What Ottawa’s new rental housing bylaw means for landlords

Aug. 31. For your townhouses, there are four new requirements. For your triplex, there are five.

To be in compliance, the most urgent thing is to provide an information letter to any new tenants who sign a lease with you on or after Aug. 31. The letter needs to set out your contact information, including a mailing address, a telephone number and at least one method of electronic text communication, and must provide:

• information on how tenants can submit service requests to you;

• information on how tenants can submit complaints to the city, if service requests remain unresolved;

• site-specific information about

fire safety equipment, solid waste handling and where to legally park on-site or nearby; and

• instructions on how tenants can register their support need(s) in your new “Tenant Support Registry” (TSR).

The TSR is a listing of any support requests under the Human Rights Code, such as a request from a tenant who is visually impaired for notices in large print.

Most landlords provide almost all of that information now, just not all in one document. You need to have the new tenant sign a copy of the letter and keep it with your copy of the lease in case a bylaw officer asks you for that copy. (By Nov. 30, a unit-specific information letter needs to be delivered to a tenant of every rental unit.)

You also need to keep a record of service requests from tenants, including:

• the date and time of the request

• the service request address, including the unit

• the tenant's contact information

• a description of the issue • whether the request is urgent • a record of your action and the outcome

• the date and method used to notify the tenant of the resolution.

Most landlords keep track of the bulk of that information now, except for reporting on the resolution in cases where the completion of a repair is obvious.

You also need to adopt an Integrated Pest Management Plan, which includes a schedule of proactive inspections of all common areas, and units, for pests or problems that can lead to pests. Most landlords will schedule

that pest inspection to take place with their annual maintenance inspection. Landlords can schedule proactive pest inspections at shorter or longer intervals depending on the conditions at each rental building or in each rental unit.

For the triplex, but not the townhouses (and not condo units), you are required to maintain what the city calls a Capital Maintenance Plan. That is mostly a record of inspections of building common elements, like the roof or the furnace.

More information and templates are available at