John Tory suffered a rare loss at Toronto council over legalizing rooming houses. An inside look at a move that baffled and outraged housing critics

Thestar.com
Oct. 26, 2021
David Rider

Potentially unsafe rooming houses would be facing regulations and regular inspections if only one or two more suburban councillors had backed proposed new citywide rules fervently opposed by some homeowners.

The exact vote on the “new regulatory framework for multi-tenant houses” will never be known because Mayor John Tory, who backed the plan, learned during early debate at October’s council meeting that majority support wasn’t there.

Intense lobbying over months to convince councillors of the merits of modernizing and expanding citywide a licensing regime that has long regulated rooming houses only downtown and in parts of Etobicoke and York had failed.

If were put to a losing vote, the years-in-the-making framework would go in the trash. Homes with multiple private bedrooms and shared kitchens and bathrooms -- renting at $400 to $700 per room per month, compared to the $1,148 average for a Toronto bachelor apartment -- would remain illegal, illicit and underground across most of the rest of the city for years to come.

Tory instead tabled a successful motion to kick the framework back to city staff for more work and a return to council sometime next year -- possibly after the October 2022 municipal election that some councillors think was an unspoken factor.

The mayor’s rare policy loss at council -- three of his four deputy mayors voiced opposition -- baffled and outraged housing advocates given Toronto’s dire shortage of accommodation for its lowest-income, most vulnerable residents.

Six city divisions helped draft the multi-pronged plan including the fire service which noted that, of the 18 rooming house fires since 2010 where somebody died, all but two were in illegal, unregulated homes.

To better understand the impasse, the Star asked Tory and seven of his council colleagues what led to the latest in a decade of attempts to harmonize rooming house rules -- and why that vote never happened.

Here’s what we learned:

• Informal tallies during the council debate suggested the framework would be rejected on a 13-12 vote. If Brad Bradford (Ward 19 Beaches-East York), a supporter, had been at council instead of a funeral, it would have failed on a 13-13 tie. “We were hoping (the plan) would pass until the very last minute,” says Ana Bailao (Ward 9 Davenport), council’s housing advocate and a passionate supporter of the framework. Shelley Carroll (Ward 17 Don Valley North), another supporter, says virtual lobbying was no replacement for face-to-face meetings. “Discussing it with some other councillors, they hadn’t really deeply thought about it.”
• After postponing a July vote to buy time to build support, Tory’s office quietly formed a group of councillors to work through sticking points. It included a mayoral staffer, framework supporters Ana Bailao, Shelley Carroll and Jennifer McKelvie (Ward 25 Scarborough-Rouge Park), and skeptics Gary Crawford (Ward 20 Scarborough Southwest), Cynthia Lai (Ward 23 Scarborough North) and James Pasternak (Ward 6 York Centre). Some or all chatted online July 27 and Aug. 17. With no real progress made, future dates were scrapped.
• Those discussions did help Carroll and McKelvie craft improvements to the staff plan aimed at addressing concerns. They included fears there aren’t currently enough bylaw inspectors, so they would be overwhelmed by more rooming houses to inspect. Carroll’s amendment would promise to beef up new enforcement staff beyond what was in the plan. Other measures targeted parking concerns. But the amendments became redundant, untabled, when the issue was punted.
• Tory talked to 14 councillors, individually and in groups, through September. He tried to convince those who usually vote with him but did not whip the vote by threatening to strip them of committee positions or deputy mayor titles. “I think anybody who looked at the effort that I made with respect to this vote will know that it was considerable,” Tory says. “I made the calculation, together with others, that to have lost this policy completely, because it was defeated by the council, would be a worse result than to continue doing the work we’re doing to very much keep it alive and bring it back for what I hope will be a positive result.”

Carroll thinks he should done more. “He could have, and I think he should have,” whipped the vote given the risk posed by illegal rooming houses, she says. Asked if she thinks the fact the politicians will face voters next year played a role, she says: “Of course,” adding some call the pre-election period “silly season” because of council members’ extra caution and aversion to controversy.

• For McKelvie, the issue is professional -- her constituents include University of Toronto Scarborough students living in shoddy rooms -- and personal. “My mother moved out of her Ontario Housing when she was 18 and lived in a rooming house that she suspects was illegal, felt unsafe,” McKelvie says. “It gave her an affordable place to live and get a start which led to her success and then my success. There are many people in Toronto that got their start in rooming houses and can attribute their success to having that type of housing available to them.” Unlike some past fires, nobody died in a rooming house blaze in her ward on Sunday, but 16 people were left homeless.
• John Filion (Ward 18 Willowdale), a suburban progressive, opposes the framework supported by downtown colleagues with whom he often agrees. “I thought that nothing good would come of what they’re proposing and probably some negative things,” he says, accusing city staff of pushing a one-size solution that doesn’t take into account the land-sale dynamics of his ward.

“People who live downtown have very little understanding of what goes on in the former suburbs,” Filion says. “Like, thinking that by doing this you’re going to get rid of illegal rooming houses -- there’s nothing that we saw that would indicate that at all.”

• Carroll lauds city staff for crafting the framework, but says they failed to explain it to residents, as did some fellow suburban councillors.

“Residents’ frame of reference, the status quo, is an illegal mess at the end of their block -- ‘You’re asking me if I want more of that?’” Carroll says. “You have to explain to them how that mess at the end of the block can change with licensing. Many of my colleagues have not bothered to do that work -- they sent out a poll to people whose only frame of reference is unsupervised, unregulated, entirely illegal housing. Licensing is about stamping that out.”

• Proponents’ best hope of changing minds was Frances Nunziata. A right-leaning Tory ally, she represents Ward 5 York-South Weston where rooming houses are legal in one part, illegal in another. “The legal ones in my ward I don’t have a problem with -- it’s the illegal ones that cause problems,” and trigger complaints, she told council.

Nunziata tells the Star: “Some councillors are afraid of reaction from homeowners but my constituents support legalizing because their nightmare is that for years we haven’t been able to enforce rules for illegal ones. We can inspect the legal ones. I was hoping I would change some minds.” Her speech appeared to sway no votes.

• Crawford recognizes the need for rooming houses and calls the staff proposal “strong.”

“I would have wanted to vote for it,” he says. “The challenge is, I heard fairly strongly from my community ‘Fix the illegals (rooming houses) first and then maybe we can look at that path forward.”

On the other side of Toronto, Coun. Stephen Holyday (Ward 2 Etobicoke Centre) is unconvinced rooming houses belong in suburbs. “You’re putting six units in a home built for one family,” he says, citing concerns including parking. “It’s a very large change and I’m not convinced it needs to occur in these types of places ... I try to not get into the argument about income or people -- it’s not about that, it’s about the physical form and its function itself.”

Tory’s motion to kick the issue back to staff passed 17-8, supported by councillors on both sides of the divide. Bailao, who often votes with the mayor, was not among them. “I know how bad the (housing) crisis is out there, I just couldn’t do it -- it would go against my principles,” she says. “These improvements would benefit tenants and the communities surrounding them. I don’t understand councillors not working with constituents to find a solution. I wouldn’t have (made a referral motion) but I respect the mayor’s willingness to continue working on the issue. I just think the solution was there and I wanted to vote for it.”