'Status quo isn't working': Toronto proposing city-wide rules for legal rooming houses

Thestar.com
May 7, 2021

Rooming houses could finally be legalized, inspected and licensed across Toronto through a proposal many suburban homeowners are bound to hate.

The city, which adopted a human rights-based approach to housing last year, is developing plans to allow multi-tenant housing not just in the former Toronto, York and parts of Etobicoke, but everywhere.

Except in denser residential-commercial zones or apartment neighbourhoods, multi-tenant houses would be limited to six dwelling rooms, which are not self-contained and share a bathroom or kitchen.

Owners would have to submit floor plans, renovate to comply with the building code, keep to a property maintenance plan and demonstrate they can respond to tenant concerns, a first public meeting on the proposal heard on May 4.

The city might also take a security deposit from owners to fulfil property standards that do not meet requirements.

Currently, rooming houses are illegal in Scarborough, North York, East York and North Etobicoke, where many homeowners and councillors resisted legalization successfully for more than a decade.

Jim Karygiannis, Agincourt’s former councillor, searched for rooming houses and encouraged constituents to report them so they could be shut down. His replacement and former assistant, Nick Mantas, ran for the seat this year saying he wouldn’t support any plan to legalize multi-tenant housing.

Prevailing attitudes may be changing, however, as rising suburban rents and financial distress caused by the pandemic make multi-tenant housing even more crucial -- experts say rent for a room is half that of a bachelor apartment.

"The status quo isn't working,” Jennifer McKelvie, whose Scarborough ward’s Highland Creek area contains rooming houses students use, said in writing this week.

“Students are in unsafe conditions, and community members are frustrated by the lack of enforcement resources,” McKelvie said.

“The best way to end the proliferation of illegal multi-tenant homes is to create a regulatory framework that establishes safety, parking and property standards coupled with appropriate enforcement."

A Scarborough home the City of Toronto was investigating as a suspected illegal rooming house is seen in 2019. -- Metroland file photo

Instead of seeking to close illegal rooming houses down, Jean-Paul Nadeau, supervisor of a dedicated bylaw enforcement team for multi-tenant houses, said he tries to educate owners and tenants into addressing issues such as unmowed lawns.

“That usually rectifies a number of problems, whether they’re a rooming house or not,” Nadeau told the online meeting.

“My team is not in the business of evicting tenants,” unless the residents’ safety is under threat or the house’s problems are severe enough to make relocation an option.

“It hasn’t happened too often.”

Bylaw officers are often refused entry to rooming houses. Owners are hard to find, and many tenants, forced to live underground, fear law enforcers, said Nadeau, but added the team, put together last July, has gained access to rooming houses anyway.

City of Toronto may license some rooming houses in five suburban areas
The proposal includes dedicating more officers, so the team can spend more time finding and working with owners, said Nadeau, who added legalization “gives us ability to monitor” multi-tenant houses effectively.

The city can’t set rents for newly licensed rooming houses, but it’s considering property tax deferrals and other incentives to help owners renovate; the city could work with owners accepting incentives to keep rents low, said Sherri Hanley, a policy development officer with Toronto’s Housing Secretariat.

Tenant advocates have long argued a lack multi-tenant housing across the city is discrimination, and subjects tenants in illegal rooms to unsafe or unsanitary conditions since many fear losing housing if they complain.

The Maytree Foundation, at the city’s invitation, reported last October that permitting multi-tenant housing across Toronto would “not only address significant discrimination issues, it would also shift focus to increasing safety and stability, rather than attempting to curtail what is sorely needed in an unaffordable market.”

The city will host a second meeting May 11 from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Details and a survey open until May 18 are available at www.toronto.ca/MTHreview.