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Toronto Evictions Soar - 65,000 Eviction Apps – Feb.20.2006
By Gary Morton

 Today’s Star (article posted below) mentions soaring Toronto evictions. It doesn’t say exactly how these economic evictions occur. I know how because I did some cases at the Tribunal myself and was nearly evicted myself. 

Key problems – The minimum wage is too low and many jobs are part time. If you can barely raise the rent on your income you are out of luck when between jobs. A full Ontario Works (welfare) cheque doesn’t even pay two thirds of the average rent and there is no money for anything else.

-  The minimum wage needs to be at least 10 dollars per hour or pegged to a realistic formula of living costs.

- Welfare (OW) needs a realistic housing supplement.

- ODSP needs an increased housing supplement.

- Lastly and not mentioned by others, singles living alone and single parents need some sort of support.

- Higher EI rates are needed.

- We need some form of permanent and guaranteed housing supplement to keep people off the streets.

- A social assistance program that pays potential evictees’ rent would be an overall savings because it costs government much more when people start living on the streets.

- The Sheriff’s department should be used to block illegal evictions and not just to enforce landlord evictions.

- Stop making the names of evicted tenants available to companies and others that sell the information to landlord associations. This makes renting impossible for hundreds of thousands of people.

- Use genuine rent control and don't allow landlords to raise rents up high whenever a tenant moves out.

- Replacing the Tenant Protection Act will do little if key problems are not addressed.

   I’m willing to bet that most evictions are single women and men, especially singe moms because that’s what I saw at the Tribunal. A check would likely find that most evictees are low-income males and females living on their own or with children. They can’t pay the rent on one income or between jobs and haven’t found a partner or won’t live with one outside of marriage.

   Evictions are also too easy to get at the Tribunal. My landlord is currently harassing tenants out of their apartments with illegal 20% rent increases and phony evictions. The reason is that the city and the fire department fined him thousands of dollars for building code violations, failure to do work and so on. He wants to raise rents to pay fines and repair costs.

   Lower rents are only found in certain areas. In many neighborhoods, especially downtown, it is easy for landlords to obtain higher rents. And even the lower rents are too high for people on welfare or the minimum wage.

   The reason half of the evictees never have a hearing is that landlords use illegal tactics, break-ins and force to throw out tenants. They never get to the Tribunal.

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Eviction bids soar in Toronto

30,000 notices filed last year
Many removed without hearing

Feb. 20, 2006.
NAOMI CARNIOL

STAFF REPORTER

Toronto landlords are seeking to evict tenants at a higher rate than ever before, and last year filed nearly 30,000 applications to kick people out of their homes, a tenants' group says.

The Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations said the 29,090 eviction applications filed by landlords here last year is a 10 per cent jump over the previous year, and the highest on record since Ontario implemented the Tenant Protection Act in 1998.

Across the province, more than half the tenants "were evicted without a hearing at the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal," the association said in a statement.

No figures on actual evictions are available for Toronto.

The numbers put paid to the notion that "because vacancy rates are a little higher, things are fine for tenants," said Dan McIntyre, program co-ordinator for the federation, which yesterday released the numbers obtained from the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal.

"The figures show people are unable to cope with high rents and the eviction process is too easy so people are losing their homes," McIntyre said.

Toronto Councillor Kyle Rae, whose downtown ward houses many people living on the edge, said he wasn't surprised by the numbers or the huge jump over last year.

Provincial legislation protecting tenants has become weak and ineffective, Rae argued, and provisions allowing landlords to jack up the rent before a new tenant moves in have put affordable housing in Toronto beyond the reach of the working poor.

"The City of Toronto has been calling on the province to scrap the Tenant Protection Act," he said, adding the Liberals, in the last provincial election, "ran on a platform to dismantle it."

Rae said the act fails to protect tenants while the city is trying "to ensure people at the lowest end of the economic scale get access to affordable housing — and that's no longer maintained because the Tenant Protection Act allows landlords to increase rents once a tenant leaves the unit.

"It's time for the province to act on its promise."

Housing expert Michael Shapcott, a policy analyst at the Wellesley Central Health Corp., an organization that supports research on issues of urban health, said he's not surprised by the data.

Tenants in Toronto have experienced consistent rent increases — often at double the rate of inflation, he said, while household income has remained the same or dropped.

"When you put those two trends together, it's no surprise more and more tenants are having difficulty paying their rent," said Shapcott.

"Many tenant households are able to hang in for a while. They take money out of their food budgets ... but after a while it all catches up."

The soaring eviction applications shocked Jennifer Ramsay, the advocacy and outreach co-ordinator for the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario.

"An increase of 10.7 per cent is unprecedented in the whole time the (Ontario Rental Housing) tribunal has been operating," she said.

Housing Minister John Gerretsen could not be reached for comment, and Brad Butt, president and CEO of the landlord lobbying group, the Greater Toronto Apartment Association, was unavailable for comment.

But the act, seen by many as outmoded and ineffective, is on its way out, said Brad Duguid, Liberal MPP for Scarborough Centre and Gerretsen's parliamentary assistant.

Duguid said last week the long-awaited and much-delayed legislation to repeal the Tenant Protection Act is expected this spring.

Relief, if it comes, will be welcomed by tenants across the province. Figures released by the Metro tenants' association show Ontario's landlords filed 64,864 eviction applications in 2005, an increase of 8.7 per cent from the previous year — and the highest number since 1998.

The biggest jump in eviction applications occurred at the rental tribunal's Scarborough office, which recorded an increase of 14.1 per cent.

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