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\nCITY COUNCIL HAS JUST APPROVED MUNICIPAL PROTECTIONS AGAINST BAD FAITH RENOVICTIONS<\/p>\n
Ottawa\u2019s long awaited anti-renoviction by-law cleared its first major hurdle on July 8, passing the City\u2019s Planning and Housing Committee<\/a>. On July 15, city council passed the by-law which will come into force on January 1, 2027. This comes after a long journey of advocacy from students, community groups, and city councillors.\u00a0<\/p>\n A renoviction<\/a> is when a landlord evicts a tenant by claiming major renovations, demolition, or conversion to non-residential use are required. There are three legal grounds<\/a> for renoviction: demolition, the need for a vacancy for extensive repairs\/renovations, or conversion of the unit for non-residential use. That being said, community advocates claim that these renovictions are often done in bad faith, with the intention of getting a \u201clow rent\u201d paying tenant out of the unit. It can happen formally, through a legal eviction notice called an N13<\/a>, or informally, through pressure tactics that never show up in any official data at all.<\/p>\n The scale of the problem<\/p>\n How serious the renoviction crisis in Ottawa is depends entirely on who you ask.<\/p>\n ACORN\u2019s report<\/a> tracked 650 confirmed renovictions between 2010 and 2025, combining Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) filings with community-reported cases. Only 4.7 per cent of the cases ACORN tracked ever resulted in a formal N13 filing.<\/p>\n City staff put the number far lower<\/a>, identifying roughly 230 units across 40 addresses with possible undocumented renovictions since 2020.<\/p>\n David Longchamp, West End Chair of Ottawa ACORN, says the gap exists because most renovictions never reach the tribunal at all.<\/p>\n Longchamp told the Fulcrum, \u201cTenants are told they have no choice, are given misleading information, or are pressured to sign documents without understanding their rights. Once that happens, many of the provincial protections no longer apply because, on paper, the tenant chose to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n ACORN says provincial changes are not enough<\/p>\n In April 2026, Ontario amended the Residential Tenancies Act<\/a> to strengthen tenant protections for renovation-related evictions. This includes a minimum 60-day window to return to a unit after work is completed, an automatic bad-faith presumption if landlords don\u2019t comply, and doubled fines of up to $100,000 for individuals and $500,000 for corporations.<\/p>\n City staff originally recommended against a municipal by-law, arguing the provincial changes \u201csubstantially address the policy objectives\u201d a by-law would cover.<\/p>\n ACORN disagrees. \u201cThe provincial changes are a step forward, but they don\u2019t stop renovictions before they happen,\u201d said Longchamp. Adding,\u201dThey mostly help tenants after they\u2019ve already lost their homes and are forced into a long legal battle.\u201d<\/p>\n The latter argument ultimately won out at city hall. Somerset Councillor Ariel Troster pushed back<\/a> against staff\u2019s recommendation, forcing a draft by-law to committee over their objections.<\/p>\n What the by-law does and doesn\u2019t do<\/p>\n The by-law that passed committee on July 8, and council on July 15, is narrower than what tenant advocates wanted.<\/p>\n It requires landlords to apply for a city licence within seven days of issuing an N13. To obtain that licence, they must prove they already have a building permit, a step Jeff Leiper says should deter bad-faith evictions before they get started.<\/p>\n Landlords must also provide tenants with an education package explaining their rights. This includes the right to return to their unit at the same rent once renovations are complete, a protection that exists on paper under provincial law but which ACORN says is almost never exercised in practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n What the by-law does not include is significant.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike anti-renoviction by-laws in Hamilton and Toronto, Ottawa\u2019s version requires no mandatory compensation beyond existing provincial minimums, no moving expense coverage, no alternative accommodation requirement, and no report from a qualified person \u2014such as an engineer\u2014 confirming that vacant possession is actually necessary.<\/p>\n What comes next?<\/p>\n A motion by Troster, which also passed council, asks staff to review the by-law in late 2027, and bring forward options for adding compensation requirements and a qualified person\u2019s report.<\/p>\n Hamilton, which passed a strong by-law in 2024 with both of those requirements, saw N13 filings drop 80 per cent in its first year<\/a>, from 119 to 23. Leiper says he hopes Ottawa sees similar results, but stopped short of committing to a comparable target.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know what that number will be in Ottawa,\u201d he said. \u201cOnly time will tell.\u201d<\/p>\n For Longchamp and ACORN, the by-law is better than nothing but falls short of what the crisis demands. \u201cProvincial reforms improve the legal process after the fact,\u201d said Longchamp. Adding, \u201cA municipal by-law helps stop unfair displacement from happening in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n For students in Sandy Hill, the difference between those two approaches is not abstract. As Elnaz Enayatpour, president of the University of Ottawa Students\u2019 Union (UOSU), put it: \u201cA well-housed student is a better student.\u201d<\/p>\n Student areas<\/p>\n ACORN\u2019s \u201cHidden Renovictions\u201d<\/a> report has identified Sandy Hill and Lower Town as renoviction hotspots, while explicitly flagging them as student-populated and lower income areas. Mass renovictions have been documented on Osgoode Street and Laurier Avenue East, both within walking distance of the U of O\u2019s main campus.<\/p>\n Enayatpour says the pattern is something students have been raising concerns about for years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing companies purchase properties in Sandy Hill, renovate them, and then jack up the price,\u201d says Enayatpour. Adding, \u201cThe stock of housing in Sandy Hill has always been more affordable because it\u2019s older housing and it\u2019s kind of one of the only places students can afford to comfortably live in, and we\u2019re seeing people get priced out.\u201d<\/p>\n