What happens when a key government agency just … doesn’t?

Clip You’re listening to a frequency podcast network production in association with City News.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings We talk a lot on this show about failures of government in all parties and at all levels. And it’s only natural we cover news that impacts the lives of Canadians, and few things do that as often or with as much frustration as part of the system not working right. We also spend a lot of time here on housing, whether that’s affordability, availability, buying or renting, housing as an investment, or housing as a human right. And again, it just makes sense. It’s hard to imagine an issue of more importance to more Canadians than having a roof over their heads or being able to afford to keep it there. And in Ontario right now, a failure of government is colliding head on with one of the most important facets of Canadian life. And what’s being done about it is well, you’ll hear me use the term flabbergasted in this conversation because it’s the most honest reaction I could think of. You see, we’re used to government services sometimes being slow, or being complicated, or being less than hoped for or harder to access. But this is the story of a government service that right now is just not just not. And meanwhile, people are losing money and homes. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Jack Hauen is a reporter at QP briefing. Hello, Jack.

Jack Hauen Hi, Jordan.

Jordan Can you begin, maybe by just telling us what the state of evictions are in Ontario? Last time we checked in on this, there were various levels of pandemic protections. Have those all now expired?

Jack Hauen Yeah. So Ontario paused evictions twice. Once in 2020 and once in 2021. They encouraged landlords and tenants to work together to find solutions if any problems arose. But those are gone now, and that working together didn’t really tend to happen.

Jordan Shocking. So what has that done?

Jack Hauen And I mean both the pauses and the attempts to catch up afterwards to the landlord and tenant board, especially because, as you say, the working together part didn’t seem to work. Yeah, so the LTB has huge delays that can be up to a year for hearings. As for the cause of those delays, different people will say different things about how much effect the eviction moratorium had on that. The LTP has shifted to an online version, which some lawyers say has actually had a bigger impact than pausing evictions in the first place.

Jordan How so?

Jordan Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever attended an LTB hearing, but they’re a mess. Can you describe one, maybe for people who haven’t?

Jack Hauen Sure. So sometimes they’re in and out in a couple minutes. There was a big controversy about eviction blitzes, more so last year, but especially more recently. The hearings tend to take forever to figure out who everyone is on the call. About 60% of tenants are actually calling in by phone, while 70% of landlords are calling in by video. You know, if you’re going in blind to a zoom call, it takes a while to figure out everyone’s voice. People have connection issues. People drop. Sometimes people don’t show up. It’s just not a very smooth operation.

Jordan You found some stuff going on online. Why don’t we begin? You can just describe the Facebook group where you found this story, who’s in it, what’s it for, what do they discuss in there?

Jack Hauen Sure. So it’s called Ontario landlords. Simple enough. And that’s what it is. It’s a huge group. There’s over 330 people in it. Technically, it’s a private group. I joined it. I didn’t lie about anything. I didn’t say I was a landlord. And I’ve just sort of been watching it since and yeah, landlords gather there to talk about issues they’re having with tenants, strategies for evicting them. Some people have questions about whether something is illegal, whether they can do it, and others are definitely a minority, are posting questions about whether they will get caught if they evict someone illegally. And that’s where this story focuses. Maybe can you tell me about those illegal eviction questions? What are they trying to do and how?

Jordan And maybe just because you read us one of the posts and I know you just stress there in a minority, but this is happening on this group, and I think people would like to hear just sort of what it’s like.

Jack Hauen Sure. So I’ll read the post that kicked this off. This is a realtor, by the way, who told me that she was asking this on behalf of someone else. So she wrote, does anyone know what the penalty is for a landlord to change the locks and deny access to an unpaying tenant from a property?

Jordan I’m aware of the fact that it’s illegal, but so is not paying your rent for one year after signing a contract. Please, no lessons on the LTB just wondering what the penalty is. We are wondering if it’s less than the year the tenant hasn’t paid. So if the fine is less than what they would lose by continuing to host this unpaying tenant. And then she continues, if we all band together, we could clog up the system with winding unpaying tenants. So that sounds to a layperson and I mean not even to a layperson, because the word illegal is used against regulations, to say the least. Yeah. So in this case and in a few others, they’re definitely aware that what they’re doing is illegal, but they’re either testing the waters or they don’t care. They’re planning to do this and just preparing to see what the penalties are. Before we get into how harmful this can be to tenants who are obviously at risk of just losing their homes here, I’m going to ask you to give us the landlord point of view. This seems obviously, like pretty indefensible behaviour, but how do they see it?

Jack Hauen So a lot of landlords, or some landlords I should say, see this as someone is living in my home, and if the legal route to get them out of there isn’t working, I should be able to do it myself. Another comment said that if someone was not paying rent in his unit, he would do everything I could to make their lives hell. I’d leave an eviction order on their door every few days to embarrass them. I’d visit them at work to ask them for money, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s a lot of frustration and landlords are trying to figure out how to get around the system.

Jordan How illegal is this behaviour? And you know, when we talk about an illegal eviction, the way you just described it, what are we actually discussing in terms of crime, according to the authorities?

Jack Hauen So the Ford government actually doubled fines for offenses under the RTA, the Residential Tendencies Act. So an individual landlord can be fined up to $50,000 and a corporation can be fined up to $250,000 for violating the RTA, which includes illegal evictions as well. The LTB, when it actually works and when it actually gets to a decision, can order a landlord to pay up to twelve months rent for a bad faith eviction. Do we know the scale of what’s happening in terms of these kind of evictions and who’s affected and how bad it’s getting? No, not really. Okay. This is not something that the ministry was willing to help me out with. I asked for these numbers and they did not give them to me. I’m not sure if they actually track them in any folsom way. But what we do know is from community lawyers who represent tenants in these sorts of issues, anecdotally it’s on their eyes. What happens in that case when an eviction like that has taken place, somebody is being told to leave their home, or they come home and as you describe, the locks are changed.

Jordan What are their options? What can they do? Right?

Jack Hauen So the official route is reporting it to the ministry, the provincial Rental Housing enforcement unit. Practically anyone who has had any interaction with that unit will tell you it’s basically useless. The NDP housing critic Jessica Bell said that even in extreme cases, like a landlord has assaulted a tenant, the unit will say, we don’t have the resources to respond to this. So, you know, you should tick that box if you’re facing an illegal eviction, just in case. But don’t sign anything is what lawyers will tell you. Don’t agree to anything. And your best bet may be to contact a community legal clinic. There’s lots of free ones around and they’re the experts here. This is all they do. What can they do though, if the LTB is backlogged and the Ministry, as you say, you know, kind of says we don’t have the resources. Right. Well, they can’t force their way back into your unit for you. They can’t rechange the locks, they can represent you at the LTV, they can point you in the right direction as for the arguments that you need to make, and they can definitely get you a better chance of having a favorable LTV decision when that takes place. As for getting you shelter or other things like that in the short term, I’m not sure. There’s definitely other community clinics and such that deal with that. But as far as the LTB goes, that’s basically the option.

Jordan What about for landlords that have non paying tenants? And again, not to take the landlord’s side, but some people are, you know, owning one extra property and trying to make some income off that and are not the corporate landlords that we’ve heard about. Right?

Jack Hauen So again, theoretically, the LTV, that’s what the LTV is for. There are also paralegals and lawyers who specifically focus on landlord issues. I think you’re going to find fewer free or ultra cheap resources because tenants in these situations tend to not have as much money as a landlord. But again, the official routes are pretty clogged up, and your best bet would be to reach out to a legal expert.

Jordan Let’s talk about the LTP now, we said it’s backlogged. How backlogged is it? What are they focusing on? And do we have a timeline? Like, do we know when?

Jack Hauen I imagine there’s got to be hundreds or thousands of these cases before them when they’ll be heard. There is no official timeline. The LTB has essentially given up on taking new regular cases for the rest of this calendar year. They’re just focusing on previous cases and above guideline rent increase applications, which usually are just corporate landlords applying to raise rent by more than what is technically allowed each year because they say they’ve done improvements to the building that justify it. The provincial government has put $19 million into trying to improve the LTB, hiring more adjudicators. We haven’t really seen that pay off yet.

Jordan Sometimes in an interview like this, I just end up kind of flabbergasted at the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any recourse or any way to move this forward or any way. And here I’m not even trying to side with landlords or side with tenants. It just seems like there appears to be no system here.

Jack Hauen Yeah, I mean, it is bad for everybody like the LTB. You can discuss whether it’s biased one way or the other, but the fact that there is essentially no recourse for either side legally in Ontario right now is a major problem. There’s no way to evict a tenant that’s not paying rent, and there’s no way to get a decision about a landlord that’s harassing you. So, yeah, flabbergast is a good word. It’s a strange limbo to be in.

Jordan How does this play out on the ground? You’ve shared a couple of examples from landlords in the group. What are tenants experiencing and what happens in a big part of the economy when things just grind to a halt like this.

Jack Hauen Yes. So each situation is different. I mean, if you come home to change locks, you might have to stay with family, you might have to stay with friends. Like I said, you’ll tick the official boxes, you’ll make your application to the LTB, and then who knows when you’ll see it. Yeah, it’s bleak out there. And rents, as everyone knows, are absolutely insane, basically everywhere. So finding a new place can be a real challenge.

Jordan In the absence of rulings from the LTB, who wins? Does it favour landlords because they can just do the stuff you’re talking about? Does it favour tenants because there’s no way to kick them out without doing anything illegal if they don’t pay their rent? I guess I’m trying to get a sense, and I know the power imbalance in general obviously favours landlords, but when you remove the enforcement from a system, what happens?

Jack Hauen So landlords would definitely say that in the absence of the LTB, tenants win because they don’t have to pay rent and they can just live rent free wherever they want and nobody’s going to kick them out. Realistically, the amount of quote unquote professional tenants that are out there is really small. And the amount of people who are willing to break the law and engage in that amount of stress in their own home, it just seems like not a way that anyone would want to live. So, I mean, the answer is that nobody wins when there’s no official route to find an end to disputes between landlords and tenants.

Jordan You mentioned, I guess, the NDP housing critic criticizing the government’s performance. Is this on anyone’s agenda? Like it seems? And listen, I know lots of parts of government are still catching up from two years of problems, but, like, this is about where people live. It seems like it should be more of a story.

Jack Hauen Seems that way, yeah. Like I said, the government didn’t respond when I asked them about this. The provincial government has definitely been focusing on expanding housing, homeownership, that’s big on Premier Ford’s agendas. Everyone wants a white picket fence, whether that’s in Toronto or in the green belt. Renters. I don’t want to say they’re nowhere on the government agenda. Obviously, it’s something that they think about. But the response to this story, the response to other rental issues, it’s not the highest on the priority list. And when we’re talking about housing right now, obviously the big story is the green belt, but generally when we’re talking about housing with this PC government, we’re talking about homeownership. All those things, especially the green belt and new houses, seem years and years and years away. And this is happening right now. Yes, it sure is. And it’s a big problem, and it’s tough to see it getting better anytime soon. Maybe time will do it. Maybe the new adjudicators the LTV is hiring will clear up the backlog sometime next year. Maybe it will be in two years or more, but it definitely can’t keep continuing like this much longer.

Jordan Jack, I don’t know what to say. Thank you for explaining this, and thank you for shining a light on what’s going on here, because I didn’t know how bad it was.

Jack Hauen Well, thanks so much for having me. It’s definitely been a ride and I’ll keep looking into it.

Jordan Jack Hauen writing for QP briefing. That was the big story. For more, you can head to thebigstorypodcast CA. I meant it in the intro when I said we cover government failures and we cover housing a lot. There are tons of episodes. There probably none as ultimately frustrating as this one. I still don’t know what to say about what we’re seeing in Ontario right now. You can talk to the Big Story. We’d love to hear from you. If you have had an issue with the LTB, I’d love to hear some first hand stories. Maybe we’ll share some right here. We’re on Twitter at The Big Story. FPN we are. Reachable by email. Hello at the Big Story podcast. Dot CA. And of course, you can call us. Tell us your story 416-935-5935 you can find The Big Story in every podcast player, and you can ask your smart speaker to play The Big Story podcast. And I checked, and 1.27% of our downloads come from people doing exactly that. So keep telling your Alexa, your Googles, and your series to hook us up. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.