The following key recommendations for the City of Toronto from our report Access to Justice for the Right to Housing – Rights Review are based on the right to housing and human rights principles. They aim to ensure that Torontonians have access to justice so that they can live with security and dignity in their homes.
We invite advocates, groups and organizations to incorporate these recommendations into their own reports, policy proposals and submissions, calls to action, and meetings with elected officials and City staff.
- Read our recommendations below
- Read the full report
- Read the executive summary
Our recommendations for safe and well-maintained homes in Toronto
1. Ensure that tenants have equal access to legal supports to challenge evictions.
Principle 1: Everyone must have access to justice and legal recourse when faced with the loss of their home.
Recommendations for the City of Toronto:
- Continue funding the Toronto Tenant Support Program to support the various legal needs of tenant communities and expand the program in the coming years to meet tenants’ needs.
- Improve legal support programs for tenants to challenge AGIs in their buildings and expand programs that build tenant organizing capacity.
- Establish a by-law prohibiting renovictions and that ensures the preservation of affordable housing units, supports tenants’ right of return, requires accommodation needs during the renovictions, and requires other supports such as moving costs.
- Provide resources and funding for programs that help tenants navigate the Landlord and Tenant Board’s (LTB) shift to online hearings, especially people with disabilities or tenants without reliable access to technology.
- Provide advocacy and legal support for affected communities to identify and address systemic violations of their right to housing and establish procedures through which right to housing claims can be heard and recommendations made to ensure compliance with the right to housing as recognized in the Toronto Housing Charter.
- Establish a procedure through which the LTB is able to refer tenants facing eviction to the City’s eviction prevention office to explore all possible solutions before any eviction is ordered, and to ensure that in the event of an eviction, affected individuals will not become homeless.
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2. Ensure individuals and communities have access to programs and procedures that allow them to exercise their right to housing.
Principle 2: The City must ensure individuals and communities have access to supports and programs to exercise their right to security of tenure in all circumstances.
Recommendations for the City of Toronto:
- Continue and expand funding to the City-funded resources that provide legal information services to tenants.
- Increase funding for eviction prevention services to expand the provision of housing stabilization and wraparound supports to marginalized tenants.
- Develop alternative procedures to deal with the needs of encampments, informal settlements and individuals living outside to ensure access to water and sanitation, protection from unnecessary evictions and that adequate housing is provided based on dialogue and engagement.
- Provide training in the right to housing as affirmed in the Toronto Housing Charter to all City staff and implement “right-to-housing-analysis-plus” to ensure that all decisions impacting the right to housing are reviewed for compliance with the right to housing as defined in international law.
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3. Meaningful engagement and effective participation from tenant residents.
Principle 3: The City must ensure that tenants, precariously housed individuals and those experiencing homelessness can meaningfully participate in rights-based decision making, including the design and implementation of policies that improve their access to justice and strengthen their security of tenure in compliance with the right to housing in the Toronto Housing Charter.
Recommendations for the City of Toronto:
- Establish procedures for hearing from low to moderate income renter communities and persons with lived experience of homelessness to ensure that all decision-making at the City is consistent with the right to housing, to identify issues that need to be addressed and to participate in the development and implementation of required measures.
- Continue to work with the Tenant Advisory Committee to improve City policies and programs in accordance with the Toronto Housing Charter and the right to housing.
- Creating a new Right to Housing Community Engagement Committee to make recommendations for action.
- Expand public education programs on the City’s new commitment to the right to housing for communities living in inadequate or precarious housing and provide ways to bring their lived experience to the decision-making tables so as to clarify the responsibilities of the City.
- Facilitate and encourage joint or collaborative responses by other orders of government and assist rights claiming groups in having their right to housing considered by other orders of government, including by facilitating public hearings.
- Adopt and implement the role of the Housing Commissioner to engage with communities to assess compliance with the right to housing, ensure that goals and timelines for the elimination of homelessness are met, identify the responsibilities of various orders of government and advance housing policies that meet the needs of communities and uncover systemic housing issues facing communities and groups denied the right to housing.
- Communicate the City’s willingness to consider and respond to any recommendations from the Federal Housing Advocate on measures needed within the City’s authority to address systemic issues.
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4. Ensuring that Toronto tenants are not evicted because of affordability issues beyond their control
Principle 4: The City must not allow the present housing crisis to result in the evictions of low income tenants and must provide tenant households living on lower incomes with supports and programs that stabilize their tenancies to remain housed.
Recommendations for the City of Toronto:
- Appoint a panel to review all existing programs providing assistance with rent or rent subsidies in order to assess compliance with the requirements of the right to housing under international law and develop recommendations for the City and other orders of government on how to address the affordability crisis facing low income tenants so as to ensure their right to housing.
- Extend the additional supports provided by the Housing Stabilization Fund, especially for those at greatest risk of losing their homes due to rent arrears or at risk of housing loss due to impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Continue to fund and expand the Toronto Rent Bank and make grants a permanent fixture of the program.
- Expand RGI subsidy eligibility in response to increasing housing prices and simplify eligibility criteria.
- Reduce instances of RGI subsidy loss by enhancing tenants’ knowledge about program requirements, supporting tenants with repayment plans for rent arrears that are realistic, and making the process of RGI subsidy loss decision reviews less onerous on tenants.
- Adopt all appropriate means to counter the financialization of housing and the destruction of affordable housing communities.
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