FROM APRIL/MAY 2023 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

In 2018, 476,966 Toronto house-holds were renters, making up 46 per cent of the city’s population. It’s a staggering number of people – almost half the city – for whom the matter of finding and keeping a decent rental has become nearly impossible. And as housing prices skyrocket, their ranks can only grow.

Toronto is now the second-most expensive rental market in Canada, behind Vancouver. In February 2023, the average rent for a one-bedroom in the city was $2,471. But rental rates are only the first hurdle to clear. From unregulated rent increases to tenant exploitation, tenants in Toronto have been pushed to the brink.

Those who are struggling to stay afloat often call the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations (FMTA) Tenant Hotline. Rees Nam, FMTA director of communications, says they have been fielding an increase in calls for the past few years. The hotline regularly hears from renters dealing with own-use evictions (N12s), renovictions (N13s) and rent control violations.

Besides traditional evictions, tenants also find themselves priced out. In Ontario, rent can only be increased based on a yearly guideline set by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. This year, that guideline increase is 2.5 per cent. If a unit wasn’t residentially occupied prior to Nov. 15, 2018, however, it isn’t subject to the rent guidelines at all – meaning the rent can be increased by any percentage at the landlord’s discretion.

Nam says that many recent callers live in new buildings and their unit’s immunity to rent control guidelines often comes as a complete surprise. For tenants who haven’t experienced unregulated rent increases, the prospect of eye-watering hikes constantly looms on the horizon. Pre-November-2018 rentals are increasingly the exceptions, outnumbered by ever-increasing towers of newly built rentals exempt from guidelines.

According to Ryan Hardy, a lawyer at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO), the rent control issue is one of the group’s priorities. “We should close the recently created 2018 loophole, which means that new builds after Nov. 15, 2018 aren’t subject to even the limited rent control rules that we have.”

The term “loophole” is actually a misnomer, Hardy explains. “It’s not some sort of accidental thing that somebody discovered, or a back door in the law or something like that. It was designed to be that way. And that’s a clear choice made by the government.”

The longer the exemption exists, the greater the number of Toronto apartments that will proliferate exempt from legislated rent guidelines, which is a big concern for advocacy groups like ACTO.

In Toronto’s pressurized market, someone who manages, against all odds, to secure an affordable rental may find themselves clinging to it for dear life. They might be forced to weather unsafe living conditions, privacy violations, and the spectre of rent hikes, both legal and illegal. West End Phoenix spoke to four tenants living in these grey areas – all of them facing free fall from the precipice of Toronto’s housing crisis.

Illegal rent increases

With few options in sight, tenants are learning how easily their legal rights can be violated.

When Tracy (not her real name) was forced to move out of her apartment in 2021, it didn’t immediately feel like a disaster. Even though the landlord had abruptly sold the unit that Tracy and her roommate shared, she had a plan.

In 2021, COVID had a cooling effect on the housing market, and rental prices had decreased. “It was pretty straightforward, and not as stressful as it used to be,” says Tracy, a 26-year-old remote worker who has rented since she was a student in 2015. It felt like a welcome reprieve from her fraught prior experiences in the Toronto market.

Tracy used a real estate agent to aid her search for a new apartment. “I wanted something not too busy, not too crowded,” she says. She had a downtown area in mind, and her real estate agent made her aware of which apartments were subject to rent increase guidelines – effectively rent controlled. Soon, Tracy signed an $1,800-a-month lease on a one-bedroom apartment in a breezy Harbourfront neighbourhood.

“This fit everything, in a sense. It was under rent control and was still new enough that it wasn’t an older condo,” she recounts. Everything was falling into place. And for a year, things stayed that way. Tracy enjoyed her time in the apartment and the security that the rent guidelines offered. After the first year, the rent went up as per the guidelines, to $1,821.

Then, in June 2022, the other shoe dropped: “The landlord’s agent called me and said they would like to increase the rent to $2,200.” Tracy was familiar with the guidelines and knew this rate was well above the legal limit. But even if she wanted to challenge the illegal increase at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB), she was in a bind. “He explicitly told me that my landlord could say he wanted to move in, and I’d have to move out.”

Tracy realized she was in a “lose-lose situation.”

“I knew I could fight it,” she says. “Regardless, if they say they want to move in, I’m going to have to move out. And $2,200 is still lower than market prices for a one-bedroom apartment in my area right now.”

Tracy’s options looked bleak. If she challenged the illegal increase at the LTB and won, she knew the relationship with the landlord would sour, rendering living conditions uncomfortable. But if she moved out, where would she go? By now, lockdown-era prices were a distant memory; the Toronto rental market had once again reached a boiling point.

“A lot of my friends rent, and so many times they start searching and have to pause their search because things are so expensive, or they apply constantly to places and keep getting rejected,” Tracy says. Some of her friends have had to put as much as six months’ rent down in advance. “Landlords,” she says, “have the upper hand. I had to accept it. You can’t say no because you need a place. It’s illegal, and you know that. You’re very well aware that it’s illegal. However, you say no, and then you’re left with nothing.”

Tracy opted to negotiate with the landlord, eventually settling on a monthly payment of $2,050 – still illegal, but manageable for her current situation. But she has no guarantee that it will stay that way. “I know that unfortunately, I’m at the landlord’s grace.”

Judgment and scrutiny

When 21-year-old undergraduate student Neel Desai managed to secure a rental within his budget, it became clear that feeling “othered” posed another sort of challenge.

Since April 2022, Desai has shared a one-bedroom unit in a small condo building in Yorkville with his partner. They pay just under $2,000 a month.

They found the unit after a lengthy search, and the price point initially seemed too good to be true. But when the couple visited the listing, they found that the rate was low due to the lack of sunlight in the suite. Despite the shortcoming, they decided to sign a lease right away.

At first, they thought the location might be temporary. But it soon became clear that finding another unit that worked with their budget meant inevitable sacrifices. “After looking at the prices, we were like, ‘No, let’s just stay here. This is something that we’re very fortunate to have.’”

Yet their inexpensive apartment comes with baggage. “We look like outsiders,” says Desai, who is from Scarborough. “Me and my partner are both South Asian, and a lot of times we get this side eye, kind of like ‘What are you doing here?’ looks from a lot of the wealthy white folks [who] occupy the Yorkville area. It created a little bit of anxiety in the sense that we’re occupying a space we’re not really familiar with.”

After growing up in a highly racialized part of the city, Desai has now felt for the first time the anxiety that accompanies suspicious, judgmental stares. As they lugged their “little granny laundry cart” full of No Frills groceries up the stairs, the couple often felt the prickle of eyes on them.

Many students in Toronto face similar scrutiny when trying to find rental accommodations. Some of Desai’s friends have been asked to pay larger and larger deposits, and are barred from renting on a month-to-month basis.

“It encompasses and, in a way, reveals the POC student living situation when you’re a person who’s been living in the suburbs and now moving into downtown Toronto,” says Desai. Thinking about their future makes him a little anxious, because it’s difficult to predict what rental prices will look like. “If the trends continue and the prices of rentals keep increasing, then that makes it very challenging for us to even make an informed decision to move out.”

Inhospitable living conditions

The moment an affordable listing hits the market, it’s immediately snapped up. Ammar (not his real name) is one of many who put up with untenable living spaces due to the lack of options.

In his mid-twenties, Ammar has been renting in south Etobicoke since early this year. He describes the process of finding accommodations in Toronto as “extremely difficult.”

“It looks like going on Facebook Marketplace, asking friends if they know anyone and then obviously, you have to show that you can meet the requirements. Every time I found a place I liked, it would be gone within maybe a day or two,” he says. “It’s very hard to secure a spot, especially in Toronto, or anywhere near a subway or a GO station.”

Ammar was looking for a room in a shared unit; prices in south Etobicoke ranged from $900 to $1,600 for a single room. When he eventually found a spot he could afford, it was just that – a spot. While rent is extremely cheap at $300 a month, Ammar rents a den in an apartment with three other people, all strangers. He has specific hours in which he is promised privacy, from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. The rest of the day, people can pass through his room as they please.

“They come and go every day,” he says. Their landlord also doesn’t communicate much with the tenants. They’ve found themselves surprised by the arrival of construction crews doing unexpected renovations. Once, people arrived to see the apartment because the landlord was thinking about putting it up for sale.

The lack of privacy has been nerve-wracking, particularly in the winter months when he couldn’t spend time outside. These days, he often finds himself heading back to his parents’ house to spend as much time away as possible.

“Honestly, I’m still pretty lucky to find rent that’s extremely cheap,” he says. But in exchange for that, he lives in what he describes as “a shoebox in the sky.”

Despite the sub-optimal accommodations, Ammar says he’s still concerned about the potential for rent increases. “I would not be surprised at all if it goes up,” he says. “I’m sure it’ll go up at some point like all the other rentals, but hopefully I can get out of here before that.”

Mistreatment from management

With so few options on the market, tenants who do find a unit are often forced to weather irresponsible management or active aggression.

Nafeesa Alibhai is a 23-year-old graduate student living in the Annex in a three-bedroom apartment they share with two roommates. Their building is one of the older properties in the neighbourhood. Over the past few years, similar apartment buildings down the street have been demolished and redeveloped as condos or higher-end apartments.

They have lived in their unit since August 2021, splitting the $2,350 rent between their roommates. Like many tenants, securing an apartment they could afford was only half the battle. With loose window frames, old electrical panels and black mould coating bathroom surfaces, Alibhai and their roommates have struggled to assert their rights with an uncooperative landlord and property management company.

“I’m also a biology student, so I know the effects that mould could have on people,” they say. “It can cause hallucinations, it can mess with your mental health, it can cause respiratory problems, it can cause fatigue.”

They called 311, and tried to report the situation as a health and safety concern. But the response, Alibhai says, was frustrating. “They were like, well, it’s not big enough for us to deal with.” With black mould seeping across the walls of a bathroom with poor ventilation, it felt suffocating. After numerous maintenance requests, the superintendent finally had the vents cleaned. The mould remains in the apartment, as does the bubbling paint on the walls.

Their superintendent has been habitually uncooperative with requests for repairs or reports of problems. Once, the superintendent yelled at Alibhai in public. As a visibly queer South Asian person, Alibhai could see the difference in the superintendent’s treatment of white tenants.

Although the building’s age means the rent can only increase according to legal limits, Alibhai is well aware that their situation could change. The steady demolition and turnover of buildings around them serves as a constant reminder: “I definitely am concerned that that’s going to happen to our building.”

They recently attended a consultation held regarding a local church set to be demolished and replaced with a condo. “They were talking about it like, ‘We’re bringing housing, it’s so good, we’re being so benevolent,’” Alibhai says. “But they’re actually pricing a lot of people out.”

Searching for solutions

Someone who doesn’t rent might be unaware of the obstacles renters face. But for almost half the city, the pain is real. Simply finding a place to live is like running a gauntlet of hardship, from exploitation to harassment and back.

When faced with challenges like ever-increasing, unregulated rent hikes, tenants have little recourse. Hardy says if left unchecked, the problem will worsen. “Every year you’re looking over your shoulder to see how bad the increase is going to be, with no predictability.”

ACTO has its eye on several priorities to address some of the key issues faced by tenants. “We’re always monitoring what’s going on in the courts,” says Hardy. The organization often acts as an intervenor in key cases related to tenant rights. “Basically, we kind of stand up and assert the power of the Landlord and Tenant Board and the courts to restore tenants into possession after any illegal eviction.”

Beyond the court cases, ACTO is pushing for legislative change to end the 2018 rent control rule and eliminate vacancy decontrol, which allows landlords to change the rent on vacant units without regulation. “The simplest way is to have the rent tied to the unit, rather than the tenancy,” says Hardy.

Bahar Shadpour, the director of policy and communications at the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR), highlights the need for intergovernmental solutions. At a provincial level, CCHR advocates for the Residential Tenancies Act to be strengthened, offering better protection to renters from eviction, unregulated rent increases and unsafe property standards. Municipally, CCHR advocates for program changes, including for the city’s Rent Bank to shift from loans to grants and a strengthening of the RentSafeTO audit of rental properties.

“We want to depoliticize the housing issue so that we can find solutions that are long-lasting and collaboratively created...that go beyond that four-year election cycle,” says Shadpour.

In the absence of legal options, some tenants are finding ways to protect their rights as a collective.

Back in Alibhai’s condo, the aggression from management has encouraged tenants to communicate. “I just started going door to door, knocking and introducing myself,” says Alibhai.

At first, it was just to create a group chat among residents. But when they learned that others in the building were paying significantly lower rents for similar units, it helped them negotiate lower rates with the landlord.

Eventually, Alibhai created a spreadsheet that serves as a rent registry: 35 out of the building’s 84 units are participating so far. The group has also coordinated to exchange tools, pass on extra groceries, and press the landlord to deal with issues like uninsulated windows. If the tenants one day face renovictions or rent increases, Alibhai says organizing is a real prospect. “One of the reasons that we have the group chat, I think, is because it’ll help us come together and fight that collectively if we need to. We have this community within our building. I’m almost committed to staying here and fighting this one out, because we all need housing.”

This story is part of a year-long multimedia partnership with Maytree, an organization devoted to finding systemic solutions to poverty through a human rights-based approach. WEP is grateful to Maytree for its financial support. All stories, video series and artwork created through the partnership are being independently produced by West End Phoenix.