City did little to help rooming house tenants left without heat, hot water for 6 months after fire: Ombudsman Toronto

Nearly a dozen tenants at an illegal rooming house in northwest Toronto were left without heat and hot water for months following a September 2023 fire and city staff did little to help them, a new report from Ombudsman Toronto has found.

In the report, which was released on May 15, Ombudsman Kwame Addo said that the “inaction” and “unfair” decisions made by city staff exacerbated the “unsafe and uninhabitable” situation for the home’s 11 tenants, all but one of whom moved out. Some relocated to homes with “higher higher rents and weaker tenancy protections,” according to the 118-page report.

The City of Toronto bylaw states that landlords must provide what are known as “vital services” – gas, electricity, and hot and cold water – to renters.

The City’s Municipal Licensing and Standards (MLS) division also has the power to require landlords restore these services, if they are lost for whatever reason, but chose to not enforce its right in this case, the report found.

City staff acted ‘biased’ and ‘in an arbitrary manner,’ report finds

In the report, bylaw officers and managers were found to have acted “biased” and “in an arbitrary manner” when they failed to help the tenants, all of whom were Black.

“They had low incomes, working low wage jobs or relying on social assistance. Almost all the tenants were newcomers. Several of them were people with disabilities. One tenant was seven months pregnant,” said the report, which does not list the landlord of the building in question.

“The experience had affected their physical and mental health and resulted in a loss of dignity.”

Addo called the affected renters “among Toronto’s most vulnerable residents.”

The report also noted that a bylaw officer did not visit the multi-tenant residence until two weeks after the first complaint was made on Sept. 12 and did not return tenants’ calls. MLS is required to visit a dwelling within 48 hours of receiving a service call barring approval to delay such a request, the report noted, and determine or document whether there was a bylaw violation within 48 hours.

“When MLS did visit, it did not collect evidence, interview witnesses, or document any inspection of the property. It did not verify important information, such as who had ordered the cutoff of vital services and the reason why,” it found.

“MLS never determined whether the landlord was in violation of the City’s vital services bylaws, and never issued an order for the landlord to restore the vital services.”

It also determined that due to an apparent “lack of training,” those officers did not understand that landlords have a legal obligation to provide vital services to tenants and were “not adequately supervised.”

Thirdly, the report found that the management of MLS was inadequate in its oversight of the case.

Addo says the City’s Housing Secretariat, through its Eviction Prevention in the Community (EPIC) program, also failed the tenants as staff took more than a month to respond to their service requests, “a delay we found to be unreasonable.”

“Staff at EPIC and MLS were unaware that the Toronto Housing Charter commits the city to taking a human rights-based approach to housing and helping the most vulnerable,” Addo said.

“Had city staff received adequate training, I believe they would have acted with greater urgency to assist [them].”

This program was also found to have no written policy in place when it comes to the delivery of emergency assistance.

The York South-Weston Tenants Union (YSWTU) got involved at the request of the affected tenants, its founder Chiara Padovani told CP24 in a follow-up interview.

“The tenants reached out to us when they failed to get a response from the city,” she said.

“The {City of Toronto] was not helpful at all so that’s when we escalated to the Ombudsman’s office and they started an investigation (on June 5, 2024).”

Padovani said vital service cutoffs must be treated as emergency requests and addressed immediately.

Vital services weren’t restored at that building until March 18, 2024.

“The fact that this wasn’t dealt with within days was shocking and that’s when we really, really started pushing,” she said, adding that members of the volunterr-run group visited the rooming house in question and found the conditions there to be “completely unacceptable.”

“This is perhaps the worst kind of neglect, but this kind of inaction for the city is quite common - not enforcing bylaws that protect tenants,” said Padovani.

She noted that the city has a basic responsability to enforce building standard bylaws and should be issuing fines and orders if they’re not upheld, or even taking remedial action and billing landlords.

Ombudsman Toronto makes 27 recommendations

Ombudsman Toronto has made 27 recommendations for this case, all of which the City of Toronto has accepted.

They include a review by MLS of how it enforces the standards for rental housing and the development of a process for responding to the loss of heat, power, and water and improving the training and supervision of bylaw officers.

Ombudsman Toronto is also recommending that the city’s Housing Secretariat develop guidelines on “exercising discretion” in the delivery of emergency assistance through EPIC and that staff at EPIC and MLS engaged in housing receive training on the requirements of the Toronto Housing Charter.

City says it’s committed to supporting recommendations, addressing tenant service gaps

In a May 1 letter to Addo, Deputy City Manager David Jollimore said that the city is “committed to working inter-divisionally to support [the implementation of OT’s recommendations], and to address service gaps faced by tenants experiencing displacement as a result of vital services outages, as well as other factors.”

“Indeed, there is currently work underway relevant to many of the recommendations,” he wrote, pointing to policy and program changes as well as investments “that have improved the regulation of multi-tenant houses and the supports and services available to tenants.”

“These changes along with [OT’s] recommendations will provide better supports and services to tenants living in multi-tenant houses. … The City is committed to continually improving our work to ensure rental housing is safe, secure, and habitable; and further, that the tenants living in this valuable housing stock are supported through the City’s programs and regulatory framework,” Jollimore said.

On Friday, Mayor Olivia Cho also shared her thoughts on the situation suggesting the city ”must do more to protect renters.”

It should be noted that regulations for rooming houses have changed since that September 2023 rooming house fire. The new multi-tenant housing framework, which aim to legalize rooming houses throughout the city and make them safer for tenants, went into effect on March 31, 2024.

Ombudsman Toronto said the city is expect to update them on the status of its implementation of its recommendations by November 1 and then quarterly thereafter.

“[We] will follow up until we are satisfied that the City has implemented our recommendations,” Addo said.