Landlords to face penalty for turfing tenants without fault

Ontario to impose new rules protecting province’s renters from unlawful evictions

Ontario tenants will have more protection from eviction starting Friday.

That’s when new measures aimed at stopping landlords from turfing people from their rental units will take effect.

Effective Friday, when a landlord ends a tenancy to have family members move in, people evicted must receive compensation.

“When a tenant is evicted through no fault of their own, they are forced to scramble to find new accommodations and cover the costs of a sudden move,” Housing Minister Peter Milczyn said in a statement.

Landlords will have to pay one month’s rent to the evicted tenant or offer him or her another comparable rental unit. There will also be a new measure in place to ensure that an apartment isn’t vacated, ostensibly for a relative, and, less than one year later, rented out to someone else.

“If the landlord advertises, re-rents or demolishes/converts the unit within one year, she or he will be considered to have acted in bad faith, unless they can prove otherwise and could face a fine of up to $25,000,” the government says. “The new measures will help protect tenants by discouraging landlords from unlawfully evicting them, whether for conversion of the unit into a short-term rental or immediately re-renting it at a higher rate.”

Milczyn, who is also the minister responsible for Ontario’s poverty-reduction strategy, said the aim is to help “make that transition easier” for tenants forced to move.

The minister said, in some cases, it could “prevent it from happening at all, by curbing unlawful evictions.”

Friday’s changes are part of sweeping tenant-protection protections imposed this year.

Residential rent increases are capped at 1.8 per cent next year unless landlords apply to housing authorities for more. Those who renovate their units can apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for increases based on the amount of money spent on improvements.

Rent controls were expanded by Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government in April.

In all, there are about 1.2 million private rental units in Ontario.