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Toronto’s bylaw officers should have more powers to hold bad landlords accountable, by identifying illegal activity, gathering evidence and supporting criminal investigations, a city councillor says.
Coun. Josh Matlow, who represents Toronto-St. Paul’s, will present a motion to council’s planning and housing committee next week that calls on the city to expand the powers of its bylaw enforcement officers who inspect rental apartment buildings.
The motion recommends that city staff report back on the feasibility of the idea next year, saying RentSafeTO bylaw enforcement officers could be allowed to identify fraud and breaches of the Residential Tenancies Act by landlords and to collect evidence to turn in to police.
“Far too often, landlords will fraudulently renovict tenants or pretend that they have a landlord own use case where perhaps they pretend to bring in a family member, but they’re not really doing so. And a tenant can find themselves not only out of their home, but out of their home under false fraudulent pretenses,” Matlow said this week.
“And it could cost that family thousands of dollars to find a new home, let alone the upheaval in their lives that they should never have gone through. Unfortunately, most of these cases are never addressed through the criminal justice system,” he added.
“For some reason, when tenants are defrauded out of their own homes, nothing’s done.”
Coun. Josh Matlow says: ‘For some reason, when tenants are defrauded out of their own homes, nothing’s done. I’m asking for real action to be taken where the city can provide supports to ensure that both the police and provincial rental enforcement can pursue investigations and protect the victims.’ (Saeed Dehghani/CBC)Proposal is ‘wrong solution to the problem,’ lawyer says
David Debenham, a lawyer with the law firm LMR in Ottawa and who specializes in fraud, said the proposal would flood the criminal justice system with landlord fraud cases, adding there is a reason that the Landlord and Tenant Board was created.
“We don’t fund fraud matters to begin with, as a general rule. We don’t have police officers who specialize in it, we don’t have prosecutors who specialize in it and we don’t have judges who specialize in it,” Debenham said.
“It’s the wrong solution to the problem.”
Nadine Ramadan, spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service, said most landlord tenant disputes are outside the jurisdiction of the police.
“Police become involved in landlord-tenant matters when there is a need to keep the peace, address a public safety concern, or investigate allegations of criminal offences,” Ramadan said.
Ramadan said the majority of such disputes fall under the Residential Tenancies Act. Police would decide if a criminal investigation is warranted only if there are allegations of criminal conduct, such as assault, threats, harassment, fraud or other offences under the Criminal Code.
Advocate concerned move could criminalize tenants
Yaroslava Avila Montenegro, executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations, said the organization is concerned that the proposal would increase police involvement in landlord and tenant matters.
“We are concerned that this kind of push is actually going to perhaps criminalize tenants,” she said.
If the motion passes, it would go to city council at its meeting at the end of July.