This is Toronto-St Paul's Tenant Association Network's response to the Toronto Housing Action Plan 2020-2030, which is being drafted in 2019.

Problem Statement and Core Concepts

The problems facing Toronto tenants are multifaceted and interconnected.

• Toronto is facing an unprecedented housing shortage; not enough housing is available, resulting in extremely low rental vacancy rates.
• Low vacancy rates result in enormous competition for rental housing, leading to rapidly increasing rental prices. Rents have increased on average by 10-15% per year over the past decade, far outstripping incomes and the rate of inflation.
• An extremely low vacancy rate incentivizes landlords to abuse the residential tenancy system.
• As rents for existing tenants are capped at the provincially-set guideline (at the rate of inflation), while market rents are increasing 10-15% higher every year, this incentivizes landlords to do everything possible to kick out existing rent-controlled tenured tenants and rent out units at the prevailing market rate.
• Changing the balance of market rate vs. subsidized or below-market “affordable housing” is not sufficient; more housing needs to be created overall. If insufficient market-rate housing exists, then affordable or subsidized housing will merely be a lottery for those few people who qualify; everyone else who either doesn’t qualify or doesn’t win the affordable housing lottery is forced to compete for the remaining market-rate housing, which will continue to increase rapidly while there is insufficient supply.
• Subsidized below-market affordable housing has a meaningful place for vulnerable groups in Toronto, such as people with mental health or addiction needs, families experiencing displacement, people with disabilities, and people on fixed incomes.

Proposed Solutions

We propose a broad set of solutions to address the issues identified above, centred on a few core themes: understanding the problem, evening the supply-and-demand balance, and ensuring tenants and landlords are treated fairly. If they are to be lasting, solutions must address the underlying causes of the housing crisis, not just the symptoms.

Addressing the Cause

Without addressing the underlying cause of the housing crisis, any solutions will be incomplete and risk creating new issues elsewhere. The fundamentals of Toronto’s housing crisis need to be addressed.

• Gather better data.
  • Housing data is lacking in Toronto. We do not know the full extent of the issue, including:
    • Actual vacancy rates, particularly given the high proportion of privately-owned rentals (condos, bedrooms, secondary suites)
    • Market rents
    • Rents actually paid by tenants
    • Numbers of evictions, renovictions, and evictions of tenants for “own use”
    • Demand side drivers for housing, such as extent of foreign investors or foreign money
    • The extent of money laundering in the Toronto market; estimates from Vancouver place the money laundering in the billions of dollars, potentially affecting the price of housing by over 5-10%
    • The number of vacant homes in Toronto
    • The number of homes used by part-time rental sites such as AirBNB or VRBO
• Build more housing.
  • Too little housing in Toronto is being built - the net result is a vacancy rate of <0.5%, at historic lows.
• Allow more housing to be built.
  • 85% of residential land in Toronto is currently zoned only for single-family homes (the “Yellowbelt”). Under the existing planning regime, it is impossible to build new housing on this land. This artificial constraint on building new housing prevents supply from being created to match demand; as a result, prices rise.
  • Enabling the construction of the so-called “Missing Middle” of housing in the Yellowbelt, such as duplexes, triplexes, n-plexes, townhouses, lowrise and midrise apartments, would allow for a great deal more housing to be built. Such housing would also provide a wider range of options for people, including families with children, seniors, and people with accessibility needs.
• Build subsidized housing for people with special needs; but do not use supportive housing, inclusionary zoning or subsidized housing as a reason not to allow much more housing to be built overall.
• Level the playing field for rental housing compared to other kinds of housing.
  • Equalize the tax rates paid by multi-unit rental buildings and single-unit privately-owned residential properties. Currently rental properties are taxed at 2.3x the rate of privately owned residential properties. This artificially depresses the profitability and supply of multi-unit residential housing while artificially increases the monthly cost to tenants
  • Ensure tax breaks and incentives available to other housing types are also available to rental housing. For example, most energy efficiency retrofit tax credits are only available to owners, and are inaccessible to landlords of rental housing (which increases their incentive to impose AGIs for energy retrofits)

Addressing the Symptoms

While the longer-term cause of the housing crisis is being addressed, these short-term solutions would address some of the more prominent symptoms that tenants are facing. However, these solutions cannot be undertaken without also addressing the fundamental cause of the problem.

• Clarify and tighten rules on landlords.
  • The City of Toronto Apartment Building Standards and Property Standards Bylaws should be reviewed to determine what rules should be modified to make housing more affordable.
  • Clarify rules on when AGIs can be applied, and limit the abuse of AGIs for non-essential, elective construction projects.
  • Increase penalties on landlords who violate provisions of the RTA - e.g. abuse of the Own Use provision, fraudulent claims, etc.
  • Increase and enforce penalties for landlords who violate RentSafe TO guidelines:
    • Refuse to share capital plans, or providing erroneous or incomplete capital plans.
    • Bogus accounting and fraud
    • Renovictions
    • Violations of “own use” provisions
• Improve training for City staff regarding rules related to tenant housing:
  • Regulations in RentSafeTO and enforcement mechanisms
  • Bylaw enforcement office
  • Toronto 311
  • City planning
• Increase accountability on landlords
  • Prevent landlords from doing construction work without the appropriate permits
  • Fund more city bylaw inspectors
  • Increase penalties on landlords who break rules.
• Increase funding for organizations that support tenants through much-needed information, advice and legal aid, such as the Federation of Metro Tenants Associations (FMTA) and Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO).