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A policy options forum on
rent regulation, tenant protection and related issues was
held on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2003. This event was sponsored
by the Centre for Urban and Community Studies at the University
of Toronto and the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario.
Julia McNally, Kenn Hale and David Hulchanski are among
the policy experts who presented an overview of the issues
and potential solutions.
The recently elected
Liberal government in Ontario has promised to repeal the
Tenant Protection Act and introduce a new system of rent
regulation within one year. This policy options forum was
designed to provide an opportunity to discuss the key issues
and options for revised rent regulation and tenant protection
legislation. The opening presentations were broadcast live
over the internet and have been archived and made available
on this website for viewing, using the services of the
Knowledge
Media Design Institute of the
University of Toronto.
1. Documents from
the Forum
Rent Regulation and Tenant
Protection: Issue and Options
David Hulchanski, Professor and
Director, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University
of Toronto
click
here for PDF of Part I
click
here for PDF of Part II
click
here for PDF of Part III
click
here for PDF of Part IV and V
Residential Landlord
& Tenant Relations:
Restoring the Balance
Kenn Hale, South Etobicoke Community
Legal Services, and Mary Todorow & Julia McNally, Advocacy
Centre for Tenants
click
here for PDF
Statement of Principles:
New Landlord/Tenant and Rent Control Legislation
Legal Clinics’ Housing
Issues Committee, Advocacy Centre For Tenants Ontario, June
2003
click
here for PDF
The LCHIC and the ACTO
proposals for change regarding residential landlords and
tenants, compared to the Ontario Liberal Party's housing
policy proposals
Prepared by the Advocacy Centre
for Tenants Ontario (ACTO), Fall 2003
click
here for PDF
Recommendations for
an Improved Process for Provincial Appointments to Adjudicative
Tribunals
Government Adjudicative Appointments
Group, Ontario Community Legal Clinics, April 2003
click
here for PDF
Improving Social Housing
Regulations: A List of Recommendations
Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario,
submitted to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing,
March 2003
click
here for PDF
Re-constructing the
Work of the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal: First Steps
to a Fairer Process
Katherine Laird, Legal Director,
Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario
click
here for PDF
"Decisions Adverse
to a Household": Protecting social housing tenants
under the Social Housing Reform Act and the Tenant Protection
Act: Revocation of RGI assistance and Subsequent Evictions
for Arrears of Rent
Toby Young, Advocacy Centre for
Tenants Ontario, and Bruce Best, Clinic Resource Office,
Legal Aid Ontario
click
here for PDF
Rental Housing in Ontario:
Quick Facts
The Advocacy Centre for Tenants
Ontario, November 2003
click
here for PDF
Income and Wealth of
Owners and Renters in Ontario, 1984 and 1999
Urban Centre Fact Sheet, 2001
This fact sheet supplements CUCS
Research Bulletin #2, A Tale of Two Canadas: Homeowners
Getting Richer, Renters Getting Poorer, Income and Wealth
Trends, 1984 and 1999, August 2001.
click
here for PDF of the Ontario Fact
Sheet
click
here for Research Bulletin #2,
A Tale of Two Canada
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2. Election Promises,
Ontario Liberal Party, 2003
Minister of Municipal
Affairs speech to landlord association, Dec. 2003
click
here for PDF
Ontario Liberal Platform
on Communities, Affordable Housing and Rent Control
click
here for PDF
Backgrounder to the
Liberal Party
Strong Communities Plan
(further details on election
promises relating to
housing and related issues), 2003
click
here for PDF
Ontario Liberals will
restore real rent controls
September 30, 2003, Ontario Liberal
Party press release
“Ontario Liberals will restore
real rent controls and provide a variety of measures to
protect tenants. The Liberal plan is clear. We will bring
in real rent control legislation within one year. We will
introduce a Rent Bank to help tenants with short-term arrears
so that they can keep their homes. We will establish …
“
click
here for PDF
Liberals unveil tenant-aid
package: Affordable housing, strong rent controls, emergency
funding outlined in policy aimed at renters
November 26, 2002, The Globe
and Mail.”
Ontario's Liberal Party is attempting
to mobilize the province's tenants in its bid to oust the
Conservative government by offering an extensive package
to protect renters and help those who have difficulty meeting
their rent. The package includes stronger rent controls,
short-term help for those who cannot meet their rent in
an emergency, construction of affordable housing and expanded
housing allowances.”
click
here for PDF
Liberals pledge 'real'
rent control – Latest plank in election platform Ontarians
to get the details today
November 25, 2002, Toronto Star
The Ontario Liberals are to release
details of their election strategy today including bringing
back rent controls. "We are talking about a return
to real rent control," a spokesperson for the Opposition
Liberals said. "We will provide real protection for
tenants and make unfair rent increases illegal."
click
here for PDF
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3. Recommendations
for Tenant Law Reform
Federation of Metro
Tenants' Associations, A full response to the issues raised
in the Residential Tenancy Reform Consultation Paper, June,
2004
As the Public Consultation period
concludes, this paper is intended to give a perspective
from the Federation of Metro Tenants Associations on the
status of rent reform in Ontario. The case for real rent
control, a new and fair law, and an overhauled Tribunal
is strong.
click
here for PDF
Federation of Metro
Tenants' Associations, Ontario's Green Paper: Rents will
Still Increase, April 2004
The discussion paper is weak
on the issue of stopping Above Guideline Increases. Tenants
in thousands of apartment buildings have experienced unfair
and unjust and compounding rent increases based on capital
expenditures or temporary jumps in utility costs (already
included in the guideline).
click
here for PDF
Renters Educating & Networking
Together (R.E.N.T.), Reform of the T.P.A., April 2004
R.E.N.T. is a proactive, non-partisan
group of volunteer citizens who seek to improve the state
of tenants within the Region of Waterloo, through education,
organization and general representation. Our primary concerns
centre around Rent Increases - and all the sections of the
TPA which refer to rents.
click
here for PDF
Future Directions on
Rent Regulation and Laws affecting Tenants by Shelter, Housing
and Support Division, City of Toronto, February 2004
This presentation to the Rooming
House Working Group reports on: the rental housing situation
in Toronto; key parts of the TPA; future directions; and
next steps.
click
here for Power Point slide show
Federation of Metro
Tenants' Associations, A New Tenant Law: Suggested Changes
to Current Tenant Law in Ontario, February 2004.
We have worked with tenants
from every part of the City of Toronto. In November, 2002,
members of the FMTA approved a 15 point resolution for change.
In November 2003, members approved a 29 point "Redprint
for Tenant Law Reform." This document builds on these
resolutions and reflects the unfairness experienced by tenants
and their hopes for change.
click
here for PDF
Federation of Metro
Tenant's Associations, Position on Tenant Law Reform, December
2003
From our experience of working with
tenants in hundreds of buildings in Toronto since the TPA
came into effect, we have seen tenants' desperate need for
change. The following reflects the ideas and aspirations
of the Toronto tenant community. The new Government has
promised a new law within one year. We promise them that
we will work constructively to achieve the best possible
legislation.
click
here for FMTA Press Release, December 2003
click
here for FMTA Redprint for Tenant Law Reform, December 2003
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4. Context: Rental
Housing Problems
State of the Crisis,
2003: Ontario Housing Policies are Dehousing Ontarians
By Michael Shapcott, Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives, Ontario Alternative Budget
Paper, March 2003
Ontario has lost 45,000 private rental
units over the past eight years. The province has also lost
23,300 affordable social housing units, along with another
59,600 affordable social housing units that should have
been built. Tenants face a growing affordability squeeze
as rents in existing units have increased significantly
since 1995 – as much as 30% or higher in some areas
– at the same time that renter household incomes have
been stagnant or declining. It wasn’t supposed to
be this way.
click
here for PDF
Affordable Housing
in Canada:
In Search of a New Paradigm
Toronto Dominion Bank, TD Economics,
Special Report, 2003
Housing is a necessity of life. Yet,
after ten years of economic expansion, one in five households
in Canada is still unable to afford acceptable shelter –
a strikingly high number, especially in view of the country’s
ranking well atop the United Nations human-development survey.
What’s more, the lack of affordable housing is a problem
confronting communities right across the nation –
from large urban centres to smaller, less-populated areas.
As such, it is steadily gaining recognition as one of Canada’s
most pressing public-policy issues.
click
here for PDF
Housing Policy for Tomorrow's
Cities
J. David Hulchanski, Canadian
Policy Research Networks, Research Report, December 2002
Canada’s housing system is
“dehousing” Canadians. Reversing that situation
must be part of any national strategy to enhance the quality
of life and competitiveness of Canada’s cities. Housing
Policy for Tomorrow’s Cities investigates the federal
responsibility for access to affordable housing in the country’s
major urban centres. “Canada’s housing system
is discriminatory. Public policy relies on, and reinforces
a market mechanism which works for owners but not for renters,”
says Hulchanski. “The result is that certain households
are increasingly excluded from access to housing.”
Public regulation, mortgage insurance and tax breaks have
created a sustainable home ownership sector. Not so for
rental housing. In that sector, demand far exceeds supply,
leaving many out in the cold.
click
here for PDF
Targeting the Most
Vulnerable: A Decade of Desperation for Ontario's Welfare
Recipients
Michael Oliphant and Chris Slosser,
Daily Bread Food Bank, Ontario Alternative Budget 2003,
Technical Paper #6, May 2003
April 1, 2003 was the tenth anniversary
of the last time welfare benefits were raised in Ontario
after a 21.6% cut in 1995 (and since 1995, inflation has
increased by 15.8% in Ontario, making the real value of
that cut now over 37%). According to the Ontario Association
of Food Banks (OAFB), the impact of the cut was felt immediately:
food banks across the province saw an increase of more than
30% in the number of people accessing their services from
1995 to 1996. Current welfare rates fail to meet the cost
of both rent and food as measured by the Canada Mortgage
and Housing Corporation and by the Nutritious Food Basket
measure calculated by public health units in each community
across the province. As such, this paper proposes short-term
changes to the existing welfare system through immediate
rate increases as a means of providing needed relief to
the financial pressures that place welfare recipients in
housing insecurity and food shortages.
click
here for PDF
Profiting from a Manufactured
Housing Crisis
Michael Shapcott, Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives, Ontario Alternative Budget Paper,
June 2002
The 4.8 million women, men and children
living in rental housing in Ontario remain mired in the
province's worst housing crisis in more than a decade. But
the bad news for millions of renter households is a virtual
goldmine for investors and their financial advisors, including
a former assistant deputy provincial housing minister. The
province's over-heated rental market is showering them with
big returns even as tenants struggle to make their monthly
rent. They are buying up rental buildings with moderate
rents in Toronto, Mississauga, Burlington, St. Catharines,
Ottawa, London, Brampton, Kitchener-Waterloo and other communities,
then using weakened tenant protection laws to drive up rents
and bank the profits, a big chunk tax-free.
click
here for PDF
Homeless-Making Processes
and
Canada’s Homeless-Makers
By J.D. Hulchanski, for Toronto
Disaster Relief Committee (TDRC), March 2000
Since the 1980s a number of homeless
making processes have been set in motion. These ‘processes’
are not caused by ‘nature’ – such as an
earthquake, ice storm, or flood. They are human made processes.
People, in public and private institutions and organizations
large and small, from households to corporations and governments,
have set in motion and have left unchecked these homeless
making processes. People able to stop or redress the harm
fail to do so. Homelessness in Canada will not be eliminated
until we can specifically name the people and groups who
create, promote, refuse to redress and who benefit from
these homeless making processes. They are Canada’s
homeless makers.
click
here for PDF
Made-in-Ontario Housing
Crisis
Michael Shapcott, Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives, Ontario Alternative Budget Paper,
May 2001
According to this report, six years
of Harris government housing policy, including massive social
housing cuts and growing handouts to private developers,
has been a dismal failure. All ten of Ontario's rental markets
saw a drop in rental vacancy rates, a sure sign of a province-wide
housing crisis. Not surprisingly, all ten markets also saw
rental rates increase, often at double the rate of inflation.
The three worst rental markets in Canada are in Ontario:
Ottawa, Toronto and Kitchener.
click
here for PDF
The Grapes of Rent:
A History of Renting
in a Country of Owners
Donald A. Krueckeberg, Housing
Policy Debate, 10(1), 1999
In addition to neighborhood antagonism
and financing challenges, multifamily housing faces political
prejudice. Krueckeberg argues that there is a centuries'
long political bias against both renters and rental housing.
He says federal and state housing policies should seek a
balance of rental and ownership choices through incentives
that support markets in proportion to the needs and financial
capabilities of all consumers.
click
here for PDF
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5. The Human Right
to Adequate Housing
The Human Right to Housing,
1945 to 1999: Chronology of United Nations Activity
J. David Hulchanski and Scott
Leckie, February 2000
This report chronicles in outline
form a half century of UN activity on housing rights. It
provides a comprehensive overview of how, when and by what
method the United Nations has been working towards assuring
that all humanity understands, implements and enjoys all
human rights, including the fundamental right to a safe
and secure place to live with peace and dignity.
click
here for PDF
Adequate Shelter: A
Fundamental Human Right
Paul Martin, MP and Joe Fontana,
MP
The Task Force believes that those
searching for adequate, affordable housing may be better
served by giving them some form of constitutionally guaranteed
right to shelter. This would help them combat the weak or
inadequate anti-discrimination laws as well as make governments
face, and begin to resolve the desperate shortage of adequate,
affordable housing. This constitutional guarantee would
force governments to deal in a positive manner with these
problems or be subject to legal claims brought forward by
those disadvantaged by a lack of access to adequate housing.
click
here for a PDF
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