Landlords in Toronto will have to pay a fee to the city if they fail to provide for tenants if the buildings they live in are evacuated due to fire, flood or other service disruptions — part of a suite of changes adopted by city council on Wednesday strengthening tenant rights.
Landlords will also have to post a colour-coded sign in a prominent location, displaying a rating from the city, similar to what restaurants currently have to do under DineSafe.
The move comes even as the city continues to pay for housing and social services for tenants of 650 Parliament St., 1,000 of whom were left homeless after a fire in the building in August, 2018. The cost to the city for that relocation has mounted into the millions of dollars, according to city staff.
“We want a tool to step in when the landlord hasn’t taken the necessary steps to house their tenants,” Carleton Grant, the city’s executive director of municipal licensing and standards, told councillors during the meeting.
Kemba Robinson, a spokesperson for the anti-poverty group ACORN, said the organization is satisfied with the outcome.
“We at ACORN have been fighting for over 10 years to get these rules implemented and we’re extremely happy with the vote that has been passed today,” she said.
“We believe that the landlord should be responsible for rehousing (tenants) until the place they’re living in has been fixed.”
In addition to the fees and publicly posting ratings, the new RentSafe measures include new standard timelines for fixing specific property standards violations and limits to time extensions for landlords to complete necessary repairs.
Culled from thestar
