Q&A: Bylaws can protect tenants from some renovictions. Can Halifax enact its own?

A bylawintroduced this year in Hamiltonhasmade it more difficult for landlords to order so-calledrenovictionsthe act of evicting tenants to renovate a building and then increasingthe rent charged to new tenants. Other Ontario cities, including Toronto, are pursuing similar bylaws.

Dalhousie Legal Aid says the Halifax Regional Municipalityshould consider doing the same to protect tenants from loopholes in Nova Scotia's Residential Tenancies Act that it sayslandlords often exploit.

CBC Radio'sInformation Morning guest host Preston Mulliganspoke with Sydnee Blum, a Dalhousie Legal Aid worker and eviction prevention co-ordinator, about Ontario bylawsand why Halifax hasn't tried to introduce similar rules.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does the Nova Scotia Residential Tenancies Act currently say about renovictions and when they're even allowed?

Currently, if a landlord wants to seek a renoviction in a building, they have to meet a suite of new requirements and this was just passed in 2022.

A landlord will need to obtain a building permit from the city, so proof that they intend to go forward with those revisions and they need to be doing the renoviction in good faith. Meaning that they need to, to some degree, prove that it's going to be so extensive that they absolutely need a vacant unit.

Information Morning - NS8:18How new bylaws are closing 'renoviction' loopholes in some Ontario cities

We learn about new bylaws that effectively block 'renoviction loopholes' in some Ontario cities, and why Dalhousie Legal Aid thinks municipalities should consider introducing them here in Nova Scotia.

What are the loopholes in the tenancy act that are often exploited?

There's a lot of issues around landlords wanting to renovict people to do cosmetic repairs So you see tenants that are usually in historically low-income neighbourhoods who are being forced out so that the landlord can put up a coat of paint and laminate flooring and then flip the unit.

And then similarly, there's issues where landlords are neglecting repairs in their building in order to be able to pursue a renoviction later. And that's what we really see happening very frequently in areas like Spryfield and north Dartmouth, which are historically considered to be low-income.

There's years and years of neglected repairs,tenants are paying well under market. And then a new building owner or the landlord comes in and says, 'We got to redo everything and everyone needs to leave.'"

And so tell me about the new renovation bylaws that were introduced in Hamilton and other Ontario cities, and how do they work?

In Hamilton now, which we sort of consider to be the gold standard, a landlord has to get a licence in order to renovict tenants. And so they have similar legislation that says you need to get a building permit in order to renovict a tenant at the tenancy board.

Who would give the licence?

The licence is granted by the city, but the eviction is granted by the province. Where you need that licence to get the building permit, it's sort of putting roadblocks in the way for landlords who are not evicting people in good faith. And so there are requirements in Hamilton now where you have to get an engineer's report or otherwise a contractor, an expertto say these repairs are going to go forward and they're so extensive that the building does need to be vacant.

And then there's a sort of education built in for tenants. And something that's really key is what we call the rightof first refusal. So it's the right to return to the unit after the renovations are done at the same rent that you were paying before. It really removes that profit motive to evict people.

That first right of refusaldoesn't exist in Halifax, or other municipalities?

No, not at all.

What do we know about how well these changes are working up there inHamilton?

They are working exceptionally well on the ground. Some of the preliminary statistics so before this bylaw came into place in Hamiltonthey saw about a 1,000 per centincrease in five years inthe number of renovictionsfiled in that city,and that's dropped to single-digit numbers since the bylaw's taken place. It's really keeping people in their homes and stabilizing communities.

Why can't we do what Hamilton is doing?

The Halifax charter essentially has a clause that says that if the city is putting forward a licence or a bylaw that's going to interfere with development or housing, the province has the right to come in and veto it.

So theoretically, people say that means the province could step in and stop any sort of bylaw that the city wanted to do around this. But to thatwe would say,just because this clause exists doesn't mean the province has to use it. And especially in the face of the housing crisis and just the magnitude of what's happening in the city, we would really challenge the city to call the province's bluff on this.