Parkdale residents protest `loophole´ allowing landlords to drive up rent
(The Star Toronto Raptors)

Tenants at a highrise in an up-and-coming Toronto neighbourhood have staged a rent strike, saying landlords are taking advantage of loopholes in Ontario’s housing law to drive low-income residents out of their homes.More than 50 tenants of a building in Toronto’s rapidly gentrifying Parkdale community are refusing to pay their rent after the property manager — Nuspor Investments — applied for government permission to increase rent by nearly double the legally permitted amount.“This building is going to kick people out with the rent increases if they’re allowed to go above the (provincial rent) guidelines,� striking tenant Mark Farquharson said.“A lot of people in this building are pensioners and they’re going to be gone in another five years because they can’t afford it.�Last year the government of Ontario extended rent control — which previously had applied only to units that came into use prior to November 1991 — to all residential properties in the province, setting an annual cap on rent increases tied to the Consumer Price Index. The cap for 2018 is 1.8 per cent.But a long-standing policy in the Residential Tenancies Act allows property owners and managers to apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for the right to raise rent beyond the cap in order to recoup costs of certain capital expenditures or “extraordinary� increases in tax.“This is a loophole in the legislation that basically lets landlords pass off the costs of major work onto tenants,� said Cole Webber, spokesperson for Parkdale Community Legal Services.Landlords in gentrifying parts of Toronto are increasingly taking advantage of this legislation in an effort to squeeze out low-income tenants, Webber added.Once a unit is vacant, landlords can legally raise rent without limit.To be eligible for a higher-than-permitted rent increase, a landlord must show that their capital expenses were made to keep ...