City councillors voted unanimously to pass the 'renovictions' bylaw (credit: Jack Sutton).
At the most recent London City Council meeting, councillors voted unanimously to approve the new ‘renovictions’ bylaw.
The motion passed with one amendment. Councillor David Ferreira submitted a motion to make the monetary penalties higher to better outweigh the gains bad-faith landlords could make from evicting tenants using an N-13.
“I’m trying to add extra spikes in the loophole around the N-13,” Ferreira says. “And big enough spikes that any bad-faith landlord who is considering this option can see that and would be deterred.”
For failure to apply for a license to renovate, he proposed a penalty of $2000 per month for the first three months, increasing to $4000 after that. Ferreira did propose these amendments in the earlier committee meeting, but did not receive a seconder and the idea was never debated.
Also included in his amendment was a direction for council to revisit the bylaw in 12 months with all the available data, and also a penalty for landlords who advertise a unit as available before the N-13 has been processed.
While the final vote was unanimous, there was a long debate between councillors about the effectiveness of the proposed changes. Councillor Corrine Rahman proposed referring the entire package back to the committee, so that they could put together a stronger recommendation to council that is more in line with other municipalities that have passed similar measures, namely including requirements for landlords to provide temporary alternative accommodations for displaced tenants and short-term rental top-ups.
“If this is something we really want to do, to strengthen this bylaw, to make it have the teeth it needs to prevent people from being put on the streets,” said Rahman. “We have the opportunity to do this today and all we need to do is a simple referral.”
Rahman was not able to convince enough of her colleagues to vote in favour of her motion, which failed five to nine.
“Perfection is the enemy of done,” said Councillor Peter Cuddy. “Not everything’s perfect, and we can keep tinkering and toying with things until we think we have made it perfect…playing with this, we will never get it implemented. We will go through cycles.”
“Our residents need this now,” he continued. “And we need to implement it now.”
The bylaw package, as voted on during the meeting, will require landlords to jump through a series of hoops in order to issue an N-13 and evict tenants during renovations. They will need to apply and pay for a license from the city and provide a professional opinion stating why the tenant needs to vacate. Landlords who fail to comply will face monetary penalties, such as those stated above.
While the loopholes around N-13 evictions are being closed, landlords still have other options if they wish to evict a tenant in bad faith.
“As we constrict this loophole, the other ones are still wide open, and you’re going to start seeing a flood of those being used,” says Councillor Ferreira. “We need to focus on these other areas…I will be working with you on that in the future.”
