STANDING COMMITTEE ON COMITÉ PERMANENT DES
GENERAL GOVERNMENT AFFAIRES GOUVERNEMENTALES
TENANT PROTECTION ACT, 1996 LOI DE 1996 SUR LA PROTECTION DES LOCATAIRES
CANADIAN MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION, WINDSOR-ESSEX COUNTY BRANCH
CITIZEN ADVOCACY WINDSOR-ESSEX
ESSEX LANDLORD AND LANDLADIES ASSOCIATION
WINDSOR ESSEX LOW INCOME FAMILIES TOGETHER
KINGSTON STUDENT HOUSING OWNERS WORKING GROUP
WINDSOR WOMEN WORKING WITH IMMIGRANT WOMEN
WINDSOR-ESSEX BILINGUAL LEGAL CLINIC
ESSEX COUNTY CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY
SUN PARLOUR INCOME PROPERTY ASSOCIATION
CONTENTS
Wednesday 13 August 1997
Tenant Protection Act, 1996, Bill 96, Mr Leach / Loi de 1996 sur la protection des locataires, projet de loi 96, M. Leach
Canadian Mental Health Association, Windsor-Essex county branch
Mr Alan Stevenson
Citizen Advocacy Windsor-Essex
Ms Joyce Zuk
Ms Nimali Gamage
Essex Landlord and Landladies Association
Mr Don Barratt
Windsor Essex Low Income Families Together
Ms Christine Wilson
Ms Mary Seaton
Hiatus House
Ms Donna Miller
Legal Assistance of Windsor
Ms Carol McDermott
Kingston Student Housing Owners Working Group
Ms Daphne Dean
Windsor Women Working with Immigrant Women
Ms Sungee John
Ms Anne Lebeznick
AIDS Committee of Windsor
Ms Mary Osborne
Ms Sharron Cooney
Mr Chris O'Neil
Windsor-Essex Bilingual Legal Clinic
Ms Patricia Broad
City of Windsor
Mr Ed Link
Downtown Mission
Mr Barry Furlonger
Essex County Children's Aid Society
Mrs. Margaret Simpson
Danzig Enterprises
Mr Tim Fuerth
Sun Parlour Income Property Association
Mr Tim Fuerth
Ms Tilda DiMenna
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GENERAL GOVERNMENT
Chair / Président
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente
Mrs Julia Munro (Durham-York PC)
Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood L)
Mr Harry Danford (Hastings-Peterborough PC)
Mr Carl DeFaria (Mississauga East / -Est PC)
Mr Ed Doyle (Wentworth East / -Est PC)
Mrs Barbara Fisher (Bruce PC)
Mr Tom Froese (St Catharines-Brock PC)
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East / -Est PC)
Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur L)
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York ND)
Mrs Julia Munro (Durham-York PC)
Mr Mario Sergio (Yorkview L)
Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough PC)
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel PC)
Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North / -Nord ND)
Substitutions / Membres remplacants
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton PC)
Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville L)
Mr Pat Hoy (Essex-Kent L)
Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener PC)
Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes
Mr Karl Cunningham, senior policy adviser, Ministry of Housing
Clerk / Greffier
Mr Tom Prins
Staff /Personnel
Ms Susan Swift, research officer,
Legislative Research Service
STANDING COMMITTEE ON COMITÉ PERMANENT DES
GENERAL GOVERNMENT AFFAIRES GOUVERNEMENTALES
Wednesday 13 August 1997 Mercredi 13 août 1997
The committee met at 0903 in the Windsor Hilton, Windsor.
TENANT PROTECTION ACT, 1996 LOI DE 1996 SUR LA PROTECTION DES LOCATAIRES
Consideration of Bill 96, An Act to Consolidate and Revise the Law with respect to Residential Tenancies / Projet de loi 96, Loi codifiant et révisant le droit de la location à usage d'habitation.
CANADIAN MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION, WINDSOR-ESSEX COUNTY BRANCH
The Chair (Mr David Tilson): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. These are the public hearings of the standing committee on general government reviewing Bill 96. We will start with the first delegation, which is the Canadian Mental Health Association, Windsor-Essex county branch, Alan Stevenson. Good morning, sir. You can proceed when ready.
Mr Alan Stevenson: Mr Chair and members of the committee, on behalf of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Windsor-Essex county branch, I want to thank you for the opportunity to present some of our views regarding Bill 96 for your consideration.
The Canadian Mental Health Association, Windsor-Essex county branch is an incorporated, non-profit, registered charitable organization locally established in 1971. We are one of 36 branches in Ontario having membership with our provincial and national associations. The Windsor-Essex county branch has approximately 240 active volunteers who provide direct program support as well as board and committee services. The branch has a rich history of providing mental health services in this community through education, prevention, advocacy and support services. The programs and services provided by the Windsor-Essex county branch are funded by government grants, the United Way and supplementary fund-raising activities.
CMHA, Windsor-Essex county branch has made significant contributions to the development of housing programs in this community. We strongly advocate for the development and maintenance of housing and support for consumers of mental health services, as we believe that adequate, safe and affordable housing is the most basic of human rights.
We welcome this opportunity to respond to the second reading of Bill 96, An Act to Consolidate and Revise the Law with respect to Residential Tenancies.
To fully appreciate the importance of stable housing for people with serious mental health difficulties one must understand the experiences of people with mental illness. The nature of most mental disorders is cyclical, such that relapse is in fact a reality of living with a psychiatric disability, but recovery is also possible. This is in contrast to other types of disabilities that are generally constant or require increasing care over time, such as developmental delays and disabilities due to aging. In this context, we believe that a person's supports should increase or decrease as his or her mental health needs and circumstances change. Supports and housing based on individual choices and needs significantly improve the likelihood that people with serious mental illness will maintain a stable housing situation.
The primary source of stability and security for all people is often a living situation which feels like home. Indeed, the Ministry of Health recognizes that a stable supported living environment is essential for consumers of mental health services. For persons with mental illness, control over their environment is especially important. Satisfaction with housing is correlated with an increased ability to cope in the community and the likelihood of successful tenancy. Housing is a basic right for all people, but this right is especially significant for people with psychiatric illnesses due to things like poverty, discrimination and complex social issues. Therefore, we believe it is housing supports that should be flexible and portable, and not tenants who need those supports.
We believe in the principle of affordability, that is, people have adequate financial resources to pay for decent housing. Rent costs must reflect the reality of the lack of adequate income for mental health service consumers. Any decrease in rental cost protection and subsequent increase in rental costs may limit housing choices for people with mental illness. Therefore, our organization supports continued coverage of the rent control guideline and notice periods for tenants to protect housing for persons with mental illness.
However, we suggest that the focus of rent control should be on units, not on tenants, as proposed by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Removal of rent controls on initial rent for vacant units and exemption for new constructions will mean that accessibility to housing will be jeopardized because landlords can increase rent on vacant units or set new unit rents at any level they desire. A lack of controls on vacant and new units will mean that the number of units accessible to tenants on limited incomes, such as people with mental illness, will decrease. Removal of rent controls will result in fewer affordable housing units. This may force tenants to either endure inadequate housing or move into adequate housing with increased rent. Finally, removing controls on vacant units also provides an incentive for landlords to evict existing tenants, as they can increase the unit cost once it is vacated.
We are pleased to see that landlords will still require permission to raise tenants' rents above the guideline. CMHA, Windsor-Essex county branch supports retention of a rent control guideline formula as proposed by the legislation. We also endorse the proposed limit on capital expenditure increases to 4% above the previous lawful rent and the preservation of a tenant's right to make a rent reduction application due to a reduction or elimination of services or facilities.
However, CMHA, Windsor-Essex county branch has concerns about permitting landlords and tenants to negotiate rent increases above the guideline for any prescribed service, facility, privilege, accommodation or thing. For tenants who are vulnerable, the landlord may use his or her power to influence the tenant to pay for new services, facilities etc that are unnecessary. It will be difficult for the tribunal to determine if a tenant entered into an agreement by coercion or misleading representation.
It has been almost two years since the ministry implemented the first phase of its framework for housing, that is, ending subsidies for the development of new social housing. The government has also introduced a 21.6% reduction to general welfare assistance. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing business plan for 1996 stated that the government will develop a shelter allowance system by 1997-98. Many consumers of mental health services receive social assistance and have been affected by reduced income for housing.
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The lack of affordable housing, combined with a lag in the development of the shelter allowance system, may have a significant impact on persons with mental health problems. Inadequate or unstable housing may result in increased hospitalization, which is very costly. Although CMHA recognizes the time required to make policy decisions, we would urge the government to make access to affordable housing a priority.
At present, the Human Rights Code calls for equal treatment for occupancy of accommodation without discrimination on the basis of various factors, including disability and receipt of public assistance. CMHA understands the need for landlords to make credit checks, credit references, obtain rental histories and guarantors. People who are homeless, and who often have a serious mental illness, may not have these types of records. We urge the ministry to ensure the landlords are sanctioned if negative inferences are drawn in situations where these records do not exist or are inaccessible.
The proposed amendments to the Human Rights Code through this act will allow a landlord to use income information to determine the occupancy of residential accommodation. This amendment will legalize discrimination by landlords against applicants who have a limited income or receive social assistance, many of whom have a psychiatric disability. We recommend that the phrase "income information" be removed from the proposed amendments to the Human Rights Code. Income criteria should only be necessary for determining eligibility for rent-geared-to-income, non-profit or public housing.
The CMHA endorses an Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal, as the current process is very complex. Decisions should not be based on the influence of a particular lobby group but rather on the specifics of an individual case. This means that it will be critical for members of the tribunal to be objective and to state any conflict of interest. The CMHA understands the minister's need to set temporary guidelines for the tribunal until its rules and guidelines committee is functional. We urge the minister to establish a maximum time limit of six months for the committee's functioning to ensure that the tribunal becomes independent from government as quickly as possible.
We suggest that vulnerable tenants, such as people with mental illness, should be provided with a case manager who would guide the tenant through the tribunal process from beginning to end. The provision of legal aid funding would provide additional opportunities for vulnerable tenants to seek support for the tribunal process. The notice of termination given by a landlord should inform the tenant that he or she is entitled to dispute the application and, in care homes, provide a contact name to assist in the dispute.
We support the tenant and/or landlord's right to appeal the decisions and orders issued by the tribunal. CMHA recommends that the government support tenant advocacy for appeals through the court system.
Section 3(k) of the Tenant Protection Act exempts:
"living accommodation occupied by a person for the purpose of receiving rehabilitative or therapeutic services agreed upon by the person and the provider of the living accommodation, where,
"(i) the parties have agreed that,
"(A) the period of occupancy will be for a specified duration, or
"(B) the occupancy will terminate when the objectives of the services have been met or will not be met, and
"(ii) the living accommodation is intended to be provided for no more than a one-year period."
As stated previously, it is our position that to the fullest extent possible, it is the housing supports that should be flexible and portable, and not the tenants who need these supports. It is our concern that if the time frame is increased from the six-month average length of stay that it is now to the intended one-year length of stay, housing that under current legislation does not qualify for an exemption may in fact qualify under the proposed legislation. Subsequently, more people with serious mental illness will not be afforded tenant status with the rights and responsibilities prescribed by the act.
If the time frame must be increased from the six-month average length of stay to a one-year intended length of stay, the legislation must include due process procedures for evictions in exempt care homes. If there is no legislated process, housing stability for mental health consumers may be seriously undermined.
In conclusion, the Canadian Mental Health Association, Windsor-Essex county branch believes that the Tenant Protection Act will reduce protection currently available to tenants in several ways as previously identified. We are very concerned that people with serious mental illness, who are among the most vulnerable of citizens, will be further marginalized by decreased access to safe, affordable and secure rental accommodation. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Stevenson. There is time for questions if you're prepared to entertain questions.
Mr Stevenson: Sure.
Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville): Thank you, Mr Stevenson, for your thoughtful presentation. I was curious about a couple of issues that you raised and I'd like to explore them a little bit more with you.
The first had to do with your endorsation of part VIII of the act, which creates a new tribunal. We in the official opposition generally support the need to have a more efficient process. Other groups, however, have argued that they're concerned that a tribunal have properly trained people on the tribunal itself and that there be a due process established under it, and I've been wrestling with this notion. On the one hand, you want to try and unencumber the process, but on the other hand, there's a need for process.
You've recommended tenant advocates who would represent those with mental illness who are appearing before the tribunal. Do you see this tribunal possibly developing into almost a quasi-court? I think of the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal as another example where government has attempted to demystify the process somewhat and wound up creating something that was even more complex. I just wonder if you could expound on that a little bit.
Mr Stevenson: I'm not sure. I would certainly not, and our organization certainly would not, want to see something become more complex. For many of our clients who are very vulnerable, the amount of stress in a situation such as appealing an eviction notice can cause them a relapse. We want to ensure that whatever process the tribunal puts in place is simplified and reduces that level of stress. That's in part why we see the need for advocates. As much as many of our clients who have serious mental illness require clarity and someone to advocate to demystify and put into simple language the type of situation or process or law that they're dealing with, they also need someone to provide them with emotional support, because very often, as I said, they can experience increased symptoms and often lose the ability to advocate for themselves. So whatever process is put in place, we would like to see it simplified.
Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): Thank you for your presentation. You're concerned about the people who have mental problems, and I understand from statistics that up to one in ten in their lifetime could be affected by that. When you're looking at the legislation coming through, is this going to make rental accommodation more available with the type of legislation that you see here?
Mr Stevenson: I do not see that at all. My concern and the concern of our organization is that rental accommodation will become more scarce, particularly affordable accommodation. I have a concern about the communication with or the lack of coordination with policies in other ministries. Certainly the Ministry of Health is currently leading mental health reform, a 10-year process to downsize psychiatric hospitals and institutions. Many of those people are very vulnerable and require supportive housing, require affordable housing. I'm not sure how those people are going to be housed in a community like Windsor when rental accommodation is going to become even more scarce and affordable accommodation has become much more scarce.
Mrs Julia Munro (Durham-York): I would like to ask you a little about issues you raise. For instance, you talk about vulnerable tenants, and you also have a question regarding the ability of landlords and tenants to negotiate rent increases, that it would be difficult, obviously, for tenants who are vulnerable. What this suggests to me is that you see a distinction between people who are or who are not vulnerable. Is that fair to say?
Mr Stevenson: I don't think the law should distinguish between them. However, my organization represents people who are vulnerable, people who have serious mental illness, and that is my greatest concern.
The Chair: I'm sorry, we've run out of time. I'm sorry to cut people off, but we've got to keep moving. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for coming here and making a presentation to the committee.
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CITIZEN ADVOCACY WINDSOR-ESSEX
The Chair: The next presenters are Joyce Zuk and Nimali Gamage, who are speaking on behalf of Citizen Advocacy Windsor-Essex. Good morning.
Ms Joyce Zuk: Good morning. I'm sure by this stage in the hearings you've heard it all, but we are grateful for the opportunity to appear before you this morning and to speak specifically for the clients we represent. My name is Joyce Zuk, and I'm the executive director of Citizen Advocacy Windsor-Essex. With me this morning is Nimali Gamage, who has prepared the presentation on behalf of our agency and our clients.
As I mentioned, we are pleased to have the opportunity to address you and to take part in the process of community hearings. As an advocacy organization, we advocate for community hearings.
At this time, we'd like to provide you with a very brief overview of our agency and explain how some of the sections of Bill 96 we believe have the potential to adversely affect our clients. Given the stage in the hearings, we are going to keep our comments very brief. We just want to highlight sections of the act which we feel directly affect our client group.
Citizen Advocacy is a non-profit organization that provides non-legal advocacy to seniors and adults with disabilities in the community. Citizen Advocacy Windsor-Essex began its program in 1974. Our agency first focused on adults with developmental disabilities, but soon expanded its focus to all people with disabilities and those experiencing problems due to aging.
In May 1982, a permanent office was opened in the community. Today the program supports individuals with developmental, physical and psychiatric disabilities, as well as seniors throughout Windsor and Essex county. Our clientele is comprised of individuals who are at least 18 years of age and have a physical, psychiatric or developmental disability and/or are a senior. These individuals are eligible for our program if they are socially isolated and lack support systems. This means that friends and family members are not available to provide support on a regular basis, and our clients are often unable to speak on their own behalf and therefore require an advocate.
In such cases our organization aims to help our clients integrate into the community, guard against discrimination or exploitation and assist them with practical needs. In 1996, 39% of our clients required assistance with matters pertaining to rental housing. Our organization believes that certain aspects of the proposed Tenant Protection Act will drastically hinder the quality of life for all tenants but especially for our clients who are most vulnerable to a power imbalance in favour of landlords. The proposed changes we believe undoubtedly disadvantage those individuals who require affordable housing and those who are on a fixed income. A majority of our clients fall into this category since many seniors and people with disabilities are unable to work.
Our brief will outline the various sections of the proposed Tenant Protection Act that we believe will adversely affect seniors and adults with disabilities and specifically in our community. I now turn the mike over to Nimali Gamage.
Ms Nimali Gamage: The proposed Tenant Protection Act makes a change to the Human Rights Code to allow landlords to check a tenant's credit rating and their level and type of income when they apply for an apartment. As mentioned before, a majority of our clients receive public assistance as a result of their age or disability. This change to the legislation will allow landlords to refuse housing to a majority of our clients solely because they receive public assistance. This practice discriminates against our clients because it jeopardizes their chance to find affordable housing on the basis of their disability and/or age.
The Tenant Protection Act makes it easier for landlords to evict tenants. Eviction notices no longer have to provide details of the reasons for eviction in most cases. Therefore, it will be harder for tenants to stop evictions where the landlord is trying to get back at them for exercising their rights and easier for landlords to start the eviction process without any substantial reason.
Under the Tenant Protection Act, agreements to terminate no longer have to be in writing for a landlord to proceed with an eviction. The landlord need only swear that the tenant agreed to leave. This change to the legislation is of concern to our clients who are vulnerable and may therefore be unjustly evicted and may not fully understand that they could have attested the eviction or how they could have done so. Therefore, the potential for abuse is present.
Under the Tenant Protection Act, care home landlords may force tenants out because they want to repair or renovate the home. In such cases landlords are required only to make reasonable efforts to find appropriate alternative accommodation for care home tenants. Our concern with this part of the legislation is that it does not specify what accommodation is considered appropriate and it does not define what would be a reasonable effort by the landlord. As a result of such vagueness, we fear that our clients who reside in care facilities will be forced to live in inadequate housing during times of renovation or repair or be forced to secure alternative housing without support or assistance.
Perhaps the biggest concern of the Tenant Protection Act for our clients is that it removes many of the existing financial protections for tenants. When a tenant moves out of an apartment, there will be no legal limit on the amount of rent the landlord can charge the next tenant. Consequently, new units will be exempt from rent control forever. Landlords will be looking for reasons to evict current tenants so that they can increase the rent for the incoming tenant. Fewer units will have the utilities included in the rent and tenants will have to compete with each other for accommodation.
Our clients will be adversely affected by this part of the legislation because a majority of them have a fixed income. Many of our clients are receiving public assistance because they are unable to work as a result of either their disability or their age. These clients do not have the option of getting a second job in order to afford an increase in rent. In other words, they do not have the resources to compete for accommodation.
The provisions for a housing tribunal in the Tenant Protection Act do not enhance the already existing rent control tribunal. It does nothing to make the tribunal more accessible to the public. There is no mention of any services that encourage accessibility, leaving the issue entirely up to how the government sets up the tribunal and whether it funds it adequately.
Our organization feels that this lack of concern for making the tribunal accessible is a blatant disregard for people who are limited as a result of their age or disability. Many of our clients encounter limitations in dealing with the practical aspects of daily life. Sometimes they are cut off from association, opportunities and even their fundamental rights. As a result, they have become isolated from the rest of society. The inaccessibility of this tribunal exacerbates such circumstances of isolation.
In conclusion, we urge this committee to re-examine Bill 96 in the light of the issues we, along with many others, have raised. We cannot forget that when amending or making rules, regulations and laws that govern our society, we must keep the needs of those who are the most vulnerable at the forefront in the process to ensure that those who are unable to guard against discrimination are protected.
Thank you for allowing us this opportunity to contribute to these hearings.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for your presentation. I get the impression that the feeling of not only your group but others is that this legislation is really an attack on vulnerable people, the disabled and the elderly. When you compare what happened from 1986 to 1990, when Liberal legislation allowed rents to go up 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% at a time, now we're seeing legislation that could be an attack on that section of society and leave them very vulnerable. What's your feeling on that?
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Ms Zuk: The point we want to emphasize this morning, as our colleague from CMHA stated just prior to us, is that we're dealing with a group whose income is fixed, and as it stands now, it doesn't have the potential to go up. That's not going to change. The income level of our clients is not going to change and there is a great potential for rents to go up. We believe we're dealing with a situation where people are going to be in competition to find not only affordable housing but adequate housing. We don't want to talk about affordable and adequate in two separate debates, because they're one and the same. Affordable housing has to be adequate housing too. I think we need to have a whole discussion around the issue of what adequate housing is, what a reasonable standard of living is for people.
Mr Len Wood: The way I see it could happen is that landlords, with very little notification, could give people notice to move. As they're looking around for other accommodation, the number of homeless people could continue to increase, because as they're evicted from their apartment and shop around for another one, the rents are going up. We know that people move out of rental accommodation at least every five years, some more often than that. Now that we have the right to evict, where do these people end up? They have 60 days to get out and it takes them six months to find other rental accommodation.
Ms Zuk: You have identified the fact that we already have a homeless problem in this province and that could increase. What we see at our agency more often than not is that people are living in substandard housing, and that's something that greatly concerns us. They're living in illegal apartments, illegal basement flats, and the level of housing -- I really wish I could have brought photos or taken you all for a day with us to see some of the conditions our clients are living in. I think you would be shocked.
Mr Len Wood: I guess the same thing applies in Windsor as applies in Toronto or other communities, the conditions of a lot of the apartments if you want something you can afford, if you're disabled or on a fixed income, and you also try to keep enough money for food and whatever. Some of the conditions existing now are bad. Is allowing landlords to increase the rent, and letting them use eviction notices and that, going to help the situation? Is there going to be more rental accommodation available?
Ms Zuk: In our community, I would say not. The government has stated that increased competition for housing will force the rents to actually go down and landlords will have to get competitive to compete. Perhaps in some scenarios that would work, but in our community of Windsor and Essex county, where there is already a shortage of rental units, when we're talking about a vulnerable population that is not always informed of what their rights are, this act does not have a lot of protections for that client group.
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): Thank you both for taking the time to make your presentation this morning. I would like to follow up on an inference Mr Wood has just made, that the status quo is clearly not acceptable to your group. You talk about inadequate housing for many of the people you're serving. You're talking about waiting lists. You're talking about problems that exist in landlord-tenant relationships. Would you agree with me that there are problems that exist in housing?
Ms Zuk: Yes.
Mr Gilchrist: Well, that's a good starting point. Let me deal with a couple of the things in your submission. I think it's quite unfortunate that certain lobby groups have been going around spreading information that, to be kind and parliamentary, has to be described as disinformation or misinformation.
First off, all evictions will have to continue to provide the reasons 100%. That doesn't change. The problem between oral and written tenancy agreements exists today. This act doesn't change that in the slightest. But what it does do now is provide for a 10-day setoff period for the tenant. The tenant, once notified that they've been evicted or that the tribunal has ruled in favour of the landlord, will have an additional 10 days now to respond and to go back to the tribunal if he or she disagrees with the original ruling or did not even get a notice of the landlord's first appeal. That's not a right that exists today.
Perhaps the most troubling of all the points in your submission and one that I really must take a minute to rebut is that somehow the addition of -- the comment about income check is that it's taking away a right.
It's adding another protection. In Ontario today, it is absolutely, positively legal for a landlord to ask for your income. There is nothing in the Human Rights Code that prevents it. There's nothing in any other statute that prevents it. The problem is that because it is not mentioned in the Human Rights Code, a landlord today can use that information to discriminate against you. He can't use the source of your income. That's provided in the code, and that stays. If you're on government assistance, the landlord cannot use that as a rationale to deny you accommodation. But he can use income today.
This bill puts it in the code and states quite explicitly -- a lot of people dwell on the first section of our section 200 of the bill, but they conveniently ignore that there's a part (2) that says the regulations will then prescribe the only manner in which the landlord can use that. That's wording similar to what's in the code today about things such as source of income. The irony is that the groups coming before us and saying, "Don't include this in the act," would perpetuate a system where a landlord can ask for the information and can discriminate with impunity.
We believe that putting it in there is essential for one very simple reason: Many people have come before this committee and talked about the situation where a woman may have left an abusive situation, where the husband may have had all the credit history and may have signed all the leases in the past, so there's no tenant history either. The groups have said, "We believe it's appropriate for landlords to be able to ask for credit checks and to ask for tenancy history and to make their judgement on the basis of what they hear." For that woman coming forward, the credit check would come up negative or non-existent and the tenancy history would come up negative or non-existent. The landlord, they've submitted, would then have the right to deny them accommodation, even if that woman is gainfully employed and is earning a good income. Clearly, it's in the interest of people to have that weapon in their arsenal, and we think this adds another protection.
Mr Duncan: Well, we think your arguments are spurious and don't reflect the reality. I'd like to quote from the presentation that the chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission made to this committee, the Honourable Keith Norton, who had been a member of the Davis government and was appointed by your government.
"In the commission's experience, single mothers on public assistance will not be the only ones to suffer should income criteria be implemented. Income criteria will severely restrict housing opportunities for seniors, persons with disabilities, refugees and new immigrants, teenagers and countless other disadvantaged persons. The commission presently has three distinct cases before the board of inquiry," and it goes on.
The point is that neither the commission nor too many other people argue that a landlord ought not to be able to check credit rating and so on, but income source will clearly discriminate against the poor and the vulnerable.
I want to come back to a couple of questions related to your presentation. I'd like to point out to the government members that we have had countless presentations now from people who have a certain expertise in the process and the procedure, and generally -- for instance, the Halton Hills Legal Clinic yesterday talked about mandatory disputes in writing, times for filing disputes, all of which prejudice particularly vulnerable clients.
My experience in these matters is that the current system of dispute is very burdensome and very difficult, even for those who have some expertise to understand. As advocates for the vulnerable, do you see a need for improvement in that? You've expressed concerns about what the government has presented. I'd be curious to know if you have other ideas, things that could make this system work better for your clients and others who find the whole system very cumbersome.
Ms Zuk: We were in favour of the Advocacy Act, which would provide for a network of advocates province-wide to represent vulnerable people in situations, and perhaps that of rental problems could have been one. But yes, the problem is very onerous. As I mentioned to you, 39% of our clients last year requested assistance with problems pertaining to rental properties where they were living. Most of those cases we had to refer out to legal assistance of Windsor or the bilingual legal clinic, because for an agency like ours that's assisting vulnerable persons in a number of areas, it's very difficult to keep on top of legislation, processes, and in fact that's not our role. It's to help vulnerable individuals get connected to service. But I know the clinics are doing an excellent job to assist clients such as ours to resolve problems.
But yes, the process is a long one, and if it eventually is one where you have to go to court, and now the proposal of the housing tribunal, any process like that is intimidating to someone who isn't always fully aware of their rights and is trying to access a system where they've not been able to access such basic things as affordable housing, adequate food. Hooking people up to services is our business, and we can tell you that people who have disabilities and seniors have a difficult time hooking up to service.
The Chair: Ms Zuk, Ms Gamage, unfortunately we are out of time, but we thank you for coming and making your presentation to the committee.
Ms Zuk: Thank you very much.
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ESSEX LANDLORD AND LANDLADIES ASSOCIATION
The Chair: The next presenter is Don Barratt of the Essex Landlord and Landladies Association. Good morning, sir. You may proceed when ready.
Mr Don Barratt: Good morning. Landlords have a very tough time trying to keep their costs down, to keep the rents low. I have spoken before to the ministry about the problem. We have no control over property taxes, and the municipalities tax us higher than they do regular houses, and town houses are taxed higher than comparable private or government-financed buildings.
Hydro: That's a government body. They charge landlords 8.65 cents per kilowatt, but they charge tenants or house owners 8.02. So the landlord is paying more than anybody else, which has to be added on to the rent somewhere, especially as they are providing all the utilities in that building, and there are many like that in Windsor. Until recently, public utilities commissions and Hydro forced landlords to pay the bill of tenants who refused to pay. A lot of people don't know that, but that's a fact. Landlords took a municipality to court and the judge agreed that it was against their rights, and that's been changed now.
We need the same rights as government-subsidized co-ops, etc. Let landlords have a security deposit of $500 for each unit, regardless of the monthly rent, to keep it simple. So $500 right across the province -- scrap the last month's deposit, which can be only used for rent -- with the $500 to be paid to the Ministry of Housing for safekeeping. If the tenant claims a repair is too high, the Ministry of Housing sends out an inspector to estimate it. This plan is very simple and will protect tenants. It will keep everyone's costs down, including the rent. Tenants wouldn't break leases or do damage if there was a deposit in place like that.
I spoke about this to Dave Cooke, NDP, and he didn't even consider it. I strongly urge the Ministry of Housing to implement this. I think a lot of the decent tenants would be happy to only have to put up $500 instead of $800 to equal the last month's rent. The ministry could even get the interest on it, instead of the wicked landlord getting 3% or 2.5%, whatever it is.
My other point is that Ontario Housing is sucking away our tenants, because the rents are much lower and everything is much nicer: newer appliances; you won't even see a dandelion in the lawn on an Ontario Housing unit. There are many, many people in there who should not be. They are overhoused. I know for a fact there are single people in three-bedroom houses, and the taxpayer is subsidizing that unit maybe $12,500, $13,000 a year because the tiny rent they pay hardly covers the taxes, let alone anything else. There are even single people in three-bedroom houses. Single mothers with a tiny baby who should be in a one-bedroom unit get a 1,000-square-foot house. So please don't try to say there's a housing shortage in this province. I've been in this province 40 years and I've had property in different cities, and I think developers have done a wonderful job providing accommodation for tenants.
Rent increases: If the controls are scrapped, that's absolute nonsense. I've got a few figures here. Any politician is welcome to come to my office and check my rent roll. Some of you have this sheet I'm reading from.
January 1993, unit 6: I was charging $522 a month; May 1997, $530. Eight dollars gone up in four years. Now where does this gouging landlord business come in? The legal rent for that unit is $644, and I'm only charging $530. If you scrap the rents today, my rents will not go up a nickel.
Unit 31, January 1994, I was charging $685. May 1997, I was charging $629. It went down. It didn't even go up. The legal rent for that unit is $1,100, and I'm charging $629. I wonder why. I'll tell you why. The subsidized units are sucking away my tenants.
May 1993, unit 38, I was charging $640. Guess what? May 1997: $600. It dropped $40. The legal rent is $908. I really don't know why you have all these hearings right across the country costing taxpayers millions of dollars. All you've got to do is go to the files of the Ministry of Housing and look at where landlords have been asking for raises because their mortgage jumped up multi-thousands of dollars with people who are screwing off owing money.
This new legislation fining landlords $50,000 for harassing tenants: I've never harassed a tenant in my life. Mind you, if I knock on their door once a week for a month because they owe the rent, some of them call that harassing. The tenants should be fined $50,000 for harassing the landlords or other tenants. I don't see that. I've heard all these crybabies about discrimination. We're the most discriminated people in the province. You're charging a landlord $50,000 for harassing a tenant. The tenant can do it for free. Where is the justice here?
The pet law: Scrap the law forcing landlords to take in pets -- snakes, pigs, large dogs and whatever they fancy. The legislation says "pets." It doesn't say a pussycat. It could even be a tiger. That's what we have to put up with, and it upsets the other tenants, not just the landlord.
A few weeks ago I had to repair a roof of a house. It was a decent day, not raining, so it was essential to do it during working hours. It was about 11 am. The tenant objected to me working on the roof. It wasn't a big job; it was only a half-hour job. She said: "The baby's sleeping. It's going to disturb the baby." I said: "Look, it's working hours. It's a nice day. I have to do it while I've got the chance. There's no problem. Just take the baby downstairs in the living room." I had a helper with me, thank God. So she was kind of ticked off. We got the ladder up and I started to climb the ladder. What does she do? She ran up the stairs, pulled the drapes back and took off her shirt, and I'm climbing up the ladder and this hit me right in the eye. I'm not 21 any more. I almost had a bloody heart attack and fell off the ladder. That bitch should be fined $50,000. That's harassment. It wouldn't cost her a nickel. She came down and told my helper: "The landlord's a pervert. He was looking at me in the bedroom." He was my witness. These are the things you have to put up with.
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If you put in legislation that a landlord could be fined $50,000, let's have equal rights here. The tenants should be charged for harassment. It's very, very rare that a landlord harasses tenants. I don't know why he would harass his customers. I've never heard of Eaton's training their staff to call the customers names and harass them. Landlords don't either. Naturally, if they don't pay the rent, they have to get an eviction notice. That's not harassment. Asking for rent is not harassment, but that's the type of thing we have to put up with.
A lot of these people will say, "Well, if the landlord is losing money and he's so persecuted, why doesn't he sell the building?" Take a look at this. These are real estate facts and figures, this whole page here. There are 80 apartment buildings listed; there are five sold. All the rest of the buildings expired. There's another page: 80 listed, five sold, all expired. There are no lineups of people to buy these places.
I'm amazed at all the stories I hear and these people here that are crying the blues, how rich the landlords are, making a fortune. The only way I make it is to work 80 hours a week. My place is up for sale, but no takers. I did have a building in Cambridge which was sold, thank God, but that building was a real pain. I had it a year and a half. The mortgage jumped from 10.5% up to 18.5%. That was I think 1982 or 1981.
I couldn't rush out and give everybody a raise in the rent to cover the mortgage. I was losing at least $50 on each unit. I didn't see that in the paper. What I should have done was walked away from the building and let the bank take it over, but I didn't. I wish I had now. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that this is not an easy business even without controls, but when we get kicked from one side to the other by different politicians, it's pretty rough. I say we should have an equal playing field.
Why not give us the same rules as the co-ops? They can charge a key deposit, a damage deposit and last month's rent, the whole kit and caboodle. We can only ask for one month's rent. Many times we don't even get it because we're desperate to get somebody to take an empty unit. We let them in without the last month's rent, and then half the time they take off owing it.
There are some more facts and figures here.
Social housing: Subsidized housing is expensive. The Provincial Auditor -- this is not a landlord group that put this together -- estimates the annual money on a unit as $12,500 per year. My God, why don't you give the person $12,500 so he can go buy a house? It would be cheaper. Mr Harris had the right idea when he said he was going to copy the British method to sell off all the Ontario Housing to the tenants.
Here's a glaring case. My goodness, these people would be happy to buy. Sell it to them without a down payment, 100% mortgage. This is what they're doing in Britain with these units. They're selling them at a bargain price, but I think myself it would be much cheaper to give these people $12,000 than give them a unit. You could have something so you could get it back or if they screw up they'll never get another house. I'm sure there are better ways than sucking the taxpayers dry: $12,500. I could go on and on and on.
What the landlords have been pushing for is to subsidize our units just like you're subsidizing the co-ops. The estimate would be between $1,500 and $3,000 a year. That's a vast, vast difference from the $12,500.
This lady that was recently up here trying to put her case forward about people that have disabilities, if there's a shortage in the government buildings, why not ask the landlord if they would take them on and give them this subsidy of $3,000 or $4,000? It's still cheaper than building a brand-new unit and putting them in there. The landlords have so many vacancies, they'd be happy to take these people in, providing that they're sure of the rent, of course.
I hear a lady saying some of these people are not completely healthy in their head because they're mentally retarded. It would be very difficult for a regular landlord to be able to look after that person, but I suppose if you gave them a supplement, it could be done.
Laughter.
Mr Barratt: I'm sorry. I must have made a joke here.
Mr Gilchrist: There's a hyena in the room.
The Chair: Let's have some order, please. Mr Barratt, you have two minutes.
Mr Barratt: Two minutes?
The Chair: Yes, sir.
Mr Barratt: As I said about the social housing, there are a lot of people in there that are not in need. It's greed. There's a big difference between need and greed. There are many cases -- I may be repeating myself here, but 1,000 square feet for one person is ridiculous. I think if you went through your books with this social housing and checked how many people are in these units, you might be able to save yourselves some money.
The Chair: Mr Barratt, thank you very much for coming and making your comments to the committee this morning.
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WINDSOR ESSEX LOW INCOME FAMILIES TOGETHER
The Chair: The next presenters represent Windsor Essex Low Income Families Together: Christine Wilson and Mary Seaton.
Ms Christine Wilson: Good morning. I think first I'm going to request that the Chair ask this landlord for an apology for calling women in this room necessarily, and all female tenants in this province, bitches. You may have called us to order, but we are very offended. I think that is part of your duty, and I really am serious. I would like that apology, or at least your request for that apology.
The Chair: Ma'am, I don't think he's here. He has gone.
Ms Wilson: That's unfortunate. He's probably lucky he left.
I have a couple of comments I'd like to make regarding his presentation in the first place too. One, I feel it's very unfortunate that a lot of his tenants happen to have pet tigers. If this committee wants to believe that, go right ahead. I have questions about his request for a $500 deposit that should be paid by the tenants across the province, as he stated, so that if a landlord doesn't do repairs, the government can take this $500 that the tenant paid and repair his place. I think that's ludicrous. I hope you don't take any suggestion like that seriously at all. That's quite ridiculous.
Now to get past his little bit, because that really did ruffle my feathers, WELIFT is our group. We're the Windsor Essex Low Income Families Together. We formed three years ago. Our group formed in response to government cuts. We knew that this government of Ontario was going to attack the most vulnerable in this province. We had no doubt about it, and we have seen it in every area. We have seen it in health, education and welfare. Even this new bill is another attack on the poor.
We're not here just to yell at you but hopefully to educate you about who these people are who are in our group and who tenants really are, the low-income tenants. Low-income tenants are seniors, the disabled, the working poor, social service recipients, students and people who are among the artistic community. These are people who generally do not have a lot of money and cannot afford rent increases that are outrageous. In our group right now, we currently have 105 families. There are a lot of children in our group who are not counted in that 105 number; that's the adults only counted. A lot of these children will suffer if their parents have to move into smaller accommodations.
Mary Seaton, who is our membership coordinator, is going to talk more on some of the fine points. My job is really to stress to you who low-income tenants are and why you have to be very cautious when you make any changes that can affect us.
Last year a member of this committee -- I believe it's all the same members; I'm not sure -- asked me, "Don't landlords have a right to make money?" I thought that was really a strange question. Landlords do have a right to profit, of course, but I think any landlord with any intelligence, when they invest in the rental market, has to realize that they are going to make their money over a long term. Any landlord who expects to see a profit overnight is being ridiculous in the first place, and that shouldn't be a burden placed on tenants. When you buy into that kind of business, you know that it's going to take time before you see your money back.
If we look at the duplex situation, a lot of tenants are essentially paying the mortgage for the landlord. Is it really fair for those landlords then to expect the tenant to pay for all their other living costs? I don't think so.
I hear repeatedly from different areas of the government that the tenant is not the taxpayer. Landlords cry about all the taxes they pay, but that tax is collected from the tenant. The tenant is actually the taxpayer, and tenants do vote and tenants do have a right to keep insisting. If I am wrong on that fact, why is there a thing called a rent rebate? I know what I'm talking about. The tenant is the taxpayer; the landlord is an agent for the government in that sense to collect the tax. So I think we should stop looking at the landlord as the poor taxpayer. That offends tenants, because it's not really true.
When we look at a lot of issues in this bill, we're looking at things that we fear for people in our group. Our group is a vulnerable group of people who don't always know how to exercise their rights. I looked at certain issues in this that I thought are generally going to confuse people greatly. It's going to upset a lot of people, and it is very pro-landlord. I think this committee really should pay heed to what we're trying to express, that it is very dangerous to give so much power to the landlords, to take so much away from the tenants. I think we deserve more respect. The fact that we are the taxpayers should give us that respect.
I'd like to introduce you now to Mary Seaton, who would like to speak on some of the finer points of this bill.
Ms Mary Seaton: Good morning. I'm going to talk about how it affects the people. The people we have mentioned -- seniors, people on disability and social assistance, people with families who are earning low-income wages, students and members of the artistic community -- are all in this very sensitive group, and they have one thing in common: They have a limited amount of dollars to spend, and the budget that is available to them is having more and more demands made upon it.
I sit on the Windsor-Essex County Food Safety Steering Committee, which has had a Trillium grant. It will very shortly, in early September, issue a report pointing out that any extra money that has to be spent on rent and any other facilities always comes from the food budget and that there are going to be more and more people who are going to definitely be hungry because of this, because of the demands on a very fixed income. It doesn't matter whether it is earned income or comes from the province or is a student grant; there will be hunger. It also will mean that if rents go up greatly and the availability of affordable safe housing becomes less and less through this act, there is going to be a rapid deterioration in the bottom part of the income of the community. People are going to move in together. There is going to be an increase in domestic violence. There is going to be an increase in child abuse, woman abuse and a general deterioration of health. So it is discriminatory.
The other things that really make me anxious are the proponents that -- I understand from your Chairman that this is coming under the area of disinformation, but the allowing of landlords to sell tenants' property. I see this as a very real problem with elderly seniors who are confused and with people who have mental illness. They don't always tell people when they go into hospital, and some people don't have relatives. They may go away for a period and it may look to be that the apartment is abandoned, and it isn't.
I sit on a seniors' apartment non-profit, and we had a lady who was in a car accident. She didn't have any relatives. She's a single person. She was hospitalized, and until the police came and told us, nobody had any idea that she was in hospital. These kinds of things can happen, and this is where people will fall through the cracks. Some protection has to be afforded them.
I don't see landlords as that aggressive or that desperate that they are going to go off and seize people's possessions immediately an eviction order is made. Hopefully there is some civil agreement between landlord and tenant to give them a decent time frame to get out. But I do worry about the extremes of the old and the mentally ill. We have a member in our group who has a mental illness. He disappears off the face of the planet from time to time, and it takes time to find him and see that he is okay. This is one of the people who comes under this vulnerable section.
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The other people who are very vulnerable are children. If they're not living in safe environments and do not have access to playgrounds, they do become a problem. Children are like all things young: They need space to run and space for exercise. If they are cooped up and are in intolerable conditions, they do become a problem, as anybody knows who's had three children in a car on a four-hour journey.
These are the kinds of problems that the act is going to make much more difficult for people who have fixed incomes. With the cutbacks that have come in rent and with the cutbacks and the wish of this government to get out of non-profit housing and Ontario Housing, the affordability of family housing for a lot of low-income families is becoming less and less. It's no longer going to be a dream that you're going to have your own place.
The other thing that is very difficult is with students. If the university or the college does not have its own properties and they all team up, because of the changes in OSAP, they are going to have less and less money disposable for their rent and there is going to be a problem there. They're already going to come out of university with a whopping great bill around their neck to pay for it, and so this is another area where people are going to have difficulties.
With evictions and the changes in the rules, unless these are very clearly stated, people are going to become extremely confused. People do not understand and people can very easily be harassed. People on the whole are very frightened of their landlords and see them as a threat. It doesn't matter if your landlord is very well intentioned, because it's a threat to your security, especially if you're not quite sure of what he's talking about. A lot of people, with this new eviction status, are going to see, if the landlord gives them a notice and they can come in and have it viewed, that they have to get out, and they may well abandon their buildings without going through the formal usage.
So a lot of education has to be done in this field to explain what this bill actually means, because as it is coming down, it is reading very terrifying and very anti-tenant.
I don't think I have any more issues that I can address at the moment.
The Chair: Does that conclude your remarks?
Ms Seaton: Yes.
The Chair: We have time for some questions, if you prefer to entertain questions.
Mrs Munro: Thank you very much. I wanted to directly comment on a number of issues that you've raised. One of the ones that Ms Wilson referred to was the issue of the tenant as a taxpayer, and certainly I'm very much aware of that. I wondered whether or not you would favour the direction that we've taken in terms of the direct flow of that tax bill so that tenants do know and see this; it's something that isn't a hidden issue.
Ms Wilson: I think tenants need to be informed more that they are the taxpayer. It has to be accepted more by government as well, because very often we've heard repeatedly about the poor landlord as the taxpayer, and this has been the myth that's been perpetuated for a long time.
Mrs Munro: That's why I really wanted to address that issue, because of course it is the intent then that this would be very clear for the tenant, that there would be that flow-through.
Ms Wilson: I think, though, that would fit in with what Mary is saying. If the government is insistent on the package it's trying to put out, although we're still going to have problems with a lot of this, there has to be an education package that the government is willing to pay for. Every landlord in this province would have to have, in layman's terms, an easily read document as well, which is something the government finds hard to produce, and each and every portion of this would then have to be interpreted so that it could be understood by the tenants and by the landlords. That's a problem we often face in a lot of areas.
Mrs Munro: I certainly appreciate that as a recommendation. Absolutely.
The other thing is, you raised the issue of abandonment. I just wondered, because of course the point of view of the government is how to strike a balance: Where does the responsibility of one begin and the other end? I wondered if you had a suggestion in terms of what you see as a time period that's appropriate. Any comments there?
Ms Seaton: With abandonment, I think if the rent is paid, and this often happens, then the landlord has to get together with either a lawyer or somebody who acts for the resident. I know when we have trouble in our seniors' building, there is a little unit that goes into action which acts as the property manager, an advocate for the resident, and also a member of the resident's family if they have one, and they come to some conclusion. I think something like that should go into force and there should be -- I'm not saying a huge time frame. I'm looking at, say, 90 days or something like that.
Mrs Munro: With the rent paid.
Ms Seaton: Yes.
Ms Wilson: Could I add something to that briefly? Recently in Windsor, a family was really distressed by our Windsor Housing Authority because their parent had died and the Windsor Housing Authority went in and changed the locks. They could not even get their father's clothing to bury him in. They had to borrow articles of clothing to bury the poor man in. I think there has to be something here. If even an agency like Windsor Housing Authority feels it has the right to lock up that property from the relatives, there's something big missing here. I don't think any of us would think it's appropriate to bury our father in borrowed clothing.
We have some big problems already. I think mediators have to be assigned, and that's where a lot of us keep asking for advocates in a lot of these things. We need advocate services, and the government should be funding advocate services that can look at problems like that and address them. That was a very serious and very heartbreaking situation for that family.
The Chair: I'm sorry. If we're going to allow the other side to ask questions, we have to move on. Mr Duncan.
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton): On a point of privilege, Mr Chair: Very briefly, I find the comment made by the previous presenter inappropriate and offensive. I want that on the record.
Ms Wilson: Thank you.
Mr Duncan: Ditto that for the official opposition.
Christine and Mary, thank you for presenting today. You've made a compelling case about the effect that Bill 96 will have on low-income people and people who are financially distressed and otherwise distressed.
I just wanted to point out a couple of things to you that were contained in the government's own study, called the Todd report. It was commissioned by the government in 1996, and Todd concluded that after rent control is gone, the owners of low- and mid-priced buildings will attempt to raise rents to market levels as quickly as possible. Full decontrol will result in pressure to increase rents for most buildings with rents below $900 a month. Those are the buildings where the people that you deal with and represent will be most affected. Chronically depressed rent units, ie, those buildings where the poor and those who have less resources live, can be expected to undergo the largest increases in rent. Large rent increases will produce a high turnover of tenants. I come back to the presentation by the Windsor chapter of the Canadian Mental Health Association where they talked about the stress on those individuals.
I wanted to just focus a very short answer from you. In your view --
The Chair: We're almost out of time. Mr Wood won't have a chance.
Mr Duncan: -- this will decrease available housing for poor people. Is that a proper paraphrasing of what you've argued today?
Ms Wilson: Yes.
The Chair: Mr Wood, you've got hardly any time at all.
Mr Len Wood: Just a comment then. I find very distressful and shocking the example you used -- and it could be anyone's relative -- that a landlord would even think of locking up the place and not allowing people to get the proper clothing. I'm sure there are all kinds of examples of this happening right across the province. You gave one from Windsor. Is this legislation going to improve that situation?
Ms Wilson: No, we don't believe so. We really believe there has to be an advocacy service.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Wilson and Ms Seaton. Unfortunately, we've run out of time, but thank you for coming.
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HIATUS HOUSE
The Chair: The next presenter is Donna Miller of Hiatus House. Good morning, Ms Miller.
Ms Donna Miller: Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. I'm the executive director of Hiatus House, which is a multiservice agency related to issues of domestic violence. I'm not going to spend a great deal of time explaining our organization to you except to say that we are a 42-bed crisis shelter for battered women and their children. In addition to our emergency shelter services we have a number of other program areas, which include group therapy for battered women, for male batterers, as well as for children and youth. Within our emergency shelter program we also have a specific program for child witnesses of domestic assault.
I would like to give you some basic program statistics for this last fiscal year, and then I will move on and address my remarks specifically to how we see this particular piece of legislation potentially impacting on victims of domestic violence, child victims of domestic assault specifically.
This last year we had 395 battered women admitted to Hiatus House with their 410 children. In addition to those persons, we provided crisis intervention services for another 3,164 women. Within our city group program we had 242 women. We had 88 women access our group therapy program in the Essex county area, outside the city of Windsor, and 193 men who had been violent in their intimate relationships in therapy with us. In addition to these direct service programs, we of course are involved in public education services, police education and training and so on, in a variety of different areas.
Wife assault or spouse assault, or whatever term any of us choose to use, is a pervasive problem within our society. Statistics Canada reported back in 1993 that one in four married women were assaulted by their husbands. This figure is even greater if we consider only those women who have been "married" or lived within the context of a common-law relationship. Within this study the most prevalent forms of marital violence were pushing, grabbing and shoving, followed by threats, followed by slapping, throwing objects, kicking, biting, hitting and hitting with fists. A significant number of women also reported being beaten up, sexually assaulted -- and here I am not talking about sexual assault by stranger; I am talking about sexual assault within the context of a sexually intimate relationship -- choked, hit with something, having a gun or knife used against them.
Our concerns with regard to the new Tenant Protection Act: Women who decide to leave abusive relationships are essentially homeless, and without shelters for battered women and their children, such as prior to Hiatus House starting in 1976 -- at that point in time I was working in the area of child welfare; I have been with Hiatus House since 1976 -- there were no places for victims of domestic violence to safely go to with their children.
When we talk about safety, I want to be very clear that within the context of our organization and a building that was specifically built in 1989 for victims of domestic assault and their children, we have a security system that is incredibly sophisticated and we have bullet laminate on all of the at-floor windows within the agency. We are talking here already about a situation that is very much life and death. I want to put that in context as we talk about victims of domestic assault being essentially homeless in the first place. Therefore, they are in immediate need of affordable housing.
Consequently, we believe that the new Tenant Protection Act has a direct, negative impact on abused women and their children, who usually have low incomes and may depend on assistance. Usually, women who are not already in a low-income situation or in a very dependent situation do not present in a publicly funded agency such as Hiatus House. Therefore, if exclusive possession of the matrimonial home is not an option -- and I would also like to remind this committee of other government initiatives that have already created some difficulties for this particular client population, such as within the context of Ontario legal aid. If an abused woman has to seek alternative accommodation for herself and her children, this potentially creates an additional difficulty. Unfortunately, women and their children already face discrimination in a number of situations when landlords become aware of their abusive situations, particularly when they are living temporarily in a shelter, attempting to relocate either as a single person or as a single parent.
Dianne Cunningham, minister responsible for women's issues, announced on July 2 the Ontario government's prevention of violence against women Agenda for Action plan. To quote:
"The agenda for action will be coordinated by the Ontario women's directorate in partnership with eight other provincial ministries and their stakeholders. This strategy is intended to combat violence and provide support to women and children who are in crisis as a result of domestic assault, domestic violence.
"'The government's message is clear,' said Cunningham. 'Domestic and sexual violence is a crime and abusers and offenders will be held accountable. Preventing violence against women is everyone's responsibility, and with decisive action, this government is taking its responsibility seriously.'"
I know you're already aware of the $5.5 million and where that money is being assigned, in terms of being spent on prevention and education, improving the justice system, and certainly we're in favour of the justice system being improved. But I think we need to look at the context this particular piece of legislation is being brought forward in.
I would say the implementation of the new Tenant Protection Act, coupled with what we have experienced thus far in a number of ways -- this government's lack of commitment to social housing projects as well as the reduction in welfare assistance and Ontario legal aid -- is inconsistent with the purpose the Ontario government's prevention of violence against women plan states within the context of the Agenda for Action. In fact, it would be fairly easy to anticipate that women, who have already limited choices -- rather than face the impossibility of unaffordable housing, discrimination because of her abusive situation, and then the obstacles of receiving limited financial assistance, many women will choose to stay in violent homes.
Whether you and I might have an understanding of that -- I believe we probably have a different kind of understanding of that than many people. Be that as it may, leaving a violent home is already exceedingly difficult. I have oft-times said that I hope I live long enough to hear the question reversed from, "Why would a woman stay with a man who is violent with her?" to "How is it that she has sufficient courage to pick up and leave a situation?" particularly in those instances where she has children.
Now we will have women potentially also, as prior presenters have already commented on, using money allocated for food, utilities and other necessary items to pay the rent. Under the new act, the landlord may charge, as I understand it, any price for the unit each time a tenant is moving into a vacant unit. This is particularly problematic in cases of domestic violence, since it usually takes several separations and moves from the abusive partner by the woman before deciding to terminate, in a final way, the relationship. Therefore, each time an abused woman leaves her abusive partner, she will be faced potentially with a higher-priced rental unit.
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Further, I believe the financial incentive will potentially motivate landlords to evict tenants in order to increase the rent for that particular unit. This will be a severe roadblock to abused women and their children who are trying to re-establish on their own. I think there are some very good reasons to seriously consider maintaining some form of rent control.
New units being exempt forever: According to the act, units first rented after the legislation comes into force will be exempt forever from rent control. Therefore, a landlord wanting to fill a new building might rent all the units quite reasonably in the first year, then decide to raise the rents significantly the following year. In such a situation, abused women may need, again, to use other sources of allocated dollars to pay the rent. The abused woman may also decide to return to the abusive relationship because, economically, it is simply not feasible to pay rent, utilities and to provide food for herself and children as compared to standing in lines at food banks.
A brief comment about tenants' property, and again I realize that this has already been commented on by the prior presenters: Section 40 of Bill 96 states that the landlord may sell, keep or otherwise dispose of property if the tenant has vacated the unit, but does not, in our opinion, provide an adequate procedure for requiring the landlord to make sure the tenant has vacated the premises. This implies a situation where the landlord can serve a tenant with a notice of termination and the tenant may be an abused woman who has decided to stay away until various legal remedies are in order for her. She may be staying at our shelter or any other shelter, potentially, within the province of Ontario, or she may have been in a position of being able to make private arrangements with family and/or friends. In such cases, the landlord may decide that the woman has vacated the unit and take control of her property.
Bill 96, we believe, should include a comprehensive system governing the manner in which a landlord may deal with property of a tenant. There must be a remedy provided in the bill for tenants or estates who wish to challenge such basic matters as whether the property or the premises has been abandoned. A landlord should be obligated to account for the manner in which the property is dealt with, and there should be a requirement to hold the property for a reasonable period of time.
The above are just a few of the many concerns about the impact of the new Tenant Protection Act that we believe exist in relationship specifically to abused women. This act, as I understand it -- I'm always pleased to be enlightened, but as I understand it, this act really comes across to those of us in this area as a piece of legislation that is much more protective of landlords than it is of tenants.
We have some very good relationships with landlords within this community, as have had some of the women and children and families we have worked with. But I also want to be very clear that we have also had situations where we have been contacted by women in this community directly who have not only experienced significant difficulties with landlords but have also experienced what, in their perception, is indeed abusive behaviour directed towards them and/or their children or youth, by virtue simply of the imbalance in power and control in terms of being a tenant vis-à-vis being a landlord. I want to put out both of those situations, because we certainly have had experiences of both and I think it's important for the committee to hear that.
The new Tenant Protection Act, we believe, gives the landlord more power and more control for those people who are already in an extremely vulnerable position such as abused women and their children. We believe the Tenant Protection Act should be thoroughly reviewed in relation to the negative consequences it potentially will have on those with limited income, who are mostly women and children and youth within the province of Ontario.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. We will be sending you a copy of our printed material. I apologize that I was not able to have that with me today in full form, but we will be sending it in to you.
The Vice-Chair (Mrs Julia Munro): Thank you very much, Ms Miller. We really only have time for one caucus to ask a question. We'll start this round with Mr Duncan.
Mr Duncan: Thank you, Donna, for your presentation. As always, it was very thoughtful.
I wanted to preface the question by a brief comment. Ms Miller is one of the pioneers in our province in assisting battered women and providing shelter. I should also point out that she's the chair of the board of governors of our university and has done an admirable job in very difficult circumstances this year of keeping things on track and making sure the university continues to offer this community the kind of quality education it has over the years.
My question, Donna, just to focus on the supply of affordable housing, is that the government has put the case that this legislation will (a) give greater protection to tenants, which we dispute, and (b) will increase the supply of housing. It's our view that the supply of affordable rental units for people who are vulnerable, whether they be battered women, people on social services or others -- it's our view that this bill will not affect in a positive manner the supply of affordable housing and in fact will probably decrease the supply, and, when put in the context of other initiatives by the government, will leave those people who are most in need of affordable accommodation with fewer options. Would you share that view?
Ms Miller: I certainly have a concern about that. I can't say I believe it in a definitive way, but I believe there is good cause to have concerns about that. One of the reasons we're as concerned about this bill as we are, within the context of Hiatus House, is that we are under constant pressure through this government to reduce the length of stay of battered women and their children within shelters. We know we now have moved beyond the original McGuire report, which talked about 48 hours of length of stay -- I recognize that we have moved beyond that, for which, obviously, I commend the current government -- but I'm concerned that there are some realities around length of stays in shelters, realities about the difficulties battered women and their children already have in relocating, and I have nothing before me that says this bill will increase long-term, affordable, appropriate standards of housing within communities. That's my best comment that I can give to that remark.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you. I wish you well in your deliberations and I trust that we'll see at least some changes at the end of the day in terms of the legislation you're looking at.
The Chair: Thank you very kindly for your comments.
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LEGAL ASSISTANCE OF WINDSOR
The Chair: The next presenter is Legal Assistance of Windsor, Carol McDermott.
Ms Carol McDermott: Good morning. Thank you for agreeing to allow me to present.
Legal Assistance of Windsor is a poverty law clinic. I specialize in landlord and tenant matters and that's 95% of my practice. I know there are some good landlords out there, there must be, but we don't see them. We see the landlords who are really problems. We see tenants who are in real despair. The people who qualify for our services obviously are in financial need, so they need to have premises that are affordable. There's a very low vacancy rate in Windsor, but for affordable accommodation, it's much lower.
I wish members of this committee could spend a day in my office. It would give you a real eye-opener of what the situation is like for tenants, particularly for tenants on low income.
I have prepared a written brief and would have actually had a more polished oral presentation but I've been tied up the last couple of days dealing with an emergency. There's an 80-bed care home which, unfortunately for the residents, is located right across from the location of the new permanent casino.
What's going to happen with that building isn't quite public yet, although there was a newspaper article that indicated it would be turned into a hotel for casino visitors. Until recently, it was occupied by about 80 vulnerable people who have suffered from some form of social or psychiatric or other problems that have made them need some kind of care as part of their lodging. As of today, I understand there is one person there. The owner was hoping to have it vacant by Sunday.
The residents, I understand, were given about three weeks' notice. They were given a letter some time in July that they were to be out by August 15, although Monday was only August 11, as I understand, and the property was to be empty by then. I was over yesterday and they were taking out the light fixtures. All the mattresses are in dumpsters in the backyard or in the parking lot.
One of the pieces of legislation that Bill 96 would repeal is the Rental Housing Protection Act. The Rental Housing Protection Act, as I know you all are aware, is designed to give municipalities the authority and the responsibility to make sure that when there is going to be a major loss of rental accommodation, the municipality will at least have the opportunity to review that and to make decisions about that.
I'm not suggesting that the municipality would ever say to a developer, "No, you cannot develop your land in some place that is more beneficial to you; you must continue to rent to vulnerable people," but I think the municipality could say: "We'll look and see what else is available and we'll make sure we have the time to put other alternatives in place. We'll make sure you wind up your operation in a manner that is not too harmful for people," and that doesn't require threatening people with having the police or fire department put them on the streets or considering Mental Health Act commissions to expedite the landlord's development.
The Rental Housing Protection Act, if enforced, could provide municipalities with that kind of authority. That act will be gone with Bill 96.
I know there are all kinds of other significant procedural problems that will come about because of Bill 96. LCHIC, the Legal Clinics Housing Issues Committee has provided you with a brief and a presentation that deals with many of those specifics and I don't want to repeat that.
I also don't want to repeat the things we said last summer about how badly people will be affected by vacancy decontrol. I know a lot of us have said that very often, so I won't repeat that. What I'll say is, if you're going to go ahead with vacancy decontrol, please think of some way to deal with some of the results of that.
One of the main things that's going to happen is, as I know you people are saying, landlords are going to harass tenants into leaving, I am sure that's going to happen. I think once units are vacant, then landlords are going to be reluctant to rent until they've tested out how much they can get for the property.
We already too frequently have tenants come to us and say: "All my stuff's in my truck. I was supposed to move into this new place today. I gave the landlord $500 two weeks ago and I was supposed to move in today, but I didn't have a written lease and I just arrived there this morning and the landlord said: 'I gave it to somebody else. Here's your $500 back.'"
As you know, that's a breach of contract, but what good does it do if we can say, "Yeah, we'll take him to Small Claims Court," when you're sitting there with all your property in a truck and with no place to move into, and there are very, very few apartments you can rent in Windsor for that kind of money. What are those people to do? At least under the present rent control there was not an incentive, the legal incentive to hold off and try and rent for higher prices because if the landlord was going to obey the law, which many of our landlords do, the landlord would not rent for higher than the legal maximum rent.
Under the new legislation I think landlords are going to wait until the last minute to see who will pay the most, and I fear they will rent to one party and then change their minds and rent to another. One of the ways to get around that would be to have a third party hold the deposit. This is done in some other jurisdictions such as New Zealand and some parts of Australia. The housing tribunal could hold the deposit. That introduces some formality into the system. When the parties reach an agreement that they're going to rent, and hopefully that could be on a standard form lease, the tenant could be referred to the housing tribunal to pay the deposit and then get a proper receipt. A lot of the time we have tenants who come to us and they don't have a way to prove that they paid the deposit or that there was an agreed amount to move in.
We also have problems when tenants leave apartments because landlords say, "Well, no, you didn't give me a deposit," and some of our landlords don't provide receipts. Sometimes, if it's a long-term tenancy, the tenant won't have receipts. If the deposit was held by the housing tribunal, we would save all those problems of proof. There also would be a substantial sum of money that I'm sure would be appreciated by the housing tribunal to help run some of its new programs. There would also be an orderly fashion in which the interest could be paid on the last month's deposit. We could also deal with the problem where the city refuses to provide a last month's rent deposit for people on social assistance but provides a letter of guarantee, which some landlords don't think is as good as cash. If the housing tribunal was holding that deposit, that would solve that problem.
I'd also like to see a change in legislation that would require landlords to provide receipts. A lot of our landlords don't provide receipts. Many of our tenants do not qualify for a bank account, so they pay in cash. Then we have all kinds of problems of proof. If landlords were required to provide receipts, that would solve a lot of our evidentiary issues.
Maintenance and repair is always a problem. Sometimes I go out on home visits because it's hard to comprehend what I'm being told. I go and see these places and say, "Why on earth would you agree to pay this kind of money to live in a place like this, a place where there's no drywall on the walls or the ceiling is falling in or the toilet doesn't flush?" I say, "Why would you pay this kind of money for that place?" The tenant says: "Because I had no choice. There wasn't anything else available that I can afford so that's what I paid."
At least with the orders prohibiting rent increase, that was a really cheap, economical way to put some pressure on some landlords to make repairs. I can see no legitimate reason for repealing that part of the act.
I would certainly welcome any efforts to give building inspectors more authority and to streamline that process. I think that's wonderful. We now have a lot of difficulty getting building inspectors to attend premises because the city of Windsor has put a priority on inspecting new buildings. It's very important to keep the development going. That means it's very difficult sometimes to get a building inspector to go out to look at premises in which there is a complaint. Without more building inspectors, without a requirement for the city to enforce its property standards bylaw, there's not a lot of value in that process.
I worry about the sections dealing with tenants' property, but Donna Miller addressed that in sufficient detail so I won't focus on that and take much of my time on that.
The idea of going to an administrative tribunal I think is a neutral move. It could be positive or it could be negative. It could be cost-efficient and it could cut down on some of the backlogs in the court. However, I really worry about the qualifications of the people who are appointed to that committee. I worry about their independence and their lack of bias.
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I worry more about the procedure before that tribunal. There's a section in this proposed legislation that would allow a landlord to get a default judgement if the tenant doesn't file a written dispute within five days of being served. Right now the tenant just needs to show up. Requiring a written dispute in a short filing period would mean that many of our clients will not have any opportunity to even assert their rights. People for whom English or French is not their first language, or who are marginally literate or who don't know their legal rights or can't get legal representation within five days, will not be able, in any way, to enforce their rights.
I want to leave time for questions, so let me just add that looking at the implementation, please try and remember the family support plan, when there is a system in place that people don't think is perfect but is operating and providing some people with much-needed support. Just remember we have tenants and landlords who use this system. It's not perfect, but it's essential that it not be dismantled until something else is in its place.
If you had been outside across the street this morning, you would have heard a lot of people chanting: "We are tenants. We have rights." Not everybody out there was a tenant. There are tenant households in Ontario; you would be much more capable than I of translating that into the number of voting members of the province. In addition to those tenant households, though, there are a lot of people who are fortunate enough to own our own homes, but many of us have friends, relatives, colleagues and people that we care about who are tenants.
Many of us also do not want to live in a province where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We really want tenants to have some rights. This legislation needs to be drastically amended before it takes away all those rights that tenants have now. Thank you for allowing me to address you. I'd be happy to entertain questions.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you very much for an excellent presentation. I agree with you 100%: Why bring in legislation if it's going to be the same as the family support plan where a year or more has gone by and it's still not working, not delivering? If we're going to have changes to the rent control and if it's going to be the same thing happening all over again, it's a real hardship for the people who are renting.
Back in January, when the mega-week or the mega-dumping started, I understand that in social services, and maybe some other services, close to $600 million is going to be forced on to municipalities, and, in turn property owners, landlords, are going to have to pick that up. That's not included, property tax increases are not included in the legislation at all, so if municipalities have to raise taxes, landlords are automatically going to push the rents up. There are no controls in the legislation.
I know you're talking from a legal assistance point of view, and it's probably the same thing right across the province. Should this legislation be withdrawn or tabled or put on the back burner and say: "What we have right now is working. It's working better than the system was from 1986 to 1990. Leave the system in place until we have something that will work. This won't work"?
Ms McDermott: What we have now is legislation that gives tenants rights, that gives landlords rights. Sometimes they need to be enforced better than they are now, but we at least have legislation that gives them rights. What we would have under the Tenant Protection Act would be a massive withdrawal of those rights.
Mrs Munro: I really want to comment on the way in which you have made your presentation in terms of very specific suggestions. I particularly appreciate the comments with regard to the written and the oral issue. I think there are a number of places that comes up, and so I simply want to compliment you on the very specific nature of your recommendations, because they are certainly very helpful to the committee.
Ms McDermott: Thank you, and if I can refer you to LCHIC -- it stands for Legal Clinics Housing Issues Committee -- it presented a very thorough brief with very specific recommendations to deal with those very procedural issues that lawyers representing tenants become very familiar with. If I can refer you back to that brief, that brings up a lot of very specific recommendations that I think would really help in reworking the bill.
Mrs Munro: Thank you. I'm certainly familiar with it, and we have heard from legal clinics throughout the province at each day's hearings.
Mr Gilchrist: I appreciate your comments. Just a couple of things that come to mind: I don't want to comment about that particular legal case you mentioned, that would be inappropriate, but you know, the RHPA is in force today, and I'm always concerned when I hear people saying we shouldn't be changing and yet there are these dramatic problems.
At the same time, you talk about visiting properties where the standards just aren't up, and yet nobody ever talks about the fact that municipalities have the power to enforce those standards and that this act makes it very clear that property standards must be maintained. Health and safety must be maintained. We're dramatically increasing the power given to property standards officers, we're streamlining the process, we're taking away one of the time-wasting procedures that landlords have used, and I don't see any recognition of that. But even today, as I say, municipalities have the power to fix those things, and particularly with legal counsel, I'm always concerned when I hear that these things are perpetuated and municipalities don't do anything to rectify it. Perhaps that may be where some of your effort might be better directed.
Ms McDermott: Yes, I agree. I think it's wonderful to give the municipalities more power, but if they don't have the money to hire the building inspectors to enforce their bylaws, it doesn't really help.
Mr Gilchrist: They've got to have the courage to charge the right level of taxes.
Mr Pat Hoy (Essex-Kent): Yes, municipalities will be challenged to charge the right amount of taxes, and most municipalities in Ontario are now saying they will go up.
You raised an interesting point through your brief about landlords testing the market and testing the waters, and we know that when a unit becomes vacant under Bill 96, the rents will go up. But your scenario where the landlord may be waiting for the highest bidder to come and take over a unit is interesting to me, and not something that I think any of us want to encourage. You raise an interesting point where people think they have possession of a unit and really do not, and that is a new point to the vacancy and the allowance to raise rents, that the landlord may just wait for the highest bidder.
Ms McDermott: Yes, and what are the tenants supposed to do? They're desperate. They're coming to the end of the month. They've signed an agreement to terminate. They're going to leave or they've given notice they're going to leave, and they have no place to go. Particularly if they're on social assistance, landlords a lot of the time will just say, "Well, come back tomorrow," will not confirm, and they just become desperate. Where are they supposed to go?
Mr Duncan: Ms McDermott, I want to come back to this issue: You made the comment that you were neutral with respect to the administrative tribunal. You made some recommendations as to how to make that administrative tribunal work. That is distinct from a number of other legal assistance clinics we've heard from where they seemed to express fairly strong apprehension.
Ms McDermott: Yes. Can I just clarify? I didn't say I was neutral; I said that was a neutral change. I'm worried. I'm very worried.
Mr Duncan: Okay. You're worried, and so you endorse then the positions that have been put forward by other clinics with respect to the questions surrounding the administrative tribunal?
Ms McDermott: Yes. I think the change could be made and it could be made positively, but only with a great deal more control that's specified well in advance, and not with all these things left to be determined.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms McDermott. Our time has expired, but thank you for making your presentation.
KINGSTON STUDENT HOUSING OWNERS WORKING GROUP
The Chair: The next presentation is by Daphne Dean, who is speaking on behalf of the Kingston Student Housing Owners Working Group. Good morning.
Ms Daphne Dean: Good morning to all. Thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity to come and speak to you this morning.
The members of my group, and I do represent a sizeable number of student landlords in Kingston, have only become aware of this legislation within the past 10 days. By the time we made contact with the committee clerk, Ottawa, our closest city for your hearings, was already overbooked, and so I guess I would start off by respectfully suggesting to you that I have this morning travelled from Kingston, which is really the other end of the province, to make our presentation and I hope that gives you some idea of how concerned we are about the changes that are proposed by Bill 96.
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I represent a group of small business people who are property owners in Kingston. We've come together to address an issue that we believe affects the ability of responsible landlords to provide quality, affordable and safe private rental accommodation to college and university students in Ontario.
Like I am, we are all full-time, hands-on landlords. We own our property, we take an active role in supervising it, maintaining it, renovating it. It's a business that really is a seven-days-a-week operation. We live and pay taxes in the communities where we have our rental properties. We specialize in student housing in much the same way that other businesses specialize in student needs, such as student travel agencies. They serve the student market in a different fashion, but they tailor-make their operation to address the needs of this group. Most of us in the group that I represent have been in it for at least 15 to 20 years.
As you can tell, I'm nervous about today's presentation because I'm not used to being in the role of advising governments about what laws you people should make, but as a small business person, I'm always concerned with being very careful and very sure that I observe the laws made by people like you and that I maintain my reputation in good standing in my community.
However, as a spokesperson for my group, I believe I am very qualified to indicate to you and address our concerns, and our concerns really revolve around what's needed to make the private sector student housing market work well, and when I say work well, I mean not only work well for the landlords but work well for the tenants, and we are extremely concerned that we have satisfied long-term tenants.
To tell you a bit about myself, I was born actually in Toronto and moved at a very early age to Kingston where I've lived for all of my life. I grew up in a poor family; we did not own property. We were renters or tenants. I worked hard. I attended Queen's University. I was able to graduate with several degrees, and the last, or the latest degree that I was able to achieve is a 1981 Queen's MBA.
As a Queen's student, I rented property. I experienced the dilemmas and the goods, the upside, the downside of the student housing situation, and I understand that several of you ladies and gentlemen may also be Queen's graduates, so I'm sure you're familiar with student housing in Kingston.
While I was still a full-time student, I bought my first rental property in the student area around the university. I worked extremely hard. I worked nights, I worked weekends, renovated the properties, worked in conjunction with or went to Queen's housing for their advice to obtain good tenants, and I spent enormous time since then and all through supervising the properties, maintaining them and always reinvesting and making improvements at all times. I visit my tenants on a regular basis and I respond to their needs. I and my group are very attuned and concerned that we listen to our tenants, and we have satisfied tenants who are long-term customers for us.
I've been doing this since 1973, and if I think of that, that's 24 years, and hopefully I feel that I have achieved some success. I now own approximately 80 units that I rent to students around the university. My role is a bit different, I do have staff working for me, but I am on the job sites five days of the week with my staff. It's very much hands on. I am there and I know exactly how things are progressing.
I visit my properties on a regular basis, at least five times a year, and I work full-time at it and I am in very direct contact with Queen's University housing and St Lawrence College also. I guess I would describe myself, as other people have described me, as a responsible, hands-on landlord. I'm sure that my student tenants may feel that at times I am too diligent and I'm too much on the job, but I know that the situation is working because my tenants are happy but also their parents relay to me that they are extremely happy with the housing that I provide.
Things have worked out well in the sense that I have a very high retention rate: 80% of my units are rented successively, year after year, by repeat tenants. I have very little loss, very little turnover. Four out of five students that I rent to renew their leases with me and they are happy to renew my leases, and hopefully the fact that I have 80% retention indicates to you that the lease arrangements that we have are agreeable to the tenants as they are to me. Not many businesses, I believe, have this high a retention rate with customer satisfaction.
I'm telling you this because I believe that it is in the public interest to keep responsible private landlords like me and my colleagues operating in the student housing market. Right now, the private sector supplies the vast majority of student housing in Ontario. For example, in the submission that's just been passed to you, Queen's University is our case study and you will see that 70% of the full-time students at Queen's live in private sector housing, while only three out of 10 live in university residences or university-operated apartments. We assume that these statistics are comparable across the province. I guess what we're trying to say is that without the private sector the job of housing university and college students falls back on the government and public expense.
I've talked about the importance of the private sector in supplying student housing. Now I'd like to tell you about what we believe it will take to keep good landlords operating in the private student housing market and how the student tenants' interests can be best served and protected.
Students and good landlords share a common interest. We want predictable, secure, fair and a competitive market for student housing. The most important requirement for a stable, private sector student housing market is the ability to maintain 12-month leases using termination agreements. This is the situation as it exists today. Bill 96 will change this situation. The proposed legislation will take away the ability of landlords and tenants to arranged, fixed-term occupancies when the lease is signed, which is how it is done today.
The standing committee, you ladies and gentlemen, heard from Queen's University housing last week, and they gave you their explanation of why termination agreements are essential to maintaining the stock of available, affordable student housing owned by universities. The very same reasons apply to private sector student housing. Without the ability to limit occupancy to a 12-month cycle, private sector student landlords cannot ensure that housing units will be available at the times when the vast majority of students need them, namely, May 1 and September 1.
As these 12-month leases expire and are replaced by month-to-month tenancies, vacancy rates in the student housing stock will dramatically increase. In order to pay their mortgages, their taxes, their expenses, landlords will open traditional student housing units to non-students when students have given notice that they will vacate during the academic year and also for the four-month summer period. No business person can afford to have a property empty for four months of the year.
Over time, the long-standing supply of close, convenient and quality private sector rental units for college and university students will disappear. Part of the attraction of Queen's University is that there is an abundant supply of good-quality, safe, close, convenient housing for Queen's students.
We also expect, though, that there will be a serious disruption in local housing markets, and the character of our communities as we know them today will change as students migrate into traditionally residential areas. Non-student landlords will face an unexpected and unforeseen increase in their vacancy rates as non-students move and shift into formerly student-occupied areas.
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In addition, the official plan of the city of Kingston recognizes that student housing is an important and distinctive type of housing development with different objectives than the traditional residential neighbourhoods, and I would just like to read for you, please, if I may, on the last page of our submission, under land use policies for the city of Kingston, general statement:
"Council recognizes that student housing provides living arrangements for a major segment of the city's population and constitutes a significant portion of the total housing stock."
The city's ability to control and manage this development will be compromised by the disruption to student housing caused by Bill 96.
For many reasons, including high turnover rates, the depressed rents that we experience in this market, the very low profit margin, student housing could be best described as a niche market which most professional landlords avoid. For example, members of our group own and manage a minimum of 600 student rental units in the Kingston area, and I would say that, as a conservative estimate, at least 50% of those units are below the legal maximum rent. We are in a very depressed market, and this has been the case for at least the past years, and we expect it to continue in the foreseeable future.
In order to keep good landlords in such a depressed economic market niche, as I've described it, we need to have a stable, predictable operating environment. We understand that section 37 has been added to provide tenants with enhanced security of tenure, and we support the intent of this safeguard and the anti-abuse provisions of clause 37(3)(b) which would prohibit the use of termination agreements as a condition of offering the lease.
However, we believe that clause 37(3)(a), which effectively bans the use of termination agreements, will drive responsible landlords out of the student housing market. The Ontario courts have ruled on numerous occasions that termination agreements are a legal mechanism for landlords and tenants to use.
We have suggested to ministry staff and we now suggest to you that an additional safeguard could be added to Bill 96, namely, that if the landlord exercises its right under the agreement to terminate, then the next tenant would pay the existing rent plus the legal increase once every 12 months. This would prevent landlords from using termination agreements just to arbitrarily evict a tenant in order to achieve an extraordinary financial gain in this new market-based rent system, as we realize it in Bill 96.
I can assure you, though, that those of us in the student housing market in Kingston would feel fortunate if we were able to get the maximum legal rent. We will not be anticipating any extraordinary rent gains from this legislation.
The feedback we've had from the ministry staff is that this additional safeguard would be workable and would address the risk of potential economic abuse. In other words, we're not asking for more powers or better conditions; we're asking for the same situation or the status quo as it exists with additional safeguards for tenants. If you leave clause 37(3)(a) as it's now written in Bill 96, you will punish good landlords and drive them out of the important student housing market. The result will be hardship for students and their families and pressure on governments to build more subsidized student housing.
In closing, there are three main things that I've tried to suggest to you in my presentation. The first thing is I hope that you will appreciate that we are committed to the student housing market. We are in it for the long term, and I hope you feel that our concerns are valid. The second thing is I would appreciate if you would realize that we are reasonable and we do appreciate and support what the government is trying to achieve by enhancing tenure for all tenants. We endorse your safeguards. Third, if you will, please recognize that we're not asking for new powers or special privileges. We're just asking for a continuation of the existing legal arrangement that has allowed the private sector to serve the student market well.
I'd be very happy to answer any questions, and if committee members or ministry staff would like to contact our group after today, I'd be more than happy to assist.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Dean. I'm sure there are questions from the committee.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you very much for your presentation. As a former resident of one of those houses many years ago, actually before rent controls came in, I can attest that there certainly was an adequate supply and, in most cases, adequate also in terms of the quality of accommodation. I trust things have stayed the same.
We have a problem with the gist of your request. Let me invite your comments on this. One of the basic premises behind this bill is security of tenure for tenants. In effect, what you'd be asking for is for us to create a second class of tenants, namely, students. That is troublesome and has been more than troublesome. Students may even be sympathetic to that, but we have looked at this long and hard, and there is a very good chance it would be subject to a charter argument, Mr Trudeau coming back to bite us again. Even if the students and the landlords agreed, it would not be a case of something that the courts would look favourably on.
The question is, given that you can currently sign a lease for exactly the time period you want, and if you want that to be eight months you can do that today, and given that you could immediately after the lease is signed issue a termination notice, as long as it's more 60 days before the end of that term, and given again, in most cases, if students are graduating they don't want to be burdened with that summer's worth of rental expense or the problem of subletting, what is there under the current act that has changed in this act that you see in any way affecting you, or do you think that there has been a problem with the mechanism of the 60-day notice for termination that we could improve that would clarify? For example, it might be easier to say that graduating students are another reason for terminating in a case of this.
Ms Dean: I'll answer this in a couple of ways. What I would suggest to you is that student landlords don't want to lose their tenants, and from my experience, I have never had any of my tenants object or be uncomfortable with signing an agreement to terminate. It has always been a mutually agreeable situation. With the oversupply of housing and student housing in Kingston and with the fact that landlords wish to keep their student tenants, good tenants will always be requested and kept on. No one wants to get rid of their tenants.
With graduating students, I would suggest to you that good housing is so desirable that with the graduating students I have I cooperate fully. People will call me for referrals for apartments. I direct them to my graduating tenants immediately. What I'm saying is that from my experience, my graduating students have not suffered hardship. Because of the demand for my units I've been able to direct new people who wish to rent from me into sublet situations or, on some occasions, take the lease over at that point in time.
Mr Hoy: Thank you for your presentation. You've answered in part one of my questions about graduating students, so I accept that answer as given. It appears you are a quality landlord, you have quality units, and I assume you are in a good location to have the success rate you have. Flowing from the graduating students, how do you handle or how do you expect others would handle part-time students who come in for only a few months or fractions of a year? Is that a consideration you've given some thought to?
Ms Dean: I haven't experienced that group of part-time tenants but, from my knowledge and experience, there are always vacancies in the larger houses where they haven't been able to fill it with the requisite number of five or six or whatever. From what I have heard and not from direct experience, there is always accommodation available and many landlords who have not been able to rent for whatever reason will accept a tenant for two or three months. That's their choice.
Mr Hoy: You have a situation where your graduating students are actually finding persons to rent your units for you from time to time, you say.
Ms Dean: Excuse me. It's usually the other way around.
Mr Hoy: Okay, but there would be situations at other apartment units where it would be the landlord who is out beating the bushes trying to find that replacement student and it might not occur in those four months where that graduating student has left.
Ms Dean: That's why we are concerned, because in order to keep responsible student landlords in business in this very transient, fluctuating market, student landlords need the 12-month lease to guarantee them some stability of income so that they have money for repairs. They need that stability in an unstable market.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you very much for your presentation. You've brought forward a number of good suggestions and amendments. I'm hoping that the government members are paying attention and taking notes and then we'll see when third reading comes forward the changes that you're suggesting have to be made for the student landlords and the students to be accommodated. I'm personally aware of a situation in Ottawa right now where five students thought they were going to be able to renew their lease, and they're into problems. The existing legislation is going to protect them from exorbitant increases in rent, but with this legislation, if it's passed in September, that's gone, so they'll be out on the street looking for a place.
That's the only comment that I would make. You're saying the existing legislation is working fairly well and you need some amendments to this, because as drafted it's of no value.
The Chair: Thank you, for coming such a long distance.
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WINDSOR WOMEN WORKING WITH IMMIGRANT WOMEN
The Chair: The next presenter is Sungee John of the Windsor Women Working with Immigrant Women. Good morning, Ms John.
Ms Sungee John: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to present our concerns to this committee. Windsor Women Working with Immigrant Women welcomes this opportunity to make its presentation to the standing committee on general government regarding Bill 96. Throughout this paper, this organization will be referred to either as WWWWIW or the Immigrant Women's Centre.
The Windsor Women Working with Immigrant Women came together in 1981. The focus of WWWWIW was towards immigrant and visible minority women in Windsor and the surrounding communities. WWWWIW provides the community with services such as English-language instruction, in-depth counselling, citizenship preparation, life-skills classes, support groups, information and referrals, as well as operating generally as a drop-in centre. WWWWIW also advocates on behalf of isolated women who have a limited ability to communicate in the language of their adopted country.
In the following pages, WWWWIW will briefly outline its concerns over the bill and the obstacles it presents to women and men we work with a daily basis. WWWWIW will use its allotted time to focus on the sections in Bill 96 that will have a dire impact on many immigrants and the majority of refugees in Ontario.
In regard to rent increases, Bill 96 will effectively repeal the Rent Control Act as we know it. While rent control will continue for tenants currently renting, it will not be permanent. Once a tenant moves, the landlord could quite conceivably raise the rent to the amount he or she desires. This will be made more tempting in communities where the vacancy rate is low, communities such as Windsor.
Marginalized groups such as immigrants and refugees would most likely enter the situation as new tenants, and their ability to pay the rent would often be limited by their circumstances. Many immigrants and most refugees will encounter difficulties finding decent and affordable housing.
Another issue we wanted to raise our concerns about is credit and reference checks. It is understandable that landlords might be wary of a tenant's ability to maintain rent payments. They might assuage these concerns by requesting credit and reference checks, through which they would be given an adequate history of an individual's previous reliability as a tenant.
But what about circumstances where prospective tenants are unable to provide a credit history or references? Many first-time renters fall under this category. Immigrants and refugees would have great difficulty obtaining references, references from other countries where contacts might be impossible to reach. As newcomers to Canada, they would not have readily available any Canadian references.
We urge the standing committee to give strong consideration to the inclusion of some sort of qualifier in Bill 96 that would make allowances for prospective tenants in these situations.
The next situation regards income information. Section 200 in Bill 96 would amend the Ontario Human Rights Code to allow landlords the legal right to ask for "income information" from prospective tenants. This would provide the landlord the opportunity to screen the applicants until they find their idea of a desirable tenant, an idea based solely on the tenant's income. Disadvantaged people will face further discrimination in their attempt to find affordable and livable housing.
Chief among the disadvantaged groups are people receiving social assistance. Under section 200, landlords might very well disqualify social service recipients as prospective tenants by referring to the commonly used 30% rent-to-income rule. Using the 30% rent-to-income rule, the shelter portion of the recipients' cheques will exceed 30%.
We want to take this opportunity to draw the committee's attention to three marginalized groups that will suffer the brunt of the impact from section 200.
Many refugees must turn to social assistance to survive in their adopted country. Refugees enter Canada with numerous obstacles to overcome. They will often have to learn a new language. Their finances are exhausted just to escape into this country. They have endured horrendous, traumatic conditions before arriving in Canada. They face bleak job prospects because of their lack of Canadian experience; they will have to train for new job skills because their previous professional certifications might not receive accreditation in this country, or their degrees and certificates might have been destroyed before ever arriving in Canada. They will enter this country knowing they will not have an extended family and friends to turn to for emotional support, many having lost their families or having been forcefully separated.
Family-class immigrants will also be hard-pressed to pass requirements for income information. These newcomers have had to meet an initial financial burden upon first immigrating to Canada. The $975 landing fee, or head tax, for every adult over 18 and the $500 application fee for every adult over 18, $100 if the applicant is under 18, place a tremendous stress on the finances of the family-class immigrants. It will cost a family of four -- 2 adults and 2 children -- over $3,100 in fees just to immigrate to Canada, a substantial amount for any average family. Once in Canada, immigrants face many of same barriers that refugees encounter in adapting to their new country.
Another group that will face the same barriers under section 200 are the single-parent families, the majority of which are women and children. Like many Canadian families, refugees and immigrants will encounter stress and strain that will lead to family breakdowns, with the women often faced with providing a nurturing environment for their children. Once again, with no Canadian experience and often with limited English-language ability and few of the job skills demanded by Canadian employers, and scarce child care availability, they will almost certainly have to rely on social assistance. Some women face additional fears of having their immigration sponsorship withdrawn.
Of greater concern are women who seek to escape abusive relationships. Most women will endure domestic violence until their situation begins to have a direct effect on their children. In many cases, these women will be searching for affordable housing when they are at shelters or transition or interval houses. Credit and reference checks and request for income information would threaten the fragile safety of abused women and children by violating their personal privacy under the Human Rights Code. What chance will these women have of getting past the landlord's screening if section 200 passes unchanged?
In his research based on 1991 census data, Dr. Michael Ornstein, associate director of the Institute for Social Research at York University, concluded that the 30% income criteria "would rule out a disproportionate number of marginalized people as tenants, including single mothers, members of visible minorities and young people. Missing the income threshold were half of all single mothers, about two thirds of unmarried people between the ages of 20 and 24 and 60% of black single women." Dr. Ornstein goes on to say, "This radically changes the balance of powers so that people with good and affordable accommodation can choose who they want based on whatever prejudices they have." Thus, for people on social assistance, this will "dramatically cut down their access to affordable housing."
I'll be offering concluding comments. Marginalized communities will be facing further hardship if Bill 96 passes unchanged. With the proposed repeal of the Rent Control Act, 1992, they will have less protection from rent gouging. Waiting lists for social housing can be several years in length, and with both levels of government turning away from social housing, the possibility of moving up on the list is scant.
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In the Ontario Human Rights Commission's submission, article 11, section 1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was quoted. It is worth repeating:
"The states parties to the present covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family" -- this is 1966, so it's gender-biased -- "including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions."
Thirty years later, in June 1996, the Canadian government became a signatory to the Habitat Agenda at the United Nations World Conference on Human Settlements held in Istanbul, Turkey. One of the commitments of the Habitat Agenda was the provision of adequate housing for all. The undersigned countries further committed to "improve and ensure access by those belonging to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups to shelter, finance, infrastructure, basic social services, safety nets and decision-making processes within national and international enabling environments."
We urge the standing committee on general government to amend the sections in Bill 96 that would allow for possible rent increases at the landlord's discretion, unconditional credit checks, and the amendments to the Ontario Human Rights Code that will make accessible income information. We urge the standing committee to consult with marginalized groups to understand the full impact that an unchanged Bill 96 will have on low-income and vulnerable communities.
After having read the bill, quite a lengthy bill, I would like to add another suggestion, especially for the group we advocate for. It would be to make the language more accessible, and also to provide more translations to the more significant language groups here in the province.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much. We have about two minutes per caucus -- very quick questions -- beginning with the Liberals.
Mr Hoy: Thank you for your presentation. I had the opportunity to be in a taxicab one day, and the driver started up a conversation and told me that to his chagrin -- he really was quite disturbed that he would never own a home. He was in an economic situation where he knew that for the rest of his life he would always be a tenant, and therefore, he's one of those people who would be affected by this proposed bill.
Earlier this morning we heard from Legal Assistance of Windsor that many of their clients do not have bank accounts because of their income. They deal in cash and don't have cheques flowing in and out of the bank, which was something I wanted to ask about but didn't have the opportunity.
Do you find that many of the people you deal with, immigrant women and their families, do not have bank accounts, or if they do, have substantial savings waiting there for them?
Ms John: Many of them don't have bank accounts and they don't have substantial savings waiting for them. Many of the women we advocate for are usually dependent upon their spouses, and their spouses themselves are not of wealthy means. Many of the women lack even the basic life skills, understanding of going to the bank. We often have to counsel the women and orient them towards banking and other financial transactions.
From that first point, automatically there's a barrier where the bank account is concerned, and certainly they don't have any significant assets even if they were able to get a bank account.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you very much for your presentation. We've heard a lot of presentations saying that Bill 96 is going to do nothing for groups of people out there, especially the groups of people you're speaking on behalf of, immigrant women, and even existing tenants now. We know that within a five-year period 70% of the tenants move, which means there'll be no more rent controls throughout the province within a five-year period, which will leave it open for landlords to increase the rent to whatever they desire. With the downloading and dumping on the municipalities and the tax break being given, another $6 billion, we know the pressure is going to be there. With property taxes going up and everything else being dumped, rents are going to go up. How is this legislation going to help the tenants you're speaking on behalf of?
Ms John: As I stated in my presentation, it won't help the tenants. It's a barrier that many of them won't overcome. First of all, you would need a well-paying job, and as we know, with downsizing, more and more jobs are being lost or part-time jobs being created. It'll be very difficult for the women and men we advocate for to achieve levels of self-sufficiency economically. Many of them may have to spend a long time on social assistance, and if you're on social assistance your bank accounts are always being screened by your case workers, so there's very little opportunity to put together any savings to get out of the situation our clients may fall into.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you, Ms John, for your presentation. One of the things that has become clear to us over the course of these hearings is that we need to do more public education about the intent behind section 200. Let me be as clear as I can be. The government will absolutely, positively not reduce the ability of the commission to ensure that discrimination, wherever it's discovered in this province, will be rooted out and dealt with.
The status quo today in the province is that landlords have absolutely the legal right to ask about income. There is no statute that bars it and it is not in the Human Rights Code today, so they can do it. The problem is that because it is not in the code, they can then discriminate on the basis of that knowledge. Even though previous governments have put in a restriction that says, if I were a landlord, I can't discriminate against you when I find out you're on government assistance, they can accomplish the same thing by finding out how much money you make and then figuring out: "That's exactly equal to what government assistance is. Therefore, I'm not discriminating on the basis of the source of income; I'm discriminating because that person doesn't make enough money."
We are closing that loophole. This government is saying it should be added as another protection for tenants. It really is quite incredible to us that the opposition parties have been spinning this as a loss of rights. The landlord can do it today. When this is passed, it will constrain him. He can ask the question and he can use that constructively to offer you that rent if you have no credit history. As you pointed out, particularly in the case of abused women leaving a relationship, they have no credit history and they may have no tenancy history, but because they have a job and can talk about income, that weapon should be in their arsenal. They should have the ability to communicate that to the landlord. They would have that woman denied that right. We've said the landlord has the right to ask the question, but he absolutely cannot discriminate. That protection will be there in spades.
Mr Duncan: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I want to point out that the opposition party has merely been quoting the chairperson of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and a number of other delegations with expertise in these matters who have appeared before us. We have spun nothing. We have simply reiterated the position taken by Keith Norton, a former Conservative cabinet minister, your appointment. We agree with Mr Norton.
The Chair: Thank you. That is not a point of order, Mr Duncan.
Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): Ms John, I come from an area where most of the landlords are immigrants. They came here subsequent to the war and through the 1950s and 1960s.
Ms John: The Second World War?
Mr Wettlaufer: Yes. These people were the immigrant tenants of the 1940s and 1950s and they became the landlords. The immigrant tenant of today is the immigrant landlord of tomorrow.
We have a 1.8% vacancy rate in Kitchener. In spite of this, these landlords tell me they are not able to charge the legal maximum rent, that the actual market rent is substantially below the legal maximum rent. If that's the case, why is there so much fear that there's going to be a dramatic rent increase under the new legislation?
Ms John: I'm not familiar with the landlord situation in the Kitchener-Waterloo area but I am familiar with the situation that tenants face here. Landlords are not losing money from the rent they charge their tenants. Furthermore, in the example you give about the post-Second World War immigrants, the situation after the Second World War was significantly different from what immigrants and refugees go through now. Also, in the postwar years there was an economic boom, but we are still coming out of a recession and the economic picture is different for immigrants. It's very unlikely that many of the immigrants now will be landlords of the future.
Mr Wettlaufer: The immigrants who came here after the war would argue with you about that.
Ms John: I'll sit down and debate that with them.
The Chair: Ms John, our time has expired. You should run for politics. You put these people in line. Well done. Thank you.
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ANNE LEBEZNICK
The Chair: Our final presenter this morning is Anne Lebeznick. Good morning to you.
Ms Anne Lebeznick: I'd like to thank you all for the opportunity to speak to the committee. I didn't prepare a formal oral presentation but, rather, concentrated on a written submission. All the details and history we've been going through are in my written submission.
I wanted to talk to you about the importance of the RHPA and how it has affected me and my family since 1993. Before I start that, I'll just tell you a little bit about myself. I'm 36, have been married for 18 years. I've been a tenant for 20 years, so I'm pretty familiar with a lot of the landlord-tenant relations. I've also had the opportunity to manage apartment buildings, four complexes and an office building for almost five years, so I've had a taste of both sides of the table, so to say.
My parents came to me in 1993 when their landlord approached them with a couple of problems. In 1985 my dad had a massive heart attack, and because of that he couldn't return to his job of 26 years, so they had to downsize. They bought a mobile home in a mobile home park near Point Pelee. They've been there about 11 years now. This provided affordability. Previous to that they had always been homeowners. They've owned farms, suburban homes, rural homes with large property, but since his heart attack they just had to downsize for affordability and things like that.
His brothers and sisters bought Sturgeon Woods trailer park and offered him a mobile home for sale there that would be perfect for him. We were told at that time that the municipality allowed permanent, year-round residential in that area. We checked into that, just to make sure before they moved. Sure enough, Mr Lynn Foster, the clerk at Mersea township, said 20% of the park was allotted for permanent residential residents who owned mobile homes, not trailers or anything like that.
They moved in there in 1986. His brothers and sisters sold the park in 1990, so they've got new landlords. In 1991 the landlord was making improvements, looking for ways to create more revenue for his new business and so on. He built a marina, made improvements in the park. He then served my parents a letter -- actually, not just my parents; there were 16 mobile homes down this one section in the 20% allotted. All 16 of those homes received letters of intent to convert the park to strictly seasonal. The landlord wanted to get out of the landlord business and wanted all the mobile homes removed from the park. That's where I came in.
I got in touch with Mr Steve Gaunt at the RHPA. He told me that there was legislation in the works then, called Bill 21, that was to include the mobile homes under some protection. They are homeowners and they're also tenants, and there has to be protection for their investment. They are their homes. They can't just go to another apartment for a certain amount of time.
It came to be that my parents had looked, had called all the mobile home parks in Essex county, Kent county. There are no vacant lots, no place they could bring their home. The home had been made immobile years before they had even bought it. There was a nice addition put on it and all the anchors that made it mobile were removed. They got estimates from people who would be required to dismantle the home and move it etc, and in 1994 that cost approximately $8,000. Since my parents are both on disability pensions -- most of the tenants in that park are pensioners and seniors -- they just couldn't come up with the funds needed, not only for the expenses of moving but all the other expenses incurred in doing things like that.
We applied to the RHPA for some kind of intervention. There's got to be some kind of protection for the value of their home. Prior to the new landlord coming in, they had their home listed for sale as $48,000, and now they have no hope of getting anywhere close to that if the landlord wants to make it a seasonal facility.
The RHPA informed the landlord that he would have to get municipal approval if he wanted to go through with this. Mersea township was all uninformed about any of the activities they would have to do to go through with this application under the RHPA. It was complicated further because the park was already a commercial place. It was a recreational, commercial facility and only a portion of the park was designated permanent residential. He's not, in essence, converting the whole park; he just wants that 20% back so he can close the park and go to Florida or do whatever he wants to do. As a landlord in a seasonal facility, in a campground, I can understand that a landlord would want to just close his doors, take off for a couple of months in the off season. However, he has all these vulnerable people who are left with no value in their home, who can't move it anywhere even if they could get a loan. You can't get a loan when you own a mobile home. It's not collateral; it's considered a chattel.
A lot of these tenants are really stuck right now, which is why I wanted to come today to plead with the committee that when you revamp and clarify everything going on in Bill 96, please keep sections of the RHPA and Bill 21 intact that would ensure some kind of security for the tenants' homes. Like I said, they're going to end up being homeless.
In fact, when we were going through rent control hearings with this landlord, it came out: "We can make an agreement. We'll use the mediation service." That was recommended to us by a rent officer. We took advantage of mediation service, as our relations had pretty well deteriorated since this letter of intent to convert. It came out during that that the landlord would be willing to leave the mobile homes on the site, provided we would vacate. That way, we would both have an edge of security there: My parents wouldn't have to dismantle their home, with the expense of moving it, and he could still close the park.
Then came the announcements of the repeal of the RHPA. That really threw a wrench into all our negotiations. We were counting on the public meeting that's required under the RHPA and we were really depending on the municipality and public support for the seniors to either stop the conversion or, if it was allowed, to at least award some kind of compensation or costs for their house, to have them taken care of or at least some help in relocating their home.
With the repeal of the RHPA announcements the landlord and their lawyers knew that they could just stall for time, which is exactly what they've done. They've stalled. With the rent control hearings, it has lasted -- like I said, we've been fighting this since 1994 and it's now 1997. We just signed an agreement on March 7, 1996, and we more or less just had to give up any hope of having any protection under the landlord and tenant, rent control, RHPA, all of it. Now he's going to be a seasonal facility, a campground, and as far as I understand it, none of those qualify for any of those protections.
What it comes down to is that in this contract we signed in order to protect the value of their home, they're now homeless for two months every year. As it turns out, that effectively puts them right in the target line of the vacancy decontrol, because they're going to have to find an apartment for two months every year. They're both on pensions, like I said. They're going to have to haggle with landlords. Their funds will be very limited. If this application process I've been hearing about, where the landlord will have access to -- I know about income verification, but what about rental history? With everything being amended in the Human Rights Code, if that all is allowed to be considered in an application, my parents won't even get consideration for an apartment, knowing it's only going to be for two months. He may have applications on this side of the table with working people who want a solid residence for year-round. They won't even be considered.
It's not only my parents. There really is a need for all mobile home parks to have special legislation, however you can work it that would be fair for landlords and tenants and secure some value for all their assets. All their life's work is wrapped up in this and they were supposed to retire in this trailer park, and now they're being uprooted again.
I just wanted to just come here and make you all aware of that when you're considering the legislation in Bill 96. I noticed in your New Directions paper that this part was really vague. It's all gone, other than that you're changing the protection from the unit to the sitting tenant.
The Chair: Excuse me. I just wanted to inform you that you have less than two minutes.
Ms Lebeznick: Removing the protection from the unit to the sitting tenant, what's going to be the good of having protection for the tenant if they don't have a unit to reside in? There are just too many questions left unanswered and too many circumstances that would allow a landlord to unilaterally displace mobile home owners. There are no other facilities available for these people, and that should be really considered before anything is tabled and passed. Thank you.
The Chair: I thank you very much for coming. Unfortunately, your time has expired, but we appreciate your coming and making your comments to the members of the committee.
That concludes the presentations this morning, but I have a few comments to make before members of the committee leave. If you could look at your agenda, we have a few changes. The third presenter this afternoon, the AIDS Committee of Windsor, will now be making a presentation at 1:35. The sixth presenter, Chris O'Neil, will be making a presentation at 1:55.
That concludes the comments of the Chair. If there are none from members of the committee, we will recess until 1:35 this afternoon.
The committee recessed from 1155 to 1335.
AIDS COMMITTEE OF WINDSOR
The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, we'll reconvene the committee. The first delegation is the AIDS Committee of Windsor, Mary Osborne, education coordinator, and there's a further presenter, Sharron Cooney. Good afternoon.
Ms Mary Osborne: Thank you very much for this opportunity to present this afternoon. We're presenting on behalf of the AIDS Committee of Windsor, its staff and clients.
The AIDS Committee of Windsor was founded in 1985 in response to a new and devastating epidemic that was increasingly affecting our community. The services we provide include support, education and advocacy. We recognize there are many facets to this legislation and that most will be addressed by other concerned citizens and organizations and certainly have been addressed today. Our focus of interest for the purpose of this submission centres around human rights issues, a concern which is all too familiar to people living with HIV or AIDS.
People living with HIV and AIDS, and I'll refer to them in the future as PHAs, have often been denied jobs, housing and medical care without any logical reason. Most PHAs are receiving disability benefits or social assistance. According to the Human Rights Commission, receipt of social assistance is the most frequently reported ground of discrimination in Ontario.
The Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation reports that 9% of tenants who have been the victims of discrimination have been disabled. The vast majority of our clients receive disability benefits or other forms of assistance and many have faced discriminatory practices. The fact that our clients are HIV-positive could send that figure much higher, however, but because most HIV-positive individuals fear the possibility of disclosure, they don't complain about discriminatory practices. The impact of this legislation is likely to bring hardship to people who already are living with a stigmatized and largely misunderstood illness.
HIV-infected people already face a number of disability-related expenses which could include medication at a cost of up to, and sometimes over, $1,200 a month. Currently, many are living in units they cannot afford because it's vitally important for immune-compromised individuals to live in a healthy atmosphere. Many use food banks to maintain a reasonably healthy diet. Usually there's very little left after rent for other necessities such as food and transportation.
One of our main objections to this new legislation is the income information, and if I can add a little disclaimer here, we fully recognize that landlords have every right to do credit checks and to do background checks on people. However, if you use the rent-to-income ratio, in other words, the 30% of income as a guideline for the purpose of eliminating, we feel it's for the purpose of eliminating and screening tenants.
This portion of the change in the Tenant Protection Act appears to be an effective tool to weed out those people against whom the owner has a bias. There is adequate evidence that a majority of tenants in Ontario pay more than 30% of their income for rent and never default, which underscores our view that the income ratio is a poor mechanism for making a decision to rent a unit.
The Human Rights Commission submission, June 19, 1997, on page 4 states, "Approximately one third of Ontarians pay in excess of 30% of their household incomes in rent," myself included. The submission also states, "Overwhelmingly, these persons pay their rent in full and on time." Screening on the basis of income would give a landlord the opportunity to make a unilateral decision about the suitability of a tenant based, as I said before, on personal bias.
The Human Rights Code guarantees equality in housing for people on social assistance, single mothers, persons with disabilities and so on. Leaving income information as part of the inclusion criteria for rental properties will only guarantee one thing: that persons in the above and other categories will be effectively eliminated from most of the rental markets in Ontario. The proposed changes in the TPA are contrary to the Human Rights Code and put disadvantaged people in an unstable situation.
An example of this is a person with HIV or AIDS who's on disability and applies for an apartment. The landlord does the credit check and finds the person has good credit. The tenant's rental reference is good, despite the fact that he or she has paid more than 30% of his or her income on rent. When interviewing the prospective tenant, the landlord could request more information. Under the new changes, the landlord could find out the reason for the person's disability; in other words, this person might feel forced to reveal his status or the reason he's on disability. The landlord could apply the income ratio as a reason for disqualifying the person and not revealing the true nature of his or her bias.
Our recommendation with this is, we concur with the Human Rights Commission's suggestion that income information be struck from sections 200 and 36 of Bill 96.
Rent control disputes: According to the new guidelines, when a tenant vacates a unit, the landlord is able to charge any amount he or she deems appropriate for that unit. This means that anyone who is interested in renting from that landlord will be put in the position of bidding on the unit. This is clearly impossible for people who are receiving social assistance or disability benefits.
The repercussions of this section could put more people on the streets. The National Council of Welfare reports that Ontario already has 1.6 million people living below the poverty line and many of these people are homeless. If the changes to rent control go into effect, that shameful figure will only go up. In a country that brags about its social policies, I find this figure inexcusable. To promote a situation that will make this state of affairs worse is contrary to everything the citizens of this country want and have worked for.
Along with this obvious problem the possibility also exists that even good tenants will be subject to harassment if the landlord feels he or she could receive more money for an occupied unit. Eviction notices generally no longer need to contain details of the reason for eviction -- although I stand corrected from what you said this morning -- and the notice does not even need to be in writing.
A local administrative tribunal will take the place of the court system and admittedly could render satisfactory decisions, depending on the structure. However, if the tribunal consists of number crunchers, then the human element is eliminated and people will be at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords and have virtually no recourse for their disputes. Disputes which formerly were decided by the court system, while not perfect, were decided reasonably fairly in that legal principles were applied evenly.
If the landlord has a particular bias against a selected "group" of people, then this portion of the TPA gives the landlord the freedom to dissolve a tenancy without concern about repercussions.
According to HIV and AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario this means: "A landlord can go to the tribunal without the tenant present and swear that the tenant has agreed to leave. For example, for tenants with HIV or AIDS who may be too ill to be present at the tribunal or who may even be in hospital, this is a critical concern."
Our conclusion is, there have been many submissions and concerns raised by those of us who are empowered and vocal. Unfortunately, the voices of the people most affected by these sweeping changes will most likely not be heard because of fear, illness or lack of information concerning an issue that will affect their lives.
A basic right of all Canadians is to have an affordable roof over their heads. The proposed changes will alter that right to a privilege, which too few of us can sustain for very long.
The act effectively provides landlords with a licence to take an unfair advantage of people who, if given the opportunity, would not be in a situation of poverty or illness. I ask you to reconsider the many flaws in this legislation that would only serve as a detriment to the citizens of Ontario.
Ms Sharron Cooney: One thing I would like to add to what Mary has already said is that at the AIDS committee over a year ago we started a food bank for our clients, and the reason we started this was we found people at that time were unable to eat properly because they couldn't afford it. Most of their money was already going on rent. Over half of what they were making a month was being spent on rent.
Mr Duncan: First of all, we concur with your opinion on the question of income and we'll be bringing amendments to that effect in the legislation. Also, with the notion around vacancy decontrol, we agree with your position there as well. We believe this proposed statute will decrease the supply of affordable housing for those people who are most vulnerable, and we share your concerns along some of the administrative lines, but I do want to ask one brief question.
I don't know how much involvement your committee has with actual landlord-tenant disputes, but I don't think the government is far off the mark when it says that the current system for resolving disputes is cumbersome. In my experience with it, it's cumbersome to those people who are least able to represent themselves, so I welcome an opportunity to debate a new tribunal system.
I wonder, and perhaps it's not a fair question to ask of you, do you have any views on that? Have you had an opportunity to see these things through in terms of landlord-tenant disputes, and do you believe the current system really serves vulnerable people well?
Ms Osborne: I don't believe it serves vulnerable people well at all. I've personally not been involved in a landlord-tenant dispute -- I don't know if support services has or not -- only from people I've known personally. People who are HIV-positive don't generally make a big issue out of the fact that they've been discriminated against, basically because they don't want other people knowing they're HIV positive. They simply stay away from any type of publicity so they just take their lumps and go.
I would welcome something. I think someone spoke earlier about the tribunal being composed of advocates as opposed to, as I said here, number crunchers. That's my biggest fear. I think the tribunal's a good idea, and kept on a local level, it's an excellent idea, but who's going to compose that tribunal? It's really an issue. It's really important.
Ms Cooney: I'd like to add also that the times we have had people who were willing to speak up on their own behalf against landlords -- most of the time they're not because they're already in there, they feel tentative because they're on disability and they feel it could be taken away from them at any time and they don't want to speak up -- it seemed like the issue was resolved, but then all of a sudden they were being watched very closely as far as what they were doing was concerned. Do they have their TV too loud at night? They were really being hounded, in effect, trying to find some way to get them out of there, because they were troublemakers.
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Mr Len Wood: Thank you very much for your presentation. I notice that on the bottom of the page, your recommendation, you're saying that sections 200 and 36 of Bill 96 would be in violation of the Human Rights Code, or the Human Rights Commission is suggesting that should be struck out.
I'm just curious why the government would bring in legislation that might be in violation and discriminate against certain sectors of society. Interestingly, I was doing a press clipping a while ago where the member for Windsor-Sandwich was saying, "We can't criticize what the Conservative government is bringing in, because we would've brought in a lot of the same things the Conservative government is bringing." I'm just wondering if this legislation should be scrapped and we should stick with what we have. This is a quotation and there are other Liberal members; Mike Colle is quoted in there as well, and there are the red book promises during the 1995 election campaign.
I'm going to give you an opportunity, either one of you, to comment on that. Could this be struck down by the charter? Could the whole legislation be struck down by the charter if the Human Rights Commission is saying it's in violation, those sections are in violation, if they're going to allow discrimination against a certain segment of society, the vulnerable people in society?
Ms Osborne: I certainly think it's allowing for the possibility of discrimination, and I tend to object strongly to loopholes. We see a lot of discrimination in the work we do. It just happens. I knew a young man who lost his job because he was HIV-positive. The stories go on and on. I think any legislation that is not clearly written, that is not distinct, that leaves loopholes for somebody somewhere along the line to discriminate against another person needs to be looked at very carefully and struck down, if necessary.
Mr Len Wood: Is there more time?
The Chair: Very briefly.
Mr Len Wood: Legislation to discriminate against one person is too much. You have a Conservative government bringing in legislation that could discriminate against thousands of people throughout this province. It's way too much.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you, Mr Wood, for bringing that to our attention. I wonder if he'd consider tabling those quotes because I think that's very germane to what we're hearing here today.
But more than that, Ms Osborne, I don't mean this to sound overly harsh, but we keep hearing the same incorrect assertions group after group after group. Can I ask you the source of some of the background information on which you relied in preparing your presentation here today?
Ms Osborne: I have several of the previous submissions that were held in Toronto with me. I can't find them. They're all lumped into a packet. One of the things we had talked about at lunchtime -- may I make a comment? I know what you're going to say and I had heard you say this several times today. I find legislation is very similar to the Bible. You can hand it to 10 different people and you'll get 10 different interpretations. I think what needs to be done, if, as you're saying, this is not true, is that then it needs to be written in language that those of us, the laypeople of this world, will understand, instead of legalese. It doesn't read the way you're saying it, but if your intent is the opposite, then fine, but it needs to be rewritten, it needs to be redone.
Mr Gilchrist: We don't disagree. We're actually making strides through our Red Tape Commission to try and find better ways to express the intent behind the laws that are brought forward. But let me just come to a point. I won't dwell on section 200. You and many others keep coming up with the point that eviction notices do not need to contain details for the eviction and notice does not even need to be in writing. Again, this couldn't be clearer. Under the only heading in the bill marked "Termination of Tenancies" and then the subheading "Notice of Termination -- General Provisions," it says: "If the notice is given by a landlord, it shall also set out the reasons for the termination."
What's unclear about that? How could anyone reading that come to the conclusion that you don't have to put the reasons in the notice?
It then goes on to say that it has to be signed. So clearly it has to be in writing. Would you disagree with that?
Ms Osborne: No, I don't disagree with that, and you had brought that point up this morning. I agree with what you're saying on that point.
Mr Gilchrist: So you can sense our frustration.
Ms Osborne: Part of what I got came from the HIV and AIDS Legal Clinic for Ontario. I assumed they would have some basis for that concern.
Mr Gilchrist: Just as a general point, one of the other things we've done is to make sure that all these bills are on the Internet, and every library across Ontario, at least all the urban centres, provides free access. I really wish people would avail themselves of the opportunity. Don't take our word for it. Don't take the opposition's word for it. They can read these bills themselves and form their conclusions.
I absolutely respect the motives behind your presentation, but I have to make this very clear again: We will not allow discrimination. We are adding, we believe, another restriction against discrimination by banning the misuse of income checks.
You said at the outset you think it's appropriate that landlords have the ability to do credit checks and that sort of thing. We're saying that right now there is a loophole, and I agree with you, it should not be there. Our intent is to close that loophole. If the language isn't clear enough or if we haven't done a good enough job selling that, well, I'll take that back and we'll work on that, but I want to leave you with a very clear understanding. For people suffering from AIDS or any other group in this society, we are going to continue to be vigilant against discrimination and we believe we're adding one more restriction against any misuse of information by landlords.
The Chair: Ms Osborne, Ms Cooney, unfortunately, our time has expired and I thank you for coming to the committee this afternoon. I also thank you and the AIDS Committee of Windsor for cooperating with us with respect to the agenda. We appreciate that.
Mr Len Wood: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I understand what Mr Gilchrist is saying, but for the visually impaired people, what kind of notification is going to be sufficient? There's nothing in the legislation to cover another group that can be discriminated against.
The Chair: Mr Wood, that's not a point of order.
Mr Len Wood: I just wanted to clarify what --
The Chair: It might be appropriate in clause-by-clause, but I don't think it's appropriate now.
Mr Len Wood: It's on the record.
Mrs Munro: On a point of order, Mr Chair: Because so many groups have dealt with the issue of section 200, I wonder if we could ask the minister's office and ministry staff to get us some information about the way in which these discriminatory practices are currently being dealt with. People have brought to our attention the fear they have, based on the practice as it now stands. It seems to me it would be very beneficial for us, as a committee, to have this information. I suggest we would like to know about the current status, the number of cases, the disposition of the cases and the timeliness of these charges.
The Chair: Again that's not a point of order, it's a question and that has been made. I guess the only comment I can make, and I'm going to recognize Mr Duncan, is that we're eating into presenters' times, but I'm in the committee's hands.
Mr Duncan: I have a question to place to the ministry. It doesn't need to be answered this moment. My reading of section 200 is that it is a prescriptive clause, that it provides the opportunity for landlords to use income information as part of -- in fact, the annotation describes it "Prescribing business practices." I would like, in writing, the argument against that because we have been provided, in writing, arguments from another government agency that simply do not agree with the position the government has put forward here today.
My read of section 200 is it's a prescriptive clause, and it permits, explicitly, the use of income information.
The Chair: Again, that question has been made.
CHRIS O'NEIL
The Chair: We will proceed with the next presenter, who is Chris O'Neil. Good afternoon, Mr O'Neil. You may proceed at any time.
Mr Chris O'Neil: First of all, I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear. I have been a tenant in Ontario for the last 20 years, and it's on that basis I'm making my presentation, and I expect I'll always be a tenant.
I currently live in a high-rise apartment building on Windsor's west side and this structure is owned by a responsible management group. Before that I lived in a building where, for several years, the landlord had routinely violated the law by charging illegal rents. Prior to that, I resided in a converted house that was overrun with vermin and where the landlord three times tried to evict me in the same calendar year because of a personality conflict.
My experiences with these landlords led to an active participation as a member of the board of directors of the Federation of Windsor-Essex County Tenants Associations. My time there sensitized me to various tenant issues beyond my own experience.
I'd first like to address the issue of rent control or the lack of same contained in the proposed legislation.
Let me state first that I am not philosophically opposed to the removal of rent control. I think Ontario tenants would've been much better served if the Tory government of the day had sought a different solution.
The Windsor Star recently editorialized that rent control was a province-wide solution to what was essentially a Toronto problem. Now the solution arrived at back then has become a problem for landlords and tenants across the province in terms of substantially low vacancy rates and automatic legislated increases.
In the current climate in Ontario, I view the removal of controls as a disaster for tenants, especially in light of the way it's structured in Bill 96. The government is giving landlords all the incentive they need to evict sitting tenants, as well as giving landlords of new properties a different set of rules from owners of existing properties.
If the intent of the government was to provide incentives to landlords to build new rental housing, while giving tenants some cost security, I believe they have failed on both counts.
In the early part of this decade I lived in British Columbia for a short time. Rent control had been in force in that province and then was completely removed as an incentive to prospective landlords. The province thought this would lead to a healthy rental environment in BC, but controls have been gone there for several years now and new rental units are not being built. At the moment, Vancouver has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country and available rental housing is aging and overpriced.
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In Ontario, the government is proposing to exempt new rental housing from rent control permanently. If I was a prospective landlord in Ontario, I'd consider that. I'd also consider that there have been three changes in government in the province in the last 12 years, and each has instituted its own rent regulations. I'd also consider that if existing buildings still have rent control, there is always the possibility that new ones some day will as well.
The government has set a guideline increase of 3% the next year for sitting tenants together with an extra 4% increase the landlord can apply for with respect to capital expenditure. In addition, if I'm reading the proposed legislation correctly, there is no limit to a rent increase the landlord can apply for if they experience large property tax increases.
In view of the fact that the government is currently downloading several services on to municipalities, I think it is inevitable that large property tax increases will be forthcoming. In that event, two things will happen: Irresponsible landlords will begin evicting sitting tenants so they can offer their units to the highest bidder, while responsible landlords will begin flooding the new Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal with applications for above-guideline rent increases. In either scenario, tenants will lose. Therefore, I'm urging the government to keep rent control in its present form so that tenants will have some cost security. It's bad enough that tenants are subjected to automatic legislated increases every year, but in this instance at least we know exactly how much the increase will be.
I firmly believe that rent control must be kept in force in Ontario until such time as the rental market arrives at a place where market forces will determine how much rent a landlord can charge and how much a tenant is willing to pay.
I would also like to address the issue of a new housing tribunal. In the past, I've had issues decided in both landlord-tenant court and by rent control hearings. Matters decided in court have traditionally had more impact on tenants and thus have needed to be handled in an expeditious manner. They have also been required to be dealt with in a manner nobody could question. Justice not only had to be done but be seen to be done.
In matters of rent control hearings, I found this process to be extremely time-consuming. In my dispute with the landlord who was charging illegal rents, I filed my application in April 1994 and no hearing was conducted until December of that year.
In the 1980s another landlord filed an appeal of a rent review order in September 1990 and it was not heard until the middle of the following year; this after it took the ministry nearly a year to rule on the original application.
If the government is now contemplating lumping disputes previously heard in court into this mix, I imagine the backlogs will be even lengthier than before. I'd like to recommend that disputes currently being decided in court be left there so that tenants and landlords both know the process is free from political interference, or, failing that, that the option of choosing the courts be left to the affected parties. Believe me, in matters concerning eviction, I would definitely choose landlord-tenant court.
My major concern regarding the tribunal, other than the backlogs that may ensue, is the issue of fairness. My understanding is that tribunal adjudicators will be appointed by the Ontario cabinet. I don't see much in Bill 96 that will protect tenants, and if our only recourse is a body that reflects the current government's bias, we won't be able to get a fair hearing anywhere in the province. I would add that this process could swing the other way if a government friendly to tenants is elected and adjudicators were appointed who reflected that bias. I certainly hope and expect that appointed adjudicators receive their positions because of their knowledge of landlord-tenant matters and that the process of selection is open to public scrutiny.
Under the present tenant legislation, landlords and tenants can file applications at no charge. The new legislation will allow fees to be charged to both. I would applaud the intent of filing fees if I saw its purpose as merely preventing frivolous applications. However, in light of the proposed legislation, I see the institution of filing fees as an attack on tenants at the lower end of the economic scale.
Many landlords will attempt to evict tenants so they can charge higher rents, and this will be particularly true for low-income tenants in low-cost housing. Therefore, if tenants choose to challenge the landlord's eviction notice, they might incur a cost that would be prohibitive for them. If the tenant chooses not to go this route, the only choice left would be to accept the notice, move and pay a higher rent elsewhere. Most landlords can afford to pay application fees. I urge the government to keep filing fees as low as possible, if they must be instituted at all.
I would next like to address the issue of privacy. My personal belief is that my right to privacy supersedes, except in very exceptional circumstances, the landlord's right of entry. I've had personal experience with a landlord who frequently violated my privacy rights, so I know how unsettling this can be to a tenant.
The legislation gives landlords the right to enter an apartment when the landlord has given the tenant a notice of termination; this in spite of the fact that a tenant may choose to challenge the notice. I would urge that this provision be removed from the legislation unless the tenant agrees in writing to accept the termination notice.
The legislation also proposes that entry by a landlord may be any time between 8 am and 8 pm with 24 hours' written notice. Since the proposed legislation also gives landlords new rights of entry they previously did not enjoy for prospective purchasers, mortgagees and insurers, the opportunity is there for landlords to legally harass tenants by exercising their rights of entry on an ongoing basis. Permit me to suggest that tenants should have the option of being present at the time of entry, and entry time should be specified on the notice.
Finally, I would like to address the issue of funding for tenant advocacy. This matter is not dealt with Bill 96 and perhaps it is beyond the scope of this legislation, but in the event that it is not, I wish to speak to it.
As I mentioned earlier, I was a member of the board of directors of a local tenants' federation for several years. The bulk of our funding came from the province, a practice which ceased when the current government took office. When our funding was cut off, FOWECTA ceased to exist in every way except name. Our group was not singled out by any means, since the government stopped funding any organization in the province that was exclusively concerned with tenant rights.
The housing minister spoke to this issue in August 1995 when he said he had no problem with such groups existing, but taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for them. Well, Mr Leach, I couldn't agree with that philosophy more. At the same time, I have seen under the current legislation and I certainly foresee under the proposed legislation the absolute need for tenant advocates.
The United Tenants of Ontario had requested that the government institute a $1-a-month dues checkoff for all tenants in Ontario in 1996, with the money to be used to fund tenant advocacy groups. Surveys by UTO have shown that a significant majority of Ontario tenants supported the idea of contributing financially to their wellbeing in terms of housing. My understanding is that UTO submitted their proposals concerning the dues checkoff in February of last year. I'd like to know when or if the government intends to act on this matter, and if not, why not.
In conclusion, permit me to state that I perceive Bill 96 in its present form as having very little to do with the protection of tenants. It removes cost security even for sitting tenants, makes it logical and relatively easy for irresponsible landlords to evict tenants so that they can raise rents, provides no incentive for landlords to build new rental housing, erodes privacy rights, could possibly eliminate even the appearance of fairness in deciding disputes between landlords and tenants, and does not provide funding for tenant advocacy.
I can guarantee the government one thing, however. This legislation, if passed as is, will definitely wake tenants up. Government would do well to remember what happened in 1990 when Ontario tenants voted massively against the Liberals because we were mad as hell over the rent review system. It's clearly not in your interest to make us mad, because if you do you will find we can make you uncomfortable.
I thank the committee again for the opportunity to address this important issue.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr O'Neil. We have time for a very brief question, and we'll give that to the New Democratic caucus.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for your presentation. I agree with you wholeheartedly. The legislation that was sitting there before 1990 was of no value. We've got a by-election going on now and now's the time to voice your concerns.
Thank you once again for your presentation. I've said all along that Bill 96 should be scrapped because it's not going to do anything for tenants out there, and it's going to make a lot of homeless people.
The Chair: Mr O'Neil, thank you for coming and for your presentation. I also thank you for cooperating with respect to the agenda.
WINDSOR-ESSEX BILINGUAL LEGAL CLINIC
The Chair: The third presentation this afternoon is the Windsor-Essex Bilingual Legal Clinic, Patricia Broad. Good afternoon to you.
Ms Patricia Broad: Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing us to present to your committee. These submissions are from the Windsor-Essex Bilingual Legal Clinic. We provide legal advice and representation to lower-income residents in the Windsor-Essex area. We practise predominantly social assistance, workers' compensation and landlord-tenant law. In preparing these submissions, we rely on our practical experience as well as our understanding of the Landlord and Tenant Act and the proposed Tenant Protection Act.
In our clinic, we do not specialize in any one area of law. As such, I cannot claim to be an expert on landlord and tenant matters. However, as I practise law in various areas, I hope I can bring a perspective that will be of assistance to you.
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The Tenant Protection Act proposes many radical changes to landlord and tenant relationships. We have selected some of the most important ones. We will be talking about rent decontrol, procedure and limitation periods. It is clear that an underlying theme to this legislation is that it will shift the power balance between landlords and tenants so that landlords are in an even more powerful position.
To begin with, I would like to make my submission regarding rent decontrol. Section 116 of the Tenant Protection Act indicates that rent control is gone for new units and for new tenants. As you know, this means that as of now, tenants and landlords will negotiate rents. As we have indicated, this is a particularly harsh measure against lower-income individuals, and I'm sure you've heard quite a bit of that in your meetings.
People receiving general welfare and single mothers or single parents on mother's allowance will suffer the most under these provisions. When negotiating rent, they will be in an unequal bargaining position, as they have fewer resources and they will be faced with limitations on the amount of time that they will have to find a place to live.
In fact -- again, I'm sure you've heard this before, but I'll say it again -- it is our submission that this measure will create an incentive for landlords to evict tenants. A landlord rents units in order to make a profit. Under this proposal, the easiest way for the landlord to make a profit is to evict a tenant and to charge a higher rent for the new tenant. A landlord can ensure that a tenant will want to leave an apartment. As a tenant, I can assure you this is the case. Further, a landlord can and will look for ways to evict tenants.
It is ironic that at the same time the government is creating an incentive to evict tenants, it is introducing provisions that limit a tenant's defence against eviction. Under subsection 121(3) of the Landlord and Tenant Act, a judge would refuse to grant an application for eviction where he or she was satisfied that "a" reason for the landlord's application was that the tenant complained to the government, had attempted to secure or enforce his or her legal rights, is a member of a tenants' association, or that the premises are occupied by children. Of course, I have boiled down that provision, but that's the gist of it.
Under section 79 of the Tenant Protection Act, it states that in order for a landlord's application to be refused, one of those reasons must be "the" reason for the landlord's application. As any advocate will tell you, landlord and tenant matters are rarely limited to one issue. In fact, these matters tend to build up over a course of time. By the time an application is made, there are usually several issues to be resolved. It is likely that a landlord could introduce other issues in order to evict the tenant for one mode of tenant behaviour that under the old act would have protected the tenant from eviction under subsection 121(3). By introducing section 79, the government is limiting the tenant's protection from eviction for attempting to exercise his or her legitimate rights.
Further, the Tenant Protection Act states that a landlord's application shall be refused only if she or he is in serious breach of his or her obligations or a material covenant in the tenancy agreement. As you know, under the Landlord and Tenant Act, an application is refused if a landlord is in breach of an obligation. Again, this limits a tenant's protection against unfair eviction.
In our submission, it's questionable whether this legislation should be called the Tenant Protection Act. It is true that the Tenant Protection Act provides protection against harassment. However, in our submission, this will not stop a landlord from harassing a tenant until the tenant leaves. No tenant will want to apply to the tribunal for relief against a landlord while living at the apartment. A tenant is aware that he does not own the property he is living on; it is the landlord's property. It is foolish to incite a person when you are living on his or her property. A tenant will do his or her best to stay on the good side of the landlord. Otherwise, they can expect powerful retaliation from a landlord.
Given the serious cuts in tenants' rights, we should ask ourselves if the government is going in the right direction. Are these measures going to lead to greater investment from the construction industry or more housing for tenants? Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that it will do so, and there are some indications that it may not.
On June 19, 1997, at this hearing, Tom Collins, a tenant lawyer and former executive director of the Rent Regulation Board of New York City, spoke before the committee. Mr Collins stated that New York City's three-year experiment with vacancy decontrol in the 1970s increased rents by 52%, more than doubled the level of harassment of tenants and produced no increase in the building of rental housing.
Further, in the Globe and Mail dated Friday, June 13, 1997, it is stated, "Housing Minister Al Leach agreed that the proposals, which would remove the ceiling on rent increases as tenants vacate apartments, will not be enough by themselves to stimulate a surge in construction of new apartments." It is clear that the government will cut tenants' rights without guaranteeing any benefit to society as a whole.
We also submit that the Tenant Protection Act reforms are consistent with other reforms that have been brought by this government. The government has cut general welfare and mother's allowance, it has introduced measures in the Workers' Compensation Act that will reduce or eliminate benefits for legitimate claims and, as you know, it is redefining the definition of "disability" under the Social Assistance Reform Act. It is our submission that these measures will prejudice persons who are attempting to enforce their rights. As we have stated, these measures in the Tenant Protection Act will have a disproportionate impact on lower-income individuals.
As stated in the Globe and Mail, August 20, 1996:
"About a third of Ontario's population, 3.3 million people, are tenants, and they pay $10 billion a year in rent. Renters tend to be less affluent, with tenant households having an average household income of $34,000 a year compared with about $60,000 for homeowners."
Normally, about 20% of units become vacant annually. It is clear that the government has introduced these measures as a form of social engineering which it hopes will create a stronger economy. However, it is also clear that there are no guarantees that these measures will strengthen the economy. Rather, it guarantees that people with little money will be even more vulnerable and will suffer more.
The question is, how does this all interact? Welfare cuts have led to an increase in evictions in the metropolitan area of 136%. Women and children have had to relocate to trailer parks and basements in order to have enough money to pay for their food.
Approximately one third of renters pay more than 30% of their income towards housing; 66% of social assistance recipients are paying more than their shelter allowance, because as I'm sure you know, the government cheques are divided into a shelter component as well as your basic needs; and 83% of all two-parent families with two children on social assistance have shelter costs above the maximum shelter allowance. They are forced to take the money from the food and basic assistance in order to pay for their rent, which is similar to what the lady from the AIDS committee was telling you.
It is our submission that the limitation period provided in section 131 of the Tenant Protection Act is unfair. This section states that an illegal rent will become legal after one year. It will be difficult for a tenant to find out what the actual legal rent of an apartment was, and the tenant may not know there was an illegal rent until more than one year. This provision enables landlords to charge illegal rents at the tenant's expense.
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Further, it is submitted, and I'm sure other people have brought this to your attention, that it is unfair to set a one-year limitation period on tenant applications regarding repairs. Problems with an apartment may accumulate and a tenant may wait until there are several problems before applying to the tribunal. Now the onus is on the tenant to bring applications for every little problem. Again, landlord and tenant disputes are usually complicated. There is rarely one single issue in dispute.
I understand, as Mr Gilchrist has said, that there is a provision regarding reasons which must be provided when notice is given by a landlord to the tenant. As you can tell, I'm in my procedures section. However, if indeed notice must be given in writing and it must be signed, we would request that this be clearly drafted, because when one is practising in this area of law, unless measures are clearly written out, it is very difficult to enforce these rights.
A large problem, as has been stated already, is the provision stating that a verbal agreement can be considered an enforceable agreement to terminate. Under section 72 of the Tenant Protection Act, the landlord can enforce this agreement without notice. We have seen in our practice many times where it is not clear between a landlord and a tenant if there was a verbal agreement or not. Remember, landlord and tenant relationships pass through a long period of time and they become very complicated. There are many conversations between landlord and tenant. A tenant may think that the agreement is void or, worse, an unscrupulous landlord could lead a tenant to believe it is void and change his or her mind without telling the tenant. Indeed, I've had a case where that happened. A tenant may find themselves evicted from where they live without notice.
It is my understanding that motions to set aside a default order must now be brought within 10 days after the order is issued. Again, this is a provision that the landlord can easily circumvent simply by not serving it on the tenant. In other words, a tenant can be out of town and come back and find that the locks are changed on his or her apartment. This is a serious breach of natural justice and one that infringes directly on a person's sense of security.
It is our submission that while there were certainly some difficulties with the Landlord and Tenant Act, what I found in practice was that it was usually enforced in a reasonable manner, and when I say that, I mean a reasonable manner for tenants as well as for landlords. If an application was found void because there was a defect in procedure, it was usually because the defect in procedure seriously prejudiced the tenant's rights. In other words, I never saw an application thrown out of landlord and tenant court over a technicality that didn't have some impact on the tenant. However, the government has still introduced legislation that will make it easier to evict tenants, and that takes rights away from tenants.
If you would like me to elaborate on that point, if a notice of eviction had a wrong date on it or some small matter, generally the courts wouldn't necessarily throw the whole application out; they would still continue with it, unless it was a procedural difficulty where there was no affidavit of service on file so there was no proof that the tenant ever got the notice of eviction. Those cases, where it was clear there was a breach of a fundamental right, were the applications that were thrown out.
When they're selecting members for the tribunal, we request that the government choose members who are experts in the field of landlord and tenant law. We believe it would be helpful both for the members of the tribunal and for the public that there be a code of ethics.
In conclusion, we'd like to say that a careful analysis of the Tenant Protection Act indicates that it provides more power to the landlord and less to the tenant. Rents will be negotiated. Tenants, as you know, move frequently, and in a few years the protection provided by the Rent Control Act will be effectively phased out. Tenants are faced with new limitation periods. The rules for eviction have been facilitated in favour of the landlord.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to touch on all the changes that the Tenant Protection Act has brought; however, from what I've practised, those were the most glaring changes. These changes could be serious in that they may affect a person's basic security, namely, where they live. Unless a person has been evicted or harassed or abused by a landlord, it is impossible to imagine how powerless a tenant really is. At the clinic, we see it frequently. With the changes proposed in the Tenant Protection Act, we're afraid that we'll see more of it.
Also, as part of the conclusion, I would like to address a point that Mr Duncan made earlier, because as a practitioner in this area, I may be able to provide some information that is helpful.
The Chair: I regret to inform you that you have only two minutes left.
Ms Broad: I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was going over time.
The Chair: That's quite all right. It's your time. You can do with it what you like. You have two minutes left.
Ms Broad: As quickly as I can, then. You asked about the old system and the movement towards the tribunal system. In our submission this is a good idea. A tribunal system could be better in that it would be less adversarial, we hope, in an area that is highly emotional and very adversarial. In that respect, we're looking forward to practising in that domain. We also think it could be more expedient.
However, our concern with some of the proposals -- correct me if I'm wrong, but when I read the act, I see that the time limits are pretty harsh. We're worried about that. A landlord can apply forthwith now to have a tribunal hearing. Before, it would have to be after the 20 days. That's of great concern to us, because tenants have a difficult time acquiring the evidence necessary for their case. We anticipate there could be problems with that aspect of the legislation, but overall, the move to a tribunal and out of the courts we hope will be better, and hopefully the mediation too. We're looking forward to the mediation. There is concern about the power imbalances there; however, hopefully people like our clinic can get involved and help regulate that.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Broad, for coming. Unfortunately, your time has expired, but we appreciate your presentation.
1430
CITY OF WINDSOR
The Chair: The next presenter is Ed Link, who is a building commissioner. We welcome you to the committee, sir.
Mr Ed Link: Good afternoon. I'd like to clarify one point before I start. When my secretary was asked what group I was representing, she mentioned I was here to represent the Large Municipalities Chief Building Officials group. While I am a founding member of that group and on the board of directors, my comments are folded in with their presentation which will be presented in Toronto when you have your hearings there.
I'm here today as a building commissioner for the city of Windsor. The brief I have before you today is being delivered not necessarily in conflict with the position of the Large Municipalities Chief Building Officials or the Ontario Building Officials Association or the Toronto Area Chief Building Officials Committee. We've shared our briefs and I believe the presentation I'm making here today will augment their position.
The city of Windsor has been involved in the enforcement of property standards since 1957, when an amendment to the City of Windsor Act enabled my municipality to become the third city in Ontario to establish a property standards bylaw.
The city of Windsor has an interest in protecting its existing housing stock. Occasionally, this will include the prosecution of individuals who have not maintained their property in accordance with minimum standards. It is our goal to alter behaviour and not necessarily to punish our citizens. The following comments are being offered in the hope that Bill 96 will be modified to provide a more effective and efficient method of enforcing the legislation and our own municipal property standards bylaw.
To begin with, part VII of Bill 96 will amend the legislation related to the provision and maintenance of vital services. Since its enactment, very few municipalities have created municipal bylaws for the provision of vital services. Those that have done so have received special legislation to recover municipal expenditures as taxes and not as a lien on property. Municipalities do not wish to become the lenders of last resort with, in some cases, very little hope of recovering our expenses. Our recommendation before you today is to allow the cost of maintaining vital services to be recovered as taxes.
The Large Municipalities Chief Building Officials group has already held this position, and they in turn have written both to the Premier and to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
Procedures for the enforcement of property standards bylaws will be streamlined with the passage of Bill 96. There will still be times when property owners choose not to comply with minimum standards and it'll be necessary to commence court action. The increase in the maximum fines in all likelihood will not motivate a change in behaviour. Court action is a very time-consuming process with very little guarantee of success. Upon conviction, the fines tend to be rather small -- based on our experience over the last five years, the average is approximately $250 or less -- and there's very little incentive for the payment of the fine. Furthermore, most municipalities do not take the necessary steps to collect on delinquent accounts.
Where fines are unpaid, it is up to the municipality to prepare a letter to the clerk of the court requesting a certificate of default, which is then filed in Small Claims Court. Once a certificate of default has been filed by the municipality, the municipality then files a request for enforcement to issue a writ of seizure and sale with that office and to file that writ in the sheriff's office, the registry office and land titles office. This acts as a lien on the property and, if not discharged by the owner, must be renewed every six years by the municipality. The cost to the municipality of $101 for the registration of the document is then recoverable, with interest, on the amount outstanding. Currently, the post-judgement interest rates are set at 5% per quarter. This, once again, does not include our legal expenses, which are absorbed by the municipality.
A far more effective, efficient and businesslike way of handling this is obviously to allow the municipalities to recover outstanding fines by placing them on the tax roll and collecting them as taxes.
Financial programs to assist in the maintenance and upgrading of the province's rental housing stock have been terminated, with the exception of programs to modify units for occupants with disabilities. As far as I'm aware, only two municipalities, Toronto and Hamilton, have enacted bylaws to create low-interest loan programs for the upgrading of the dwelling units in their communities. Without financial assistance, building officials like myself must resort to punitive action to obtain results.
The fines assessed by the courts, while they're usually small, could be better used to repair dwellings. Oftentimes in our case, once the person is found guilty, particularly if it's an owner-occupant, we've asked for a stay of anywhere from a month to three months, depending on the situation, so that the individual can repair the dwelling. At that point, when it comes to the actual fining process, we're then able to present the justice of the peace with a track record of what the individual has done, as an additional enticement to get the work done as opposed to actually fining our citizens.
Once again, the most vulnerable members of our society require financial assistance to maintain their property. Our council has gone on record requesting the province to give consideration to the re-enactment of financial programs to assist in the rehabilitation of our municipal housing stock.
We currently have in our possession approximately $200,000 in loans which are being processed. As the money comes in, we're supposed to return it to the province. What we're hoping, because it does not take any additional funding, is that programs can be reinstated to maintain our existing housing stock.
That concludes my presentation. The recommendations are fairly simple. I thank you very much for the opportunity to be before this committee and make this presentation. I'm also prepared to answer any questions you may have.
Mr Beaubien: Good afternoon, Mr Link. It's nice to see you in downtown Windsor. The city of Windsor was very visionary, I guess, in 1957 when they were the third municipality in Ontario to establish property standards bylaws. I agree that the process might be unwieldy and slow at times, but I think it has worked quite well in most municipalities in Ontario in the past number of years.
I have some difficulties. This morning we had a presentation from Legal Assistance of Windsor, and I will read from their presentation:
"The city of Windsor building department has placed a priority on inspection of new buildings, resulting in inspections of existing buildings with respect to complaints receiving a low priority. It can difficult to get a building inspector to attend at premises, and when they do, they focus on the exterior. I have been advised that they may start only inspecting the exterior and avoid going inside at all."
Could you comment on that?
Mr Link: Yes, I can. With the increase in the level of construction -- to give you an order of magnitude, in the last five years we've had more construction in this community than in the previous 15 years combined. With limited municipal resources, we've focused our attention on, I'll say, the present workload, which is on new construction, because we have an obligation in that respect.
The enforcement of municipal bylaws by and large is discretionary. We've tried to prioritize this, with the most serious complaints going to the top of the list, in other words, ones that involve an immediate threat to life, safety or health. Issues that are more aesthetic or nuisance-type complaints are dealt with in a lower priority. We currently spend probably less than 10% of our staff time dealing with the enforcement of bylaws, where normally that would be in the range of 25% to 30%. That's just based on the current workload.
Mr Beaubien: Then I would be correct to assume that if there was a situation in a building in Windsor that could potentially affect the health or safety of individuals, it would be given top priority with regard to having a report done on the property itself.
Mr Link: That's correct.
Mr Duncan: Thanks, Mr Link. It's good to see you again. I wanted to raise one issue with you in your presentation. It's a legal issue, I suppose. I imagine there's a reason these types of recoveries have not been classified as taxes in the past. Would there be impediments in other statutes to referring to these recoveries as taxes?
Mr Link: There may be some impediments related to that. Once again, the process is established in the courts. What I was hoping is that the legislation would be amended by very simply saying that if a municipality had outstanding fines they could be recovered as taxes. It's fairly simple. It saves the province all kinds of handling in staff time and everything else and it's very simple for the municipality. We can then use our discretion in how we proceed. Once again I wish to emphasize that we want to see property upgraded. This is not to be a punitive action.
Mr Duncan: These taxes could then be used for those purposes?
Mr Link: If collected as taxes, it makes it simpler for us and it acts as an additional means of leverage, where we can encourage people to repair their property and keep it upgraded, as opposed to working out other arrangements where we have to be very diligent in our efforts to extract the fines.
Mr Len Wood: As a follow-up to the question from Mr Beaubien, as of January 1 there are $600 million in services that the municipalities are going to have to pick up, which is going to mean restructuring and downsizing.
We have a situation in Timmins that was in the paper a couple of days ago, where a business has had to shut down because the only inspector around was on vacation and they could not afford to hire a replacement for vacations, so the business had to shut down and lay off 15 employees until that inspector comes back from vacation. Can you see this happening, maybe not necessarily in Windsor but in some of the other areas throughout the province as you reduce and downsize and try to live within the means without having big tax increases, staff not being available to look after these situations?
Mr Link: Based on the experience I have, which is basically with a larger city, we have the resources. As a larger city, if areas are amalgamated, you can provide for some efficiency in the delivery of service, with a hope that you can cross-train individuals to provide various activities that are normally provided by a larger municipality.
When it comes to, for example, permit fees and things like that for construction, we operate on a cost-recovery basis. In fact, we're looked at as a revenue generator in that regard. I lose money on bylaw enforcement. My legal cost alone is $60,000 a year for legal services and I recover maybe about 80% of that through fines assessed, and of the fines assessed, I collect on maybe 60% of those. It's not very cost-effective from a business perspective.
Mr Len Wood: There's a possibility that you'd have to introduce higher user-pay fees for this work to be done. You're saying you've had to reduce the amount of buildings being inspected now in favour of new construction. That could be reduced even more, or you'd have to increase user fees or find some way of getting revenue.
Mr Link: It's a matter of resource allocation. I have only so many staff, so many vehicles, and one has to make judgement calls as to where you're going to put those individuals and those resources.
Mr Duncan: I'd like to ask to ask a question of the minister's staff. I think it's salient. The parliamentary assistant and I were just reviewing page 99, subsection (4), which says, "and the amount shall be deemed to be municipal real property taxes and may be added by the clerk of the municipality to the collector's roll and collected in the same manner and with the same priorities as municipal real property taxes." Is it the view of the ministry that that would address the concerns raised by Mr Link?
Mr Gilchrist: That is what we believe is the appropriate solution, yes.
Mr Link: I have an older copy of the document. In the earlier version I believe it was to be as a lien on property. That may have been subsequently changed.
Mr Gilchrist: I'll be pleased to show it to you.
The Chair: Mr Link, thank you very much.
The next presenter is Barry Furlonger of Downtown Mission. We're a little off schedule. I'm going to run through the list and see if anyone else is here. If not, we'll have to have a short recess. Margaret Simpson of Essex County Children's Aid Society? Tilda DiMenna of Sun Parlour Income Property Association? Clerk, could you call out in the hall and see if Mr Furlonger is here? If not, we'll have to recess.
The committee recessed from 1445 to 1500.
DOWNTOWN MISSION
The Chair: Perhaps I could ask committee members to return to the table. I understand Mr Furlonger representing Downtown Mission has arrived. Good afternoon, sir. You may proceed.
Mr Barry Furlonger: Good afternoon. I'll try to stay below the 20 minutes I was allotted. Is that the spot I have, 20 minutes?
The Chair: You are allotted 20 minutes, yes. Your time is how you wish to use it. You can allow time for questions or you can speak for the full 20 minutes.
Mr Furlonger: I think I'll be less than 20 if I timed this right. The proposed changes to gut rent legislation are just one more brick in the wall. It's a big brick and it will make the wall even higher. The wall I'm referring to is the wall that this society is building between the rich and the poor.
Over a year ago, the provincial government made drastic cuts to the welfare system in this province. What was especially drastic about those cuts was the unrealistic amounts allowed for rents. The amount allowed for a family with two children went from $707 to $554. You cannot rent a two-bedroom or a three-bedroom apartment for that amount of money, let alone pay utility bills.
The result across the province is that tens of thousands of children are living in households where $100 to $200 a month is taken out of the food budget to pay rent and utilities. That's why the mission's food bank demand went up 30% and some food banks went up 50% to 100%.
Today I served a lady who's paying $700 for an apartment. She's allowed $554. She pays $56 a month electricity on top of that. She's trying to feed herself and two children on $330 or something like that, and on top of that, her husband's support payments are behind by $900 because the system in Toronto that's supposed to kick that cheque out has failed her too.
At the low end of the housing market where people are living on welfare, disability or low-wage jobs -- and for every person on welfare there's about two families out there who are at the bottom end of the wage market and are just above that welfare level of income -- the vacancy rate is very low. Most of these units -- and I've dealt with these landlords. I've been a landlord. I know a lot of these landlords, some of them good, some of them bad.
Most of those landlords who own those units at the bottom end of the market buy existing units and use the income to pay the mortgage and to pay their costs. They have neither the inclination, the money or the resources to build new units. That's not the business they're in. They don't have the money to do it. They make a minimum down payment and the moment they take over the units or within a month they've got income from the renters. That's how they do their business, then they buy another unit and another unit and they use the equity on their old units to buy the other units. They're not going to build new units. That's not the business they're in. What will happen is, with rent controls off, the rents are going to climb. That's a given.
The horror stories I hear from people in this position are both depressing and scary. Most landlords are responsible people, but the bottom end of the market seems to attract the worst of the landlords -- not all but some. You have landlords who make large families bid against each other for a house: "Oh, I've got a family that's going to give me $625. What will you give me?" That goes on right now, and that's with rent controls.
You have landlords too cheap to put in electric meters when they convert a house to a two- or three-unit building. They throw up a few walls, throw in a staircase and don't even bother putting in new electric meters: "Collect the electric bill from the tenant upstairs. The electric bill's in his name. If the tenant skips, you're stuck with it because I'm too cheap to do that." That's illegal, but they do it. Or landlords too cheap to buy a couple of tubes of caulking for a house that hasn't had a dime spent on it in 20 years but, "You pay the utility bill." The gas bill's $200, $300, $400 in the middle of winter because the wind blows through the windows and under the doors but, "Give me my rent, but I won't spend any money on the building."
Landlords evict tenants because they're too pushy and actually ask for something to be fixed. You have in this market some responsible landlords, but you have slumlords and slimelords. I call them "slimelords." My definition of a slumlord is somebody who owns a slum but maintains it at that level. They minimally spend enough to keep it where it's at. A slimelord is someone who owns a dump and won't even spend any money to keep it at that level, but he still wants his rent.
Both these groups will raise the rent to whatever the market will bear, but a roof is not like a car or a washing machine. You or I, when we're going to purchase something like that, we take a little while, we look around, see what's the best deal and when something's going to go on sale and who's going to give me the best deal. A roof is not an ordinary commodity in the marketplace. You have to have a roof today. You can't wait. It's a different kind of commodity. It's not quite like the normal marketplace commodity.
When I see the fear and tears in the eyes of the mothers who pay the rent and heating bills with their children's food money, I ask about the rent and the response is, time after time: "I can't find anything else. I've looked, I've looked, I've looked. What choice do I have?" They have no choice. It's not a normal market situation. You have a choice and it's to say no to gutting rent control legislation.
If you want to see what happens to a society where people just sort of let a whole group of people just kind of slide down the economic ladder and right off the end of it, how many people here are from Windsor? The rest of you are out of town?
The Chair: We're from all across the province.
Mr Furlonger: Okay. Get a car, drive across the bridge. Don't go on the expressway. Go two blocks past coming off the bridge, hang a right-hand turn and you'll see what happens in a society that takes a whole bunch of people and just shoves them off the ladder. You'll see sections of Detroit that look how Beirut used to look in the TV coverage a few years ago. You'll see despair, you'll see hopelessness, you'll see drugs and you'll see crime. If you think that can't happen here, then you're fooling yourself because if you shove enough people off the end of the economic ladder, at some point they reach a critical mass and then all kinds of bad things start happening, and this is just one more move to do that.
In Canada most of our major cities are still livable and still reasonably safe. Can you say that of most major cities in the States? Ask yourself why that is. The reason it's relatively safe here is because in three areas we give a damn about people and in three areas we say to people, "Well, we're all sort of equal," and those three areas are education, health care and the social safety net.
In the United States with those first two, health care and education, it's a two-tiered system. The health care system is a two-tiered system. What they spend on a kid for education in downtown Detroit compared to what they spend in suburbia is way, way different, not to mention the private schools. The social safety net in the United States is a tattered mess compared to ours. As bad as ours is, it still looks good compared to what's over there.
Getting rid of rent controls is one way of gutting the safety net. Downloading is another way. Decreasing welfare payments is another way, and this will just be another brick in that wall. This is a formula for disaster and if you don't think we're going to pay a big price for it in the end, you better think again.
Ask yourself why the United States has 5% of the world's population and uses 50% of the world's illegal drugs. It's not just drugs in the ghetto, it's drugs in the middle class. It's middle-class kids taking those drugs. It cuts right across society. Why does that happen? Because on some subliminal level those kids pick up on the hopelessness, the despair and the alienation. That's a society that's built on the keen edge of success, but if you are not successful, they don't give a damn about you. "We'll give you second-class education, we'll give you second-class health care and we'll give you a tattered social safety net that leaves you in grinding poverty."
1510
The message for everybody is, "Don't fail, don't stumble, don't get sick, don't get downsized, don't get old, don't get divorced, don't get born into a poor family because we don't give a damn about you as long as we get ours." That's the message that's inherent in that society and that's why that society is like it is and ours is like ours is in terms of the safety of the cities and livability of the cities.
If you have a blind faith in the marketplace, look out for what the consequences are going to be in the long run because that sharp sword of success that the US system runs on and we seem hellbent on duplicating is a double-edged sword; it cuts both ways. If you think you or your family can escape the long-term consequences of a society that is full of despair and hopelessness for a big chunk of that society, then you're fooling yourself because in the long run -- it may take one year, it may take five years, it may take 10 years -- some of you around this table will ultimately pay the price for what you are about to do.
Open up your eyes. Get in a car and go across the river. I dare you to, but maybe don't go after dark. I dare you. Go over there and see what happens to a society that says, "Here's a whole group of people we don't give a damn about." It was done, we know, on the basis of race, but you can do the same thing on the basis of income. We can just take a whole group and say, "We don't give a damn about you. If we cut your welfare payments so you can't get a dump for what we give you, tough luck." Now gut the rent control legislation and let the slumlords and the slimelords have their day. "Tough luck. As long as I get mine, I'm okay."
Open up your eyes to the fact that there are thousands of children today in this province who, because of welfare cuts, are existing on empty calories. The mother who today is trying to feed and clothe her kids on $330 a month is feeding her kids empty calories. Those kids are living on Kraft dinners. What are the long-term consequences in terms of how alert you can be in school living on Kraft dinners? What are the long-term consequences in terms of health care? We already know that health care dollars for poor people are millions and millions of dollars more than for the rest of us, and that was before the cuts to welfare.
So take a hard look at it and open your eyes and just say no to this legislation that is being proposed. Thank you.
Mr Duncan: Thank you, Barry. I think that's a wise challenge to the government members because the government has welcomed Governor Engler with open arms and endorsed the policies that that state has followed. I would urge the government members to do that as well, if they get the chance. I know they're busy and they have to be at their next set of hearings, but perhaps another opportunity will come along.
I'd like to address an issue that was raised earlier around sections 36 and 200 of the bill and place a question to the government. I've reviewed now the memo that was placed by Anne Beaumont, dated August 8, where she deals with section 36 and section 200 of the bill. If in fact it is the government's intention to not allow the use of income as a criterion, would the government be prepared to withdraw section 36 of the bill, which, according to the minister's assistant deputy minister, provides landlords with the authority to use income information in selecting prospective tenants?
If the position that has been put forward by the government with respect to section 200 and how it amends the Ontario Human Rights Code is correct -- and by the way, having reviewed this, I still don't concur with the government's position on that -- then it would seem to me that, based on Ms Beaumont's comments, the government would therefore be prepared to withdraw section 36 of the bill, and if it is the government's intention to clarify a loophole in the Human Rights Code, only proceed with section 200 of the bill.
I'll place that as a question. I don't know if the government chooses to answer it now, but certainly we'd be interested to hear that opinion prior to clause-by-clause.
The Chair: We're on Mr Furlonger's time. I'm at the mercy of the committee.
Mr Gilchrist: I'd be pleased to have staff respond.
Mr Duncan: I think it's a political question. Are you prepared to withdraw section 36?
Mr Gilchrist: No, I think it's a technical question and I'd be pleased to give you an answer if you'd like to hear it.
Mr Duncan: Yes.
Mr Karl Cunningham: The reason for section 36 is that, once this bill has passed through the Legislature and has been proclaimed in force, you will not see section 200 in that bill because it's an amending provision.
The reason for section 36 is to alert landlords under the bill, because section 36 will continue, that they may use the type of business practices that are in section 36 in accordance with the regulations under the Human Rights Code. It simply illustrates to them or draws to their attention that they do have this right in accordance with the regulations under the Human Rights Code.
The Chair: We're now on to Mr Wood's time.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for the excellent presentation. I agree with you that with what is basically the elimination of rent control what the Conservative government in Ontario considers to be 3.3 million special interest persons out there are going to have no protection whatsoever once this legislation is passed. We know that on new rental accommodation there will be no controls and on the old accommodation, as people continue to move, the rents will go up, so rent control is gone. The society that you're talking about, first of all you cut off the food money and the rent money for the welfare people, I guess it's two years next month. Now some of the same group of people are being attacked again because they won't be able to find rental accommodation.
I thought you made an excellent presentation. I'm waiting to see and hoping that I'll see some of the Conservatives stand up and vote against this legislation when it comes up for third reading, unless it's amended drastically so it will be fair and not be discriminatory against about one third of our people in Ontario.
Mr Gilchrist: I appreciate your making your presentation. If you'll allow me one brief digression, just as Mr Duncan did -- unfortunately the way these proceedings take place, sometimes points get raised that can't be addressed until subsequent opportunities -- Mr Wood raised the issue earlier and asked the question point blank: What about people who are blind and how do they have access to this? Well, while it was not the practice of your government, sir, both the consultation paper a year ago and the first reading copy of this bill are available on tape. We had them done at the CNIB and in fact we've had to reorder them three times based on the demand. Obviously they and we have done a good job of communicating with that sector of our province. The information is accessible to them and we invite their response as well.
Let me just ask you very quickly, sir, where is the role of the individual in all of this? We heard just before you arrived from the city's property standards chief here in Windsor. If in fact all of these problems exist right now, if in fact there are slumlords, and to use your term, slimelords, is there not a role for the tenant to be raising that with the city of Windsor? Is there not an obligation, given that the city of Windsor has passed a property standards bylaw, to have that law enforced? If that is true, what is the role of your organization in alerting the general populace if the city is falling down on that job?
Mr Furlonger: I used those illustrations not to say there should be better enforcement of it because obviously there should be. I use those illustrations to illustrate the kind of landlords that exist out there. The point I'm trying to make is that the people who pull that kind of stuff -- and sometimes they get called to task by a tenant finally, although sometimes it's four tenants before some tenant finally complains to the right bureaucracy and is patient enough to wait for somebody to do something about it -- the same kind of mentality that pulls that kind of crap, pardon the expression, is the same kind of person who will make somebody bid for a unit.
Mr Gilchrist: That's why we have the laws to protect tenants.
Mr Furlonger: No, because you're not going to have any rent controls. Once rent controls disappear, this landlord can say: "Gee, Julie, the last tenant will give me $650. Will you give me $675?"
The Chair: Mr Furlonger, unfortunately we're out of time; in fact we're beyond time. You've raised some very salient points, and we thank you for coming.
1520
ESSEX COUNTY CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY
The Chair: The next presenter is Margaret Simpson, a family service worker with the Essex County Children's Aid Society. Good afternoon.
Mrs Margaret Simpson: Good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity of being here and presenting the position of the children's aid society on this new proposed legislation. You mentioned that I was a family service worker with children's aid. Indeed I am and have been for the past 23 years. I have had many sad, depressing times trying to help clients right on the front line with their problems with housing and trying to keep their families together. That's been my perspective.
The children's aid society has serious concerns in regard to the legislative amendments in Bill 96. Our specific concern is related to section 200 of the proposed bill, which would amend the Human Rights Code to allow landlords to ask the prospective tenant for income information. If the applicant does not meet the income criteria of the landlord, tenancy would be denied on that basis alone.
The majority of families receiving services from the children's aid society are on social assistance. They include two-parent families, single-parent families, families new to Canada, adolescent mothers, adolescents who receive their income from the children's aid society or from social services. All our families are struggling financially to meet their own needs as well as the needs of their children, and housing is one of their primary needs.
Subsidized housing is the only type of housing that the majority of our clients can afford. Unfortunately, the government has a freeze on building new public housing. The waiting list for subsidized housing in Windsor is long. I called many of the housing institutions in Windsor, and I'll just cite one for an example. The Windsor Housing Authority has 828 families on their waiting list. They go on a point system, and someone who is struggling with two children, who does not have major health problems, who does not have to take their child for therapy once a week or can manage living on their own would not be at the top of the list -- 800 people ahead of them when they apply for housing at Windsor Housing. As a result of the long waiting lists and fewer vacancies, many families have to wait at least two years -- and that's a low number I'm giving -- to acquire subsidized housing. What are these families to do in the meantime? They have to seek housing through the private sector. This is no easy task, especially since their income was cut by 21% last year and most landlords require first and last months' rent. That's a real toughie if they have a couple of children and their income is $1,200 a month and they have to pay first and last months' rent.
Currently, many families have to resort to inadequate housing that poses a health and safety risk to both themselves and their children. It is not unusual to hear of water seeping through ceilings and windows, leaking toilets and taps, and cockroaches abounding. These families have no choice but to remain in private housing until public housing becomes available. Some mothers return to abusive situations because they are unable to acquire suitable housing and they believe it's better to take their chance on going back to an abusive situation than going on the street.
Currently, landlords cannot deny housing based on income information. However, as we know, if Bill 96 passes without the amendments being made, it will allow landlords to refuse housing based solely on the income of the prospective tenant. The majority of our families are in receipt of public assistance and would not qualify if the landlord were to use the 30% basis to decide whether they would rent to them.
We have found that many families on assistance are able to pay their rent. They don't meet the criteria, but they somehow pay the rent. How do they do it? They manage their money well. They get some part-time work; baby-sitting is common for these mothers. They cut down on essentials: food and clothing. As we heard in the last presentation, it's very sad. They do cut down and they have their kids on macaroni and cheese. Many times a month I take the mother and the children to food banks to get food for them to carry on. But they pay their rent. That's the landlord's concern, the rent paid. I have to say to myself, at what cost? But their primary concern is having a roof over their head, so they pay their rent.
Another sad situation I find -- it's not your problem but nevertheless it is sad -- is that the schools have field trips for the children and they have pizza day and so on. These children don't take anything to school. Their mothers don't have the money to give them the kinds of things that we give our children when they go to school and we want them to fit in and have what every other kid has. They don't, and they stand out and they feel that. The mothers feel it more than the children do.
Another situation I had last year: The mother paid the rent but the gas was turned off. I went into that house all winter. I had a sweater on, jacket on, blazer and winter coat and I'm freezing in there. They're managing. They have a roof over their rent and their rent is paid. But I have to say, at what cost? They got through the winter and the summer came and they were able to manage. It's not a good situation in which some of our families live.
Other families are not able to acquire housing or maintain the rent. Many of these families come to the children's aid for assistance with housing. During the past seven months, January 1997 to July 1997, our statistics indicate that 121 families had major problems related to housing. When no resources can be found to assist these families, these children have to come into foster care at the children's aid society. Furthermore, our foster care is so full up to the brim that we have no more foster homes either. We are in a dire situation, and much of it is due to housing. This tendency will increase if Bill 96 is passed without amendments to section 200. It will be a sad state of affairs if our society, through its legislation, denies families housing and consequently the children have to come into children's aid care.
It is even more difficult for families whose children are already in foster care. We can't have them returned to them until -- they cannot get any income to get more expensive housing. For example, when their children are in care they need a one-bedroom apartment; when the children come home they need a two-bedroom apartment. But social services will not give them that money until the children are home. They're in a catch-22 situation, because there's a period of time that takes much adjustment. It's very difficult for the parents to find housing for children returning from foster care.
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The children's aid society strongly urges the government to delete income information from section 200 of Bill 96. It is understandable that landlords seriously consider credit checks, credit references and rental history in selecting a prospective tenant. However, many young adults, single mothers and fathers, families new to our country, have not had the opportunity to develop a credit record, credit references or a rental housing history. The children's aid society recommends that housing not be denied to these families. These families need an opportunity to prove themselves capable of being responsible tenants, which includes paying one's rent on time.
The children's aid society's responsibility is to facilitate strengthening families and if possible maintain children within their family unit. We need legislation that does not discriminate against our most needy families, especially the children in these families. Children need an opportunity to grow in a home environment that enhances their development, not that stunts their development through lack of food, lack of appropriate housing, illnesses and disease spread by the cockroaches and insects in their homes. They need an opportunity to be safe and healthy and parents need the opportunity to provide healthy and safe affordable housing for themselves and their children.
We believe that deleting "income information" from sections 200 and 36 of Bill 96, and not denying housing to those who have no credit record, credit references or credit history, will give our needy families an opportunity to give their children a good start in life. I strongly urge you to consider that in your recommendations to the government at this time.
Mr Len Wood: Thank you for your presentation. I find it interesting that you're saying a family had to go seven months through the winter with no gas. I guess it's because of the 21.5% cut for food and shelter. It's shameful to hear that. I hope Mike Harris is aware that because of action he is taking he's having people living in the cold and is not caring for the poor people in society. You're saying it's getting worse, that there are a lot more needy children out there since all the cuts and now with the elimination of rent control -- we had a presentation this morning, a landlord representing the Essex landlord association, claiming that because there are all kinds of rental units available he had to lower his rent on a couple of apartments. Yet you're saying there are 800-some needy families waiting for subsidized housing.
Mrs Simpson: I wonder what the rent is with that landlord.
Mr Len Wood: I guess the condition of the apartments as well, if he had to lower them.
I would just make a comment, as I did to the other presenters, that I hope the Conservative caucus members who are going to be considering the amendments and voting on third reading are going to vote against this legislation unless amendments are made so that it stops discriminating against the one third of our society who are in rental accommodation throughout the province. Thank you for your presentation.
Mrs Munro: Thank you very much for appearing before us today. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions that relate to section 200. Clearly, that is a critical issue for you. You indicate on page 3 that you understand why landlords would want to have a menu of choice in terms of getting some background on a prospective tenant. Then you referred to those for whom that information may not be available. I wondered if there was something that you think is appropriate for a landlord to be able to ask if the prospective tenant cannot provide a credit check or rental history.
Mrs Simpson: I don't know. Perhaps getting references from friends or people they have known or, if it's a refugee family, the people who sponsored them to come here, to get personal references about their integrity, their honesty, their past experiences and things other than money.
Mrs Munro: My second questions comes from listening to a number of presentations where landlords have told us that they do rent to people on social assistance; they do not have a problem with this. I'm sure you'll agree with me that obviously there are many good landlords, as there are many good tenants.
Mrs Simpson: Yes, there are.
Mrs Munro: They have indicated that they are quite willing and, as a general practice, do accept tenants on social assistance. I wondered if you'd give us a comment on the recent announcement of the opportunity to have that paid directly to landlords under certain circumstances. What's your view of that?
Mrs Simpson: I think it can be very helpful to the client. That happens in subsidized housing.
Mrs Munro: Yes, but this is taking that a step further into the private sector.
Mrs Simpson: I think it's always best if these families can be responsible on their own, but sometimes if they have shown that they can't handle money that well and they are agreeing to that, I think it can be a good thing.
Mr Hoy: Good afternoon, and thank you for your presentation. Yours was similar to many others we've heard that talk about the poor, the working poor, the disadvantaged, the vulnerable in our society. I found it interesting and very worthwhile to hear you say, "They manage their money well."
Mrs Simpson: Some do, not all. The ones who pay their rent, yes.
Mr Hoy: But I'm pleased to hear you say that they do, because there is in society a stigma attached to those who are on certain assistance plans that none of them can manage their money. I'm pleased to hear you say that's not the case.
Mrs Simpson: No, it isn't the case. I appreciate your bringing up that point.
Mr Hoy: I think society has developed a certain idea that none of them can, and it's good to know that's not true.
The other thing I just wanted to mention was that some time ago I read an article that came from the United States; in it was an economic philosophy that when governments have difficulty managing the economy and we get into a situation with high unemployment, maybe coupled with a depression-type situation, governments tend to turn towards the vulnerable and blame them for all the ills of society. This fellow traced that actually happening in the United States and showed proof of that. Governments were no longer able, in a global society, to stimulate the economy the way they wanted to, so they blamed the vulnerable. I think the 21.5% cut to welfare recipients was exactly that type of mentality, that they shifted the blame to those who least affected the economy at all.
Mrs Simpson: I think those are the people who, if they aren't powerless -- and I don't believe they are powerless, but many of them believe they are. Therefore, they're demoralized and they don't know the channels to take to put their issues forward to those in power. Sometimes they don't get satisfactory answers when they do call their MPPs. Sometimes situations aren't possible to remedy, but they've had one closed door after the other and they just give up. It's a very sad state of affairs.
The Chair: Mrs Simpson, our time has expired. I thank you on behalf of the committee for coming to the committee and making your representations to us.
The next presenter is Tilda DiMenna. Is she here?
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DANZIG ENTERPRISES
The Chair: We'll try Tim Fuerth, Danzig Enterprises Ltd. Thank you, Mr Fuerth, for cooperating with us with respect to the agenda.
Mr Tim Fuerth: Thank you, Mr Chairman. I have provided you with copies of a fairly lengthy and detailed brief. I would ask that rather than read through the brief, you listen to my comments so that hopefully you'll get a better understanding of the points we are making. We were fortunate enough to make a presentation to the legislative committee hearing the comments on the discussion paper last September, and we've also been fortunate enough to make a presentation on Bill 106, the Fair Municipal Finance Act. Really, what we've provided you with is the culmination of our presentations to those two committees.
I don't intend to dwell at length on rent control other than to make a few comments. We've heard various presenters indicating that there are more vulnerable people in society and those people don't have the incomes that would allow living in accommodation that is more expensive rather than less expensive. No one disputes that. I don't think anyone in this room would suggest that people shouldn't have access to quality rental accommodation no matter what their station in life and no matter what their income.
The key issue from our perspective is, who should pay for it? Should it be the landlord, who represents a small segment of the population, or should it be the population at large? If we go back a few years, there was much discussion and media attention given to shelter allowances. As I say, no one really disputes that there are people in society who can't afford quality rental accommodation. The issue is not so much that; the issue is who's going to pay for it.
When we look at what constitutes quality of rental accommodation -- and I always hear the terminology "fair rent" -- the thing that always strikes me, and it's inherent in Bill 96 as well, is that everyone seems to concentrate on, to me, what is perhaps an important issue but certainly not the most significant issue. Everyone concentrates on rent: What is a fair rent? How much rent should someone have to pay? I don't think anyone in this room would dispute that $100 a month for a quality apartment is not a fair rent. What always gets left out in the conversation is, how much does it cost to provide quality accommodation? Certainly we've seen through the non-profit housing sector, the co-op housing sector, with the inefficiencies we've seen in those projects, that the government does it a lot less efficiently than the private sector does.
But if we break it down and we look at what it costs to provide rental accommodation, and I'm talking about quality rental accommodation, a landlord has a number of bills that have to be paid. The first one is the property taxes, which run approximately 20%. Much of our presentation on Bill 106, the Fair Municipal Finance Act, concentrated on that particular aspect. That's 20% of every rent dollar that comes in goes to property taxes. Then we talk about utilities. The rule of thumb is that 20% to 25% of every rent dollar that's paid goes to pay for the utilities. Lastly, these buildings appear on the earth through construction, and invariably construction has to be financed, so there are mortgage payments. Those three are very significant components.
The suggestion from many advocacy groups is that the landlords are taking the rent money and sticking it in their pockets. No one is looking at what the underlying costs are of operating the building. We look at property taxes, utilities, mortgage payments, and add on top of that the many other costs: insurance, capital taxes, GST, which is a new additional burden for landlords, effective I believe in 1991, that never existed before. We have to look at what those underlying costs are, and only then can you determine whether a rent is fair. I think that's something that really has been lost by all the parties, all the advocacy groups. They ignore what it constitutes to provide quality accommodation.
I think everyone would agree that you get what you pay for in most anything in life, and rental accommodation is no different. If you want to pay $100 a month -- for many of the apartments we have, that doesn't even cover the property taxes, let alone the utilities, the mortgage, the insurance and so on down the line. If you want to pay $100 a month, that's fine, but you're going to get $100 worth of rental accommodation. There's just no escaping that reality.
Short of some system, being a shelter allowance system which will be paid directly to the landlord, we're always going to concentrate on this issue of the haves and the have-nots and no one is focusing on what it costs to provide quality rental accommodation. I think that's important. We all lose sight of the fact that the landlord has bills to pay. The city certainly doesn't allow a landlord to defer or minimize their property tax payments because they have low-income tenants. The mortgage companies certainly don't allow you to defer your mortgage payments or reduce your interest rate because you have low-income tenants. The utilities, whether it be Union Gas or hydro, sure as heck don't allow you to run up too much of a balance, and if you do run up a balance they sure sting you with the penalties. People have to remember that most of that rent dollar is going somewhere.
When you break it all down, and I think this is where the whole issue of rents and fair rents comes to, when landlords pay all those obligations that have to be paid, what's left over I call the table scraps. What's left over is for maintenance. I think it's fair to say that if the rents are stabilized or decreasing at a time these costs are increasing, which I think everyone agrees they are, those table scraps start to shrink and shrink and shrink. You see it throughout any city if you go and walk through these rental apartments, that they're deteriorating. Some suggest that the landlords are sticking the money in their pockets. The reality is that the rental levels just don't support adequately maintaining these buildings. I know we'll have a heated discussion on that comment, but I believe it to be an accurate one.
We're in a crisis in Ontario with rental housing. In my brief I've repeated a quote from CMHC from October 1995, where they indicated that since 1984, 80% of the apartment rental supply and 100% of row housing has been non-profit or co-op. I think we all know that the non-profit is going nowhere in terms of new construction. We've also seen CMHC cleaning up their portfolio with co-op housing, allowing many of them now to go into bankruptcy that can't reasonably and feasibly support themselves. That's economic reality, and I think we're starting to realize that we just can't avoid economic reality.
In summary, in terms of our overall comments on the bill -- and we've certainly been more than willing to provide our comments -- we view the bill as being detrimental to our business. I know it comes as a bit of a shock that we, being landlords, would make that comment. But our view certainly is that Bill 96, from our business perspective in terms of constructing new units, properly maintaining our buildings, will be worse than the Rent Control Act. It's not very often you hear a landlord say that he favours the Rent Control Act. We point out in our brief that it's the worse of two evils, because we view Bill 96 as being clearly worse than the Rent Control Act, which I'm sure you'll find surprising.
One of the main reasons for that position is that through the process of vacancy decontrol-recontrol we will lose our maximum rents. Over the years we've been conscientious landlords. We've invested significant amounts in our properties and we have maximum rents that are in excess of the market rents. We will lose that benefit, notwithstanding that we made those investments in our properties in good faith.
I've also set out a subheading in my report that sensationalism abounds. We hear all kinds of outrageous comments: that rents will increase 20% to 30%; we hear that people are going to be on the street. In fact I heard a presenter indicate this morning that she had to cut the preparation short for her presentation because she got word that 80 people were being thrown out on the street from one of the rental accommodations in the city. What she didn't tell you was that it was actually a care home and all those people who were under medical care had already been placed in other institutions in the city. You can see how there's the sensationalism, that people start to be very fearful. The people who are going to be frightened the most are these less-advantaged people, people whom these same advocates purport to represent.
We certainly challenge the advocacy groups to provide empirical, factual, documented evidence, where decontrol has existed, where rents have increased. The fact is that they won't be able to. They know that and that's why they won't. There is no truth. If you look at the brief I've submitted, I've attached yesterday's advertisements in the Windsor Star and had them highlighted in terms of the sheer number of rental apartments available right now in the city of Windsor. You can look at the number of apartments where there's one month's free rent, no last month's rent deposit required; there are move-in bonuses. The mere suggestion that rents are going to go up 20% to 30% in a climate where a majority of the units in the city of Windsor are being rented now for less than their statutory maximum rent is baloney. If the landlords could increase their rent, why would the passage of Bill 96 make it all of a sudden easier, when they can't do it now because market conditions forced landlords to charge market rents?
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We keep hearing about the elimination of rent control. There is no elimination of rent control. It's a myth. What we're talking about here is rent control by another name. It's decontrol-recontrol. Our concern from a business perspective is that very clearly we face a negative bias under this system in that tenants will lock into low rents during times of recession, during down times, and they'll merely be able to stay in those units at recession-level-based rents -- inflation-adjusted, of course -- for the foreseeable future. The reality in the province of Ontario is that allowing tenants to lock in at those recession-level rents and stay in the units will in the end result in poorly maintained, much poorer than we see today, rental properties, because those cash-flow streams will diminish and when the good times come, the landlord won't be able to charge those extra rents to fund those necessary capital projects.
When we look at the act itself -- I can tell how topsy-turvy this issue is, because I notice that in my brief three of the pages are upside down. I don't know if anybody noticed that. We've heard a lot about the Human Rights Commission and income criteria. The plain fact is that the permission or the allowing of landlords to use income criteria in selecting tenants, among many other factors, including landlord references, employment references and the like, is the status quo today. The suggestion that all of a sudden landlords are getting this new right to the detriment of tenants is pure garbage. The reality is that right now that's the practice in Ontario, the accepted practice. The tenants aren't being prejudiced by the existing practice by containing it in the Rent Control Act.
As I said, when we talk about those disadvantaged groups in society, the issue is not so much whether they should be entitled to quality accommodation; it's who should pay for it. I've dealt enough with that particular issue.
I've referred to property tax reform as being a significant factor for us. I mentioned that roughly 20% of every rent dollar a landlord receives goes to pay the property taxes. It doesn't go in his pocket, like most tenants think it does; it goes to pay the property taxes, among other things.
Bill 106, which is certainly an act in the right direction, because the regulations weren't available at the time the bill received third reading and royal assent, in our view doesn't go far enough. The premise with Bill 106, the Fair Municipal Finance Act, is that in Ontario the tax burden should be shared equally by property owners based on the relative values of their properties.
Right now in Windsor, under market value assessment, with a 1984 base year, most people seem to not really care that an apartment worth $30,000 pays twice the property taxes, and in effect it's the tenant paying those property taxes, than a house of the same value. I don't know how anyone can argue the fairness in that sort of system.
The hope was that with the Fair Municipal Finance Act that would be a change. The word we're hearing from the Ministry of Finance is that the tax ratio for multiresidential property versus residential property will be capped at 1.8%. I have some difficulty accepting that if I'm in an apartment worth $100,000 and the guy down the street has a house worth $100,000, I should be paying double the taxes of the guy down the street, but that's precisely -- well, not quite double; it will be 180% of the gentleman down the street in the house.
That seems to me to be abundantly unfair. In fact, I've sent letters to some of the presenters we've had today, including Ms McDermott from Legal Assistance of Windsor, with a view to, in conjunction with our efforts, rapidly organizing tenant groups in the city of Windsor to make the local council intimately aware that tenants are not going to accept being stiffed. There's no other way to put it. They're being stiffed.
We've also been on record with our tenants, both in writing and verbally, that any tax reductions we see we're passing on to the tenants. We're not expecting a tax kick-back to stick in our pocket. We want to give it back to the tenants, because it will make the rents more affordable and tenants will be more responsible.
As a landlord, all I want is to rent an apartment to someone who's going to pay the rent and is going to look after the rental premises. When I have tenants who don't pay the rent, that causes me problems, because I still have those property taxes, I still have those mortgages, I still have the insurance and I still have the utilities, among all the other costs of running accommodation, kick in.
I understand that it's beyond the scope of this committee, but that is an area where we would like to see some movement, if not an immediate equalization with the residential property class, certainly over a period of transition, say, five years hopefully, maybe even 10 years, that the tax ratio be forced to be drawn down by municipalities.
I think it's fair to say that with all the restructuring going on, there's not a municipality that's not going to have their tax ratio at the 180% of residential. They have so much uncertainty now, they'd be foolish to even promise that it would be lower. That's something we're very active in. To put it into plain terms, if 10% of every rent dollar is property taxes and you can see a 50% reduction in rent -- now that's rounding, but that's what it would take to bring the taxes into line. Let's assume that 10% of that 50% results in an overall mill rate increase, so 40% reduction. If you take an average rent of $700, that's a lot of money. That's 10% less a little bit, let's say 8%. So that's about $50 a month right off the top that it knocks off a monthly rent bill.
That's something that really doesn't deal with this bill, but we've been very vocal with the tenant advocacy groups that if there's a way they want to help themselves, it's not by criticizing the landlords that they're slums. They should do it in a way that they can actually help themselves and see immediate dividends by pressuring council in an election year to make sure their voice isn't left out.
We have in our presentation a number of comments in terms of the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal. I think it's fair to say that the judges and the deputy judges are licking their chops waiting for the day when all these matters are taken out of the court system and put in the tribunal.
I don't want to elaborate at a great deal of length in terms of the tribunal. There are a number of procedural concerns we have and concerns with the drafting of the regulation, ensuring things such as that the rents get paid into court, that the tribunal doesn't have the ability to indefinitely postpone eviction, that the tribunal will have to hear an application within a predetermined time. Right now, there is no time frame within which an application would have to be heard. Really, the intention of the tribunal is to ensure that it operates more efficiently and on a more timely basis than the court system. We have some concerns about whether that's going to happen. We're prepared to, in good faith, work with the system and hope it does work, but we have some legitimate concerns about whether it will.
There are a number of other comments I had on the Landlord and Tenant Act. Again, I don't want to deal at length in terms of the specific comments. In my submission, we liken this whole --
The Chair: If I could interrupt just for one second, unfortunately, you have two minutes left.
Mr Fuerth: Okay. I will make two quick comments. In our submission we have a heading where we say, "If it's broke, why break it again?" In our view, Bill 96 is doing exactly that and the analogy we use is a car that has rims on it but no tires, which is the current rent control system. All we're doing under Bill 96 is putting tires on the rims, but not putting any air in it. It'll still work, but it sure won't work the way it's designed and intended and the way people want it to.
I would like to make one final comment in terms of the last page of my submission. I have had discussions with Mr Duncan and I suspect there may be some concern in terms of the statement I make on the last page, that we have been waiting for, not only from the Liberal Party but also the NDP, position statements rivalling these bills. All we're saying is, let's everybody put our best ideas forward and let's make the best possible legislation we can. We encourage all parties to do so. Mr Duncan made it very clear to me when I met with him last, which was a couple of months ago, that after these hearings he would be fairly quickly tabling their position, their recommendations.
The Chair: Mr Fuerth, thank you for your presentation this afternoon. You certainly have an extensive brief. I know members of the committee will take the time to read it. Thank you again for coming.
Mr Len Wood: On a point of order, Mr Chair: Just to clarify something, the NDP position is clear that there's no reason for Bill 96, as you made it in your presentation.
The Chair: Mr Wood, as you know, that's not a point of order.
Mr Len Wood: He asked a question and I wanted to make sure it was on the record.
The Chair: The final presentation is Sun Parlour Income Property Association, Tilda DiMenna, director. She was scheduled for 4:05. We will recess until 4:05 and see what happens then.
The committee recessed from 1600 to 1607.
SUN PARLOUR INCOME PROPERTY ASSOCIATION
The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee, if I could ask you to return to the table. I understand Ms DiMenna, Sun Parlour Income Property Association, is the next presenter. We have two people, and I trust you will introduce yourselves. You have the right to have the last word.
Mr Tim Fuerth: Obviously I look somewhat familiar.
The Chair: I'd swear I saw you a few minutes ago. That's correct.
Mr Fuerth: Ms DiMenna has asked that I sit here silently, really to be a resource. I don't intend to be involved in the presentation itself, but certainly in terms of any questions that she feels uncomfortable with, I would be happy to respond.
The Chair: Ms DiMenna, it is your time and you can bring whoever you wish to the table.
Ms Tilda DiMenna: Thank you very much. I hope you don't mind if I'm just going to be reading this. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare, so I hope that's okay.
On behalf of the Sun Parlour Income Property Association and myself, I thank you for giving me, as well as others here today, a chance to express opinions concerning Bill 96, the Tenant Protection Act.
In brief, the Sun Parlour Income Property Association is an active group composed of landlords and property managers from Windsor and the surrounding region. Our organization has held bimonthly meetings for over 25 years. We help keep our members informed on current and possible future rental issues.
I am employed as a property manager for a company of landlords in Leamington, which is approximately 40 miles east of Windsor -- I hit every red light coming here today -- and I've been employed with them for 20 years. I have been and still am a tenant, so I not only walk in tenant's shoes, but also have to walk in landlord's shoes many times. For this reason, and because I consider myself an open-minded person, I feel I have valid comments.
The following is a typical scenario.
Through the years, I have seen the company I work for grow from renting six units to over 90 units today. Their plan to build started in 1970 and they continued to expand until 1977.
Plans to build future units were put on hold when the Liberal government introduced the initial Rent Control Act. This company has the means to construct more units, but will not because of the uncertainty of government regulations. These landlords are fairminded business people who saw a need for good rental housing. Good economics, they thought: "Lack of supply and increased demand equals a profit opportunity. Offer and maintain that good supply and profits will see us through retirement." Isn't this what business is all about?
Rental housing is a business just as are retail stores, banks, car dealerships etc. All these businesses require reasonable credit references when sales such as furniture or car, or loans, are made on credit. If the person does not have any credit references, it stands to reason that the business owner would want to know this person's earnings to fairly assess their ability to pay for what they want. Under these circumstances, a guarantor may be required. Does this not sound like commonsense business practice? All businesses have to be subject to regulation to preserve law and order, but all within reasonable terms.
It seems as though landlords have been an unfortunate target for many years. Not all landlords are the same, but neither are all retail stores, banks or car dealerships. Consumers have the right of choice to deal with whom they prefer, but this right is abused when they cannot pay for their choice. Some prospective tenants and the Human Rights Commission call this discrimination. I call it proper business procedure. In the long run, these save a lot of money, time and evictions.
Why? Let's say a landlord feels obligated to rent to a tenant whom they feel may be unable to pay the rent. In most cases, I feel the landlord is experienced in renting and/or obviously wants do the best they can to rent their apartment as opposed to keeping it vacant. If after a while the tenant cannot pay the rent, then the process of probable loss of money, time and eviction will result. This could ultimately affect the tenant as well as the landlord.
I think landlords truly do their best to rent to anyone who is responsible and reliable, but they must also have the means to pay. It is reasonable to say that landlords cannot operate on charity. They are just trying to make a living from their investments. If we all work together, government and public, surely we can come to some reasonable resolution.
The following may be some considerations to help generate new housing and maintain the existing. This is not in any particular order; it's just in point form.
(1) Improve controls to achieve new supply through obvious cost factors such as property tax differential.
(2) Allow landlords to negotiate rent and repairs amicably with tenants.
(3) Allow landlords to receive a fair market rate for their rental units.
(4) Improve the time delay to obtain hearings and evictions of tenants who are either in rent arrears, dangerous to fellow tenants, carrying on unlawful acts in or about the rental unit or disrupting the normal peace and enjoyment of fellow tenants or the landlord.
(5) Support an amendment to set the interest rate paid on the last month's rent at a rate annually at the same figure as the guideline rate.
(6) Ensure present landlords that in creating new housing or new landlords, they will not be neglected in the process.
I hope my comments will be of value to you and that you will consider them in your final evaluations.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have time for questions, and we will start with the Liberal caucus.
Mr Duncan: Thank you for your presentation. It certainly is valuable. I just did want to point out, as much as I would like to be able to take credit as a Liberal for the original introduction of rent controls, they were in fact introduced by the Progressive Conservative government of William Davis in 1975 and then further revamped in 1979 under the Residential Tenancies Act. That's where the tenancy commission was originally established.
I did want to touch base on a couple of points that have been raised by landlord groups throughout the hearings. Mr Fuerth raised it earlier, and I'd like your view on the establishment of a tribunal versus the court process. I don't know if you have had a chance to review the government's proposals. We think that we support the general direction the government is going in that area. It's the view of the official opposition that the existing ways of rent dispute resolution are cumbersome and not particularly effective either for tenants or landlords.
I wonder if you have any comments about the government's proposals, where you think they are going in the right direction and where you think there may be room for changes or improvement, and it's okay if Mr Fuerth wants to comment on that as well. I'd like to hear your views on that.
Ms DiMenna: My comments are brief on that. I prefer the tribunal as opposed to the court process because the court process is time-consuming and also expensive. Hopefully both tenant and landlord can do this a lot quicker through a tribunal.
Mr Fuerth: I have many, many comments on the tribunal. Certainly we support the direction, as well, that's being taken and the view that it will be efficient. I mentioned in my presentation we have some grave concerns as to whether it will be as efficient as everyone hopes it will be.
The regulations under which the tribunal will operate are of paramount concern to us in terms of requiring things like payment of rent moneys into court, which is already enshrined in the existing Landlord and Tenant Act, requirements like avoiding, in effect indefinitely, evicting tenants.
Certainly there should be inserted into the regulations, if not the bill, a merits-of-justice provision which would in effect obligate the tribunal members to operate under the merits of justice, as the current system does right now. It's not a change; it's just reaffirming the existing status of the system.
Those are a few very brief comments. With the huge hike in fees for the court system that we're going to experience in a few weeks, on September 1, I assume there will be some user fees for the tribunal. We're still flying blind in terms of what those fees will be. Obviously landlords and tenants will have some interest in ensuring that those fees are reasonable and fair.
Mr Len Wood: I see Mr Duncan has corrected that. That was Bill Davis, with the support of the NDP opposition at that time in a minority government, who brought in the first rent control. Stephen Lewis was the official opposition. There was an understanding to bring it in 20 years ago.
We've had presentations saying that what is happening right now with Bill 96 is going in the wrong direction. All the presentations to date are saying that it's not going to protect landlords, it's not going to protect tenants, that it's heading in the wrong direction. One of the presentations that was made this afternoon was saying they would rather live with the rent controls that were in place from 1990 to 1995 than this piece of legislation.
I know in your presentation you're saying you feel that there can be some amendments made and property taxes and different things that will help, but are there any things in addition to that which you feel should be done with Bill 96 to make it smooth so that it's not going to be a hardship on the one third of our society who are tenants in the province?
Mr Fuerth: I think the reality is that it remains yet to be seen that the passage of Bill 96 will create a hardship. Certainly my view is quite the opposite, that it will have a downward pressure on rental amounts and escalating lack of maintenance due to that table scrap money that is left over after you have paid the bills. I think that's inevitable.
Certainly in terms of some of the changes, not necessarily with respect to the bill, and some of them beyond the scope of this committee, I have sent letters to the Minister of Finance dealing with amendments such as the elimination of or at least a holiday for capital tax on mortgages for rental properties. That's something that I think is abundantly fair. If someone has a rental property that is not owned through a corporation -- by definition, this is a capital business; you have capital assets -- that mortgage, all of a sudden, between the large corporation tax federally and the Ontario capital tax, you're really accruing about another 0.6% tax rate, which to me seems abundantly unfair. That's a tax rate that someone owning a property through a trust or individually doesn't face.
The Chair: That's it, unless very briefly.
1620
Mr Len Wood: This will just be a comment. This is the fourth time in 20 years that rent control has been tinkered with in one form or another: by the Conservative government, then the Liberal government, the NDP and now the Conservative government again. In another two years it will probably be tinkered with again if they go too far to the right, whichever government it is. It will probably be NDP, but whatever; it will be tinkered with again. I'll leave it at that.
Mr Fuerth: There are a couple of points I'd like to make quickly. I believe the Liberals actually opposed the Rent Control Act that was passed by your party in 1992 so, passing blame, everybody is changing positions. The reality is, what we're all after here is making sure that there is quality accommodation no matter which party passes the appropriate legislation. That's why I encourage all the parties to participate equally and in a conciliatory fashion to make sure it happens.
I have had some discussions with various members in the past, and certainly one of the things that I see, if you stand back, when we talk about rent controls protecting people is that we have segments of the province where we face 9%, 10%, 12% vacancy rates. Are controls really doing anything? I have wondered many times whether it wouldn't be much more efficient to impose some sort of control regime where in fact those controls are warranted. CMHC has indicated that an equilibrium market situation is 2% to 3%. Why not look at a system where we have controls that will be in place in those markets? In markets where it's 7%, what are we accomplishing? Probably nothing.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you, Ms DiMenna and Mr Fuerth, for your presentations. Perhaps Mr Wood should take it that the best lesson we could take from the number of iterations that have gone through is that fundamentally rent controls are a flawed concept and that this is perhaps the best of a bad situation that we're bringing forward here now.
I appreciate your comments, both of you, that this bill continues to have issues that will provide challenges to landlords. I appreciate very much that you have painted a picture driven by facts, not rhetoric. There seems to have been a garage sale on crystal balls across this province. People have said: "I know this will happen. I absolutely guarantee that rents will go up. I guarantee there will be no construction." Then we have people like yourselves who actually are putting their money into these projects, are creating housing, who have a very different view. In Ottawa a few days ago, we had Minto Holdings, who indicated that they are going to put an additional $25 million over and above what they would have spent into housing renovation and construction in the Ottawa market precisely as a result of this bill.
Let me just ask you one very quick question on the property tax issue. We have heard from the other side that somehow we should hide behind the smoke and mirrors, that the disentanglement or the normal cost increases municipalities face should somehow be used as the excuse to perpetuate the incredible imbalance between the taxation on apartment owners and homeowners.
The bottom line is it doesn't matter what happens to the total cost to the municipality; they will be raising everyone's taxes, or lowering in the case of communities like Muskoka that on January 1 will be going down, and many of the other counties of this province. The fact of the matter is that nobody is talking about levelling the playing field.
I guess I would ask you what you think the impact would be on the average apartment that you represent if that at least two-to-one inequity was eliminated and whether you believe that would be the biggest possible step forward in terms of creating affordable housing, immediately changing the cost formula for those at low income levels.
Ms DiMenna: I think that would be a big step forward, yes.
Mr Gilchrist: Would you hazard a guess as to what percentage if the municipalities were being fair in their treatment?
Ms DiMenna: No. I haven't given that enough consideration, but I'm sure it would be substantial. It really depends what -- you said two to one.
Mr Gilchrist: Do you disagree with Mr Fuerth's percentage that it's about 20% of the landlord's cost of providing accommodation?
Mr Fuerth: That would be very accurate, and I'll premise that by saying I mentioned 20% of the rents collected.
Mr Gilchrist: It could be higher than that?
Mr Fuerth: Yes.
Mr Gilchrist: Let me just tell you that in Toronto it's 6.2 times greater. The property tax charged on rental accommodations is 6.2 times greater than the property tax charged on the equivalent square footage of a single-family home, and not one councillor, even though the mayor ran three years ago guaranteeing that she would end that inequity, nobody has done it. Nobody has done it in Windsor and nobody has done it anywhere else, and they can't pass the buck back to us, because property tax is a municipal issue. I hope you go forward this fall and challenge all the candidates for office to restore that fairness to tenants here in Essex county.
Mr Fuerth: Certainly the inequity in property taxation is not a new concept. I also made a presentation to the Ontario Fair Tax Commission, I guess it's now four years ago, and that commission actually concluded precisely the same thing. Precisely the same thing was concluded in the Golden report; there is a litany of reports that concluded precisely the same thing. The problem is that there hasn't been the political will. The problem is the tenants haven't been made aware that they're getting stiffed, absolutely no question.
When the bill comes in and if the rents are equalized, there will not be a 50% reduction -- there will be some cannibalization because all the mill rates will be bumped up across the board -- but there will be a dramatic reduction, and that will have a significant impact on the rents, and we've certainly taken the position those tenants will receive that reduction.
There are winners and losers. Obviously the housing sector will be certainly a loser, because all of a sudden these people out buying houses because they can go buy a house for $90,000 and pay about the same as their rent are going to be in a better position being a tenant paying rent than out buying these houses. So there will be winners and losers.
Mr Gilchrist: Thank you both.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms DiMenna and Mr Fuerth, for your presentation.
That concludes the public hearings in Windsor. We will be reconvening in Toronto tomorrow for the final day of public hearings. This committee is recessed until tomorrow morning in Toronto at 10 o'clock.
The committee adjourned at 1627.