Ontario minister of housing looks at strengthening protections for landlords

One day after CBC News published an exclusive story about a Kingston, Ont., man'sfrustrating experience trying to evict a familywho trashed his property, Ontario's minister of housingsayshe has been gathering inputfor the last five months on how to improve the province's landlord and tenant legislation.

"I've been meeting with all sorts to look at the whole process, the Landlord Tenant Act and how we can make the system stronger for everyone involved," Chris Ballard told CBC Toronto on Thursday at Queen's Park.

• A landlord's nightmare: Tenants kept livestock in the house

Ballard said he has been hearing from both landlords and tenants about problems with the legislation.

Kingston landlord Simon Andrew told CBC Toronto abouthis six-month effort to evict tenants who hadn't paid rent andallowed animalsto defecate and urinate in the home.

Andrew complained that the process of eviction through the Landlord And Tenant Board took too long.

"You just have to sit back and let it happen, and they would goad me about what they were doing," said the landlord.

Andrew started eviction proceedings in April because his tenants, a couple with their adult son, kept farm animals in the house.

"It just got totally insane. It ended up that they freely admitted in emails that they had a goat in the house. We know they had rabbits. We know they had chickens. We know they had ducks.We know they had pigeons, quails, parrots."

Half a year is a long time to receive a decision, said Barrington Lue Sang, a paralegal who has worked on landlord-tenant matters for almost two decades.

"A lot of landlords depend on their rents to pay their mortgages, so to wait six months. I mean, the banks won't allow six months to pay your mortgage, so why should the board allow a tenant [to avoid paying rent]?"

Landlord and Tenant Board spokesperson Whitney Miller said in a statement to CBC News that in most cases, the board hears an application within 25 days of filing and a decision is rendered within five days of a hearing.

That has not been Lue Sang's experience. "Generally, it takes a longer time to get hearing dates and it definitely takes a longer time to have these decisions sent out because a member might be hearing anywhere between five to 10 cases every day."

There are not enough adjudicators to hear the cases, and there's been a higher volume of cases in recent years, some frivolous, Lue Sang said.

"The tenants might say there are cockroaches and the landlord goes and inspects. There are no cockroaches and the tenant still brings the application," he said.

"Where it's obvious that these applications are non-starters, I think if a tenant or landlord faces the risk of having to pay the legal costs of the other side, that might curtail a lot of these frivolous applications."

Gun-shy over long-term rentals

Andrew estimated it will cost him up to $30,000 to make the necessary repairs to his Kingston home.

He won't rent out his three-bedroom property on a long-term lease again. He plans to explore short-term rentals like AirBnB.

"Why not? I'm safeguarded. It doesn't come under the Landlord Tenant Act, and I'll have a stream of interesting and nice people presumably coming through."

The minister of housing worries about landlords like Andrew pulling out of the market when rental units are in such short supply.

"If it's enough to scare off someone from renting a suite in their basement, we don't want to have that happen. So we need to look at legislation, and that's what we're doing," said Ballard.

The ministry is winding down its consultation process now. Ballard said he has no timeline to propose any changes.