell you that I simply want to enjoy affordable rent,” said Pullia. “I am here to tell you that I want to enjoy my life in the place that I live.”