The government of Ontario announced it will be “curbing abuse of unlawful evictions” by imposing stricter rules on landlords for evicting tenants, beginning September 1, 2017.

Moving forward, when a landlord ends a tenancy so that they or a family member can use a rental unit, landlords must:

• Provide one month’s rent to the tenant as compensation or offer the tenant another acceptable rental unit.
• Express intent to occupy the unit for at least one year.
• If the landlord advertises, re-rents or demolishes/converts the unit within one year, she or he will be considered to have acted in bad faith unless they can prove otherwise, and could face a fine of up to $25,000.

According to the news release, these new measures were created as a means to “help protect tenants by discouraging landlords from unlawfully evicting them, whether for conversion of the unit into a short-term rental or immediately re-renting it at a higher rate.”

The changes build on a number of other protections for Ontario tenants that were introduced under the Fair Housing Plan, including the expansion of rent control to all private rental units built on or after November 1, 1991.

Additional facts:

• Under the changes, only individual landlords, not corporations, can end tenancies under the ‘landlord’s own use’ provision.
• It is an offence under the Residential Tenancies Act for a landlord to knowingly end a tenancy by giving notice in bad faith. A conviction for this offence can result in a fine of up to $25,000 for an individual.
• There are approximately 1.2 million private rental households in Ontario.