Investigating a rise in ‘own-use’ evictions

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Small landlords are just as greedy as big ones, the only difference is they are genuinely dumb enough to think that interest was going to stay near-zero forever.

Watching landlords cry about mortgages being too high in this historically low rate environment while treating tenants like this make me sick.

Seeing Kostos’ unit is so sad.

As a Swede, the way things work here in Canada sometimes baffles me. So many private landlords. Most rental units in Sweden would be owned by large housing corporations. So staying in an apartment for decades is easy. Just pay your rent, which increases by a certain amount. Corporations don't care as long as it is occupied and rent paid. Sure there are people "subletting" or renting out condos they own etc. But it seems to be a much higher prevalence here. But a lot could have changed in Sweden too. But definitely not the crisis like over here. Now people can be working and normal and end up homeless. Used to be drug addicts and alcoholics etc that really screwed up to end up on the streets. Who can afford $1700-2,000 for a small apartment these days. That is example of unit cost of a town 1 1/2 hours from Toronto. Everything is turning into this 3rd world, feudal like land.

This is all downstream of a chronic lack of purpose-built rentals. Think about it this way, if a unit has been built specifically to house a renter, there is no claim for "personal use" in the form of an N12. It used to be profitable in the 1970s to make rental apartments, but then there was some tax changes that made it far too expensive to operate rentals, so builders got out of the business of rentals, and instead sold condos. At the same time, the government had a public finance crisis in the 80s and 90s, and they quickly exited the housing business themselves, and downloaded a bunch of responsibility to the lower levels of government, which offloaded it to the private market. This basically killed public housing and co-ops. This was all supercharged by having strict lending regulation which required that 60-70% of condos had to be pre-sold in order to begin construction, and when a home won't be ready for anywhere between 3-7 years, guess who is buying? What option was left? Mom and pop condo investors. A bunch of Boomers and Gen Xers who we're all hyped up by reading Rich dad poor dad, which made real estate their path to riches (plus a fair share of foreign / illegal money) is driver for our housing supply for the last 30+ years. We've effectively made it illegal or prohibitively expensive to build anything else. We don't have a robust government program to build out supply, and allocate it in a responsible manner like Singapore, nor do we the incentives and structures in place for strong co-op housing like Germany or Sweden, and we don't even have the free wheeling boom and bust over building that makes rents cheaper in Texas / Atlanta. We have the worst of all worlds where housing is expensive, in low supply, difficult to build, and a financialized asset. We simultaneously have too much and not enough government where they are extracting taxes from building and heaping on regulation to make it difficult to build, while not ensuring there is adequate housing that is affordable for regular people, and are in fact rewarded when housing goes up in price by their boomer constituents.

Ontario Landlords could not even raise rents in 2021, only 1.2% in 2022, 2.5% in 2023. Meanwhile in that same timeframe, mortgage rates have tripled, Municipal taxes up substantially, food up 35%, inflation up substantially, but landlords only get a total of 3.7% in past 3 years. That's just not reasonable or sustainable.

You can pick and choose our comments?

The bottom line? Greed.

Toronto has been doing this for 25 years getting rid of low renters . Bolton Brampton and Orangeville new distanation was but now rent is crazy everywhere. Criminal

If the gentleman in that rent control apartments has been living there for 20 years, then it is an absolute disgrace that it’s in the condition that it is in. And that is because of the tenant. The filth and dirt laying around there is absolutely disgraceful and no wonder the landlords want to get them out.

I could have sworn that owners own use does not apply to buildings with more that 4 apartments..

I'm sure the bank made sure that the owners were capable of paying increased interest from the unusually low rates that we've just been through.

"An understanding this is not going to be your forever home" Is this woman missing something? She goes from saying how people with investment properties can't afford to pay the mortgages - to then saying that the renter's need to realize that this isnt really their home. If the people who can afford to own a rental property have to downsize - how do you expect the renters to do that? Owning a home is beyond reach for most young Canadians. Does she think that we never deserve to have a forever home?

Ontario is cooked

Oh Canada, what have you become? Where finding a job has become a career, and a place to lay your head in peace is called the grave. Oh Canada...

Purpose built rental buildings is the way to go. These small landlords are too predatory becauese they have no funds

Government: there's a housing shortage and people are becoming homeless but lets bring in 1.3 million people anyways 🤨

Why can't ontario be more like edmonton alberta. 1 week notes and your kicked out of the house.

My friend had together out because his son was in need of a place so my friend had to leave and other friend same thing this rule is a landlords loop hole that must not exist it's a criminal law.