A new bylaw aimed at reducing renovictions in Toronto is already having noticeable effects, according to tenant and anti-poverty advocates, though some say it’s too early to tell if it will be well-enforced.

The Rental Renovation Licence Bylaw was implemented on July 31 and is designed to protect tenants from “bad faith” evictions by their landlords under the guise of a renovation — an increasingly common tactic critics say is used by landlords to evade rent control and increase rent prices.

Toronto landlords must now obtain a licence from the city before carrying out repairs or renovations that force tenants to move out, and must apply for this licence within seven days of giving a notice of ending tenancy — known as an N13 notice — to the renter.

With the new bylaw in effect, some tenant advocates say they are already noticing a difference in landlords’ actions.

“We’re seeing far fewer calls regarding renovictions leading up to the implementation date of July 31, so it’s already had a positive impact in that sense,” said Douglas Kwan, director of advocacy and legal services at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario.

“We’re going to monitor how that goes for the rest of the year, but we anticipate that we’re going to see a gradual decline with the number of N13s or renoviction calls to our organization and others in Toronto,” Kwan said.

Renovictions have been on the rise in Toronto and the province for the past decade, and became a “massive” issue in the last five or so years, said Alejandra Ruiz Vargas, president of ACORN Canada.

Since 2017, there has been a nearly 50 per cent increase in the number of N13 notices filed in Toronto, according to a 2024 renoviction report by ACORN.

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“I know a couple that has been renovicted three times last year,” Ruiz Vargas said, adding that the bylaw’s implementation is a “huge win” for renters.

People in lower-cost rentals are commonly targeted by renovictions, and they face immense difficulties in finding places they can afford to move into after being evicted, anti-poverty advocates say.

“The huge increase in evictions has fuelled a massive increase in homelessness in Ontario,” said Jeff Schlemmer, executive director of Community Legal Clinic of York Region.

“Thank goodness municipalities are stepping up.”

New Westminster, B.C., was the first municipality to adopt a renoviction bylaw in 2019, with several other municipalities in Ontario, such as Hamilton and London, following in its footsteps.

These bylaws are beneficial not only for renters but the entire housing system in a city as they help preserve affordable housing stock and are a simpler and quicker solution than putting shovels into the ground to build more affordable housing, said Kwan.

“It doesn’t mean that legitimate landlords who have to renovate their units are prevented from doing so. It’s really to capture situations or people who aren’t even considering renovating their unit and it gives them pause,” he said.

There are several requirements under Toronto’s new bylaw that make it especially strong, such as the need for a landlord to have an architect or engineer confirm that the unit must be empty for the renovation work, and the requirement for the landlord to make rent gap payments if the tenant has to move elsewhere and pay higher rent, said Kwan.

“The rent gap payments ensure that a landlord mitigates the work. In other words, they don’t sit on their hands,” said Kwan.

Though the bylaw does not apply retroactively to tenants who have already received N13 notices, advocates say it strengthens their fight as it puts the burden on landlords to prove their renovations require vacant units.

The City of Toronto says on their website that they will use an “education-first approach” to encourage compliance, with enforcement action to follow when appropriate.

According to the bylaw, landlords could face fines of up to $100,000 if they force a tenant to leave and re-rent the unit to someone else for financial benefits, or if they fail to comply with other aspects of the new licensing requirements.

“The fines are quite high and I think they might be sufficient disincentive for these corporate landlords from acting,” Kwan said.

“I think if there is a concern, it would be uneducated, smaller landlords who perhaps unknowingly or knowingly are just trying to take the risk of renovicting their tenant. That’s probably the group of landlords that should be more of a concern than the larger corporate ones.”

Chiara Paravani, co-chair of York South-Weston Tenant Union, said she is aware of several landlords who are particularly “aggressive” in pursuing renovictions.

The particularly relentless actors may be willing to take a financial hit, Paravani said.

“Absorbing those fines is just part of the cost of doing business in terms of evicting people and replacing them with higher paying tenants, she said, adding that provincial fines were already in place and didn’t do much to change landlords’ actions.

The provincial government doubled maximum fine amounts for unlawful evictions in 2020, setting the fine rates at $50,000 for individuals and $250,000 for corporations.

But the Ministry of Housing was “vastly overwhelmed” with requests to enforce the violations, said Schlemmer, from the community legal clinic.

“You can make the penalty capital punishment, but if the person knows they’re not gonna get caught, they’re still gonna try it, which is what we have for renovictions,” Schlemmer said, stressing the importance of enforcement.

“I really hope that the City of Toronto does allocate meaningful resources to enforcement, because if they do, they could make a real dent in these unlawful evictions and significantly reduce the ongoing increase in homelessness.”