London ‘renovictions’ spiked in 2024, official figures show

Tenant “renovictions” remain a top concern for London housing advocates, an issue being underscored by a massive jump last year in the number of official local cases tracked by Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board.

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According to the latest data by the provincial agency that handles disputes between landlords and tenants, between Jan. 1 and Nov. 30 of last year there were a total of 82 applications to terminate rental agreements stemming from N13s notices, which are issued when a landlord needs a vacant unit to make building repairs or renovations.

That’s up from the 20 in all of 2023 and 44 in 2022.

Despite the significant jump, advocates say the figures tracked by the board represent a tiny fraction of all cases in which landlords, some of them in bad-faith, are using N13s as a way to gain possession of units, because the board only tracks cases that result in formal evictions but not all applications.

“We know this is still a significant problem in our community,” said Kristie Pagniello, executive director at Neighborhood Legal Services (London and Middlesex).

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“What we don’t see in these numbers is cases where (landlords) have given a notice and haven’t had to file for a hearing because the person has left or didn’t understand their rights and left.”

In recent years, the local legal clinic informally tracked more than 450 N13s notices handed out to tenants in London, which last year passed a new bylaw beefing up provincial requirements around so-called renoviction.

Even that figure may not capture all cases, Pagniello said.

Under the provincial Residential Tenancies Act, landlords who issue an eviction notice for renovations must offer a tenant three months’ rent or a different unit to live in.

And while tenants have the right to return to their unit at the original rent, critics say that landlords can abuse the process to force out long-term tenants with no other place to live and re-list their units for a significantly higher market rent.

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Jordan Smith, a leader of the London chapter of Acorn, a national organization that advocates for tenants, agreed the figures reported by the board “don’t reflect the reality” of what’s happening on the ground.

“N13s are a pressure tactic and, for us, it’s still the most common tactic used by landlords,” he said. “Tenants don’t realize that when they’re handed these notices, the N13s, they don’t mean anything until they are filled in front of the board.

“But every time one of these units is lost to an N13, we lose an affordable unit in the city, and we are in desperate need of more affordable housing in London.”

In an effort to avoid bad faith renovictions, London council city ​​council passed last year a new bylaw setting additional requirements for landlords who issue N13 notices.

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The requirements for landlords include:

• A $600 license from the city for every unit being renovated, which is only valid for 180 days.

• Applying for the license within seven days of giving an N13 notice to a tenant.

• Providing tenants with an information package that clearly states their rights.

• Getting approval from an engineer or architect that the repairs or renovations are so extensive they require a vacancy.

• Fines of $2,000 a month for failing to apply for a license (it doubles after three months) and $5,000 for advertising or reoccupying a renovated unit.

Pagniello expects the new bylaw, which won’t come into effect until at least March, will have a significant impact in reducing bad faith renovictions in the city because “landlords who are pretending to renovate aren’t going to be able to do it anymore .”

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But she said it won’t put an end to landlords trying to find new loopholes to regain possession of units amid a tight rental market.

“I think, even now, we are already starting to see fewer N13s because landlords are realizing, as people learn more about their rights and understand the law better, that it’s no longer an easy way to get people out,” she said. “I think landlords are already moving now to other methods of evicting when they want to, essentially, re-rent a space for a higher rent.”

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