It is investor landlords who are most likely to apply for above-guideline rent increases and to evict vulnerable tenants, including racialized tenants. Researcher Martine August, at the University of Waterloo, in a presentation this week on research in progress, noted that 47 per cent of landlord requests for above-guideline rent increases in Ontario came from the 10 largest landlords. The same landlords lead in evictions, which tend to hit those with the lowest incomes, seniors, lone-income parents and racialized people, the hardest.
Julie Mah, a researcher at the University of Toronto who works with August, said rent control rules originally set a firm cap on rent increases, but recognized that over time, landlords might need to do exceptional, significant upgrades whose costs weren’t covered by the rent limits. But many of today’s landlords are abusing those rules, seeking above-guideline increases to, as they admit, increase their profits, and “reposition” their buildings to attract higher income tenants.
August argues that above-guideline increases shouldn’t be allowed when rent control rules allow landlords to raise rents by any amount between tenants. Mah makes a similar argument but her proposal is to return to not allowing unlimited rent increases between tenancies and then to work out some fair way to allow landlords to pay for exceptional significant building repair costs not covered already by rents. Requiring them to maintain a reserve for major repairs might be one answer, she suggested. Their research has yet to be published but you can read more on financialization and rent at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12313042/, and on high eviction rates in Black majority neighbourhoods https://bsh.ubc.ca/financialized-violence-in-torontos-rental-market-eviction-rates-in-majority-black-renter-communities/