Decent housing for all
Saif Greenidge’s apartment is infested with cockroaches. There’s peeling paint on the ceiling from upstairs floods and mould in the bathroom. Yet Greenidge is obliged to pay $918 a month for his unit, despite the outstanding repair work.
He’s not alone. A survey by ACORN Toronto, which represents about 20,000 low- and moderate-income residents across the city, found about 95 per cent of its 174 respondents were living in deplorable conditions that violate the city’s property standards bylaw. Worse, 29 per cent said they felt threatened when making complaints about the state of their units.
While the survey may be small, if the city’s current audit program is any indication, it speaks to the state of repair in many low-income rentals across the city. Since 2008, more than 58,000 deficiencies were found in the 1,046 apartment towers that were audited and more than 4,446 work orders were issued.
The city has a chance to make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of people living in sub-standard rental units. It can and should implement a licensing or registration program being recommended by city staff to the Tenant Issues Committee on Wednesday that would force landlords to make repairs or face financial penalties.
What’s at stake is ensuring low-income renters don’t have to live with health hazards. The ACORN survey, for example, found 83 per cent of respondents have seen a cockroach in their apartment. More than 31 per cent had experienced a bed-bug infestation. Just more than half reported a lack of heating in their building and almost a quarter have been trapped in an elevator in the past two years. These are unacceptable conditions at any income level. Among enforcement measures the committee should consider: Prohibiting landlords with outstanding work orders from applying for rent increases or leasing vacant units.
Letting tenants pay rent into an account set up by a court or local housing department, instead of to their landlord, until repairs are done.
Fining landlords who don’t comply with work orders up to $100,000.
Financing the program would be minimal for landlords of buildings that have 10 or more units and are three storeys or higher. An annual registration fee could be as much as $1,300 or as little as $800 for a100-unit building, for example, depending on the financing structure the city adopts.
The Tenant Issues Committee should greenlight this plan and send it to city council for consideration at its Dec. 13 meeting. Tenants of all income levels deserve to live in homes that, at minimum, meet city standards.