Help alleviate the difficulties of Tenants as well as Landlords in the face of COVID-19 to Advance a Better Housing Environment in Ontario

by Harrish Thirukumaran

Since the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic officially begun on March 11, 2020 as announced by the World Health Organization globally including in the Province of Ontario, there have been a number of temporary changes to housing and the legal system around it within the province that can be found on the Government of Ontario website. To start, on March 19, 2020, the Ontario Superior Court issued an Order suspending the eviction of residents from their homes until the end of the calendar month in which the Ontario State of Emergency is terminated.

Accordingly, the Landlord and Tenant Board (the “LTB”) in Ontario had announced a suspension of eviction orders and all hearings related to eviction applications unless the matter relates to an urgent issue such as an illegal act or a serious impairment of safety. The LTB subsequently suspended all in-person hearings until further notice due to COVID-19. Regardless of the Eviction Moratorium, landlords were still able to serve eviction notices for non-payment of rent and subsequently file an eviction application if the tenant did not remedy an issue. This issue could relate to a behaviour by a tenant, which is called a tenant’s remedy. On March 20, 2020, the LTB established a new process for Request for Urgent Hearings (RUH) for landlords with an urgent eviction request.

From the LTB website, on August 1, 2020, the LTB will:

Begin to issue eviction orders that are pending;

Start to issue consent eviction orders which are based on landlord and tenants settling their dispute through an agreement;

Start to schedule hearings for non-urgent evictions; and

Conduct non-urgent eviction hearings starting in mid-August and into the fall.

During this time, the moratorium that the Province instituted on evictions has been lifted as the province gradually reopens and has discontinued the RUH. It is now in the process of addressing a backlog of thousands of eviction cases that have been piling up during the pandemic-induced moratorium. This includes the more than six-thousand eviction applications that landlords sent out. Delays in the LTB have even been apparent prior to the stoppage of hearings in Spring 2020, which warranted an investigation by the Ontario Ombudsman.

One example of a case affected by the COVID-19 related-issues in the LTB is a report by BlogTO about a Toronto landlord that has been frustrated by their tenant who they claim owes over $55,000 in unpaid rent from a Bridle Path property for over several months since February 2020. They have been in a legal battle over it based on the tenants’ claim of outstanding repairs and COVID-19, which will be decided before the LTB. From the perspective of a tenant, Global News reported about Annex residents in Toronto and their landlord. They both said they were financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but their landlord would not provide any temporary rent relief when they asked for it. These tenants have been served with two eviction letters as they are referred to the LTB.

Tenant groups including the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario have devoted their efforts towards extending a ban like the moratorium back in March on evictions. The government’s response to this case backlog at the LTB and other housing issues due to COVID-19 has been Bill 184, Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act, 2020, as a way to make it easier to resolve landlord-tenant disputes as well as strengthen tenant protections. However, it has been criticized by both landlords and tenants, with the former saying it does not go far enough as it disproportionately favours tenants over landlords with a proposed fee structure for unlawful evictions that she says would require landlords to give compensation to tenants. For the latter, they say it speeds up the eviction process with landlords bypassing the LTB to offer repayment plans to their tenants.

Although the stories and struggles of tenants have been wells documented during this time, landlords have also struggled with the current state of housing in Ontario. Due to the housing crunch in the last few years, home ownership has increased among the Tamil community and broader South Asian communities like the Monsoon Journal readers in Ontario. Moreover, many members of these communities have rented out their homes to tenants do make their mortgage payments and other essential expenses, effectively making them small landlords. Non-payments of rent as well as these delays in how the LTB processes cases can be burdensome for these small landlords.

Overall, we hope that you research, raise awareness and advocate about the issues around housing in Ontario in relation to the Landlord and Tenant Board that have been occurring both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contact your local Member of Provincial Parliament to advocate about or call on them for better solutions to be made in finding a balance that satisfies both landlords and tenants in maintaining their housing. In whatever way you think you can, help alleviate the difficulties of tenants as well as landlords in the face of COVID-19 to advance a better housing environment in Ontario.