RENTAL MARKET
In tight GTA rental market, tenants asked for SINs, even mental-health history
GTA tenants concerned about landlords asking for too much personal information, which privacy advocate Ann Cavoukian says puts them at risk of identity theft,
Like many Torontonians in search of a home, Katy Schuyler would do almost anything to secure a coveted one-bedroom apartment downtown. Nevertheless, she doesn’t think handing over a record of her last 30 bank transactions should be part of the deal.
“I don’t even bother scheduling appointments with places like that because that’s beyond intrusive,” Schuyler said. “You don’t need to see what I spend my money on.”
Schuyler joins a growing number of people in the GTA concerned about landlords asking for too much personal information as they hunt for affordable housing in a red-hot real-estate market.
There’s been a sharp rise in the number of public complaints about landlord and tenant issues made to Canada’s privacy commissioner. In 2012, the commissioner recorded nine of them across the country. In 2017, that number shot up to 48. In the GTA they’re also up, from six complaints to 20 over the same period.
Landlord and tenant issues are also commanding a larger proportion of the commission’s time. In 2012, they made up just four per cent of all complaints accepted for investigation in the GTA, but that number rose to 13 per cent as of last year.
The “majority of recent complaints,” spokesperson Tobi Cohen wrote in an email, were about “use and disclosure of personal information and consent.”
Those include “allegations that a landlord or property manager disclosed personal information to other tenants, other property managers, realtors etc.; complaints related to the collection of information such as driver’s licences and social insurance numbers for rental applications; and the use of video surveillance cameras,” she said.
In response to the increase, the commissioner issued new guidance to landlords and tenants in April. It outlines what landlords are entitled to ask for and clarifies their responsibilities under federal privacy legislation, which includes obtaining consent to collect pri- vate information and ensuring the information is protected.
Geordie Dent, executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations, said the rise in complaints “almost lines up perfectly” with a dip in the GTA rental vacancy rate, which means there’s lots of competition for the few apartments available.
It’s now1.1per cent for the GTA, according to the latest numbers from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., and one per cent for the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA).
“Landlords are just asking for more and more information because they know if you won’t provide it to them, there’s10 people lined up that will,” Dent said.
As a tenant advocate, he’s heard a “huge laundry list” of “very intrusive questions” being asked by landlords, including mental-health history, family status, psychological surveys and, most commonly, social insurance numbers.
“When you’re handing over your SIN, you don’t know what it’s being used for or where it’s going,” he said. “That’s a real major concern for a lot of people.”
Dent feels better enforcement of existing privacy laws, culminating in either fines for landlords or compensation for tenants, would help.
“Unless there’s some kind of penalty for breaking the law, the landlord’s going to do it anyways,” he said.
The privacy commissioner’s guidelines recommend tenants do not provide their SINs to landlords, but note there’s no law preventing landlords from asking. Once a landlord has collected such personal information, they’re bound by privacy legislation to protect it.
Former Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian called the collection of data on tenants and aspiring tenants “terrible” and said it puts them at risk of identity theft.
“I would be very concerned about this in terms of all the personal information they’re collecting from potential renters, and who knows how long they retain that information,” Cavoukian said.
While she acknowledges aspiring renters are “between a rock and hard place,” she encourages them to ask landlords to delete their information once the apartment search is over.
It’s also important to warn landlords about the “unintended consequences” of collecting data and remind them they’re on the hook in case of a data breach, she added.
“If these landlords are collecting all this sensitive information, theoretically someone could perpetrate identity theft, it doesn’t need to be the landlord himself; it could be someone in the landlord’s office,” Cavoukian said.
“You just never know.”