By Emily Miller
The provincial governments’ policies have made tenant eviction profitable. Mass evictions, like the one currently being carried out by Smart Living Properties (SLP) of Bank Block Tenants (BBT) in Centretown, have become a common strategy for landlords to extract more money from tenants. They can do this because governments at all levels work to help landlords profit at the expense of tenants.
The Government of Ontario, like other governments across Canada, has steadily eroded affordable housing since 1992. Ontario’s tenancy law includes policies that enable landlords to increase profit from their properties by weakening tenants’ protections. Central to this profitability is vacancy decontrol, which allows landlords to increase rent without restriction once a tenant vacates a unit. Landlords can only increase rent for sitting tenants based on the Ontario Consumer Price Index (CPI) or if the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) approves an application from the landlord for an increase. However, there are no regulations for unoccupied units. The Monitor Magazine indicates that in practice, this policy creates a “financial incentive for landlords to evict tenants”. Landlords are further enabled by the lack of meaningful legal recourse for tenants faced with eviction.
At the scale of a building or block, increased profit by means of vacancy decontrol are frequently achieved through mass eviction. There is a significant financial gain to be made by evicting large numbers of tenants who pay lower rents and replacing them with new tenants paying at the market-rate. Mass eviction of long-term tenants is especially lucrative given the relatively large increases in rents that can be extracted following turnover of the units.
Aging buildings with low rents are ideal investments for landlords’ profit-maximizing goals. A landlord’s business plan in this case, often referred to as “repositioning”, may appear straightforward, but in practice, landlords use harassment, intimidation, and the legal system to displace people from these aging buildings. Moreover, housing is a basic necessity, so the mass eviction of people who do not want to leave their homes is a violent act. Landlords specifically target low-income tenants and use various tactics to displace them, often using divide and conquer strategies to isolate and pressure tenants to leave. Displacing tenants forces many to experience situations of homelessness, destroys communities, and dismantles systems of support, meaning that people who are evicted face economic hardship and poor health.
Ottawa has experienced several mass evictions and redevelopments in recent years. In 2018, the Herongate tenants were targeted for mass eviction so the landlord-developer could build “resort-style apartments”. Then in 2020, Osgood tenants also were targeted for mass eviction. Both of these were long-term, low-income tenants living in older buildings.
N13s are eviction notices used by landlords to displace low-income tenants and replace them with higher-paying occupants. The latest Ontario 2024 Renoviction Report by ACORN indicates that from 2021-2022, the number of N13s filed in Ottawa increased by 545%. According to instructions by the Landlord and Tenant Board, landlords can justify N13s by saying that they intend to demolish the building, conduct extensive repairs or renovations, or convert the building. Evictions carried out by landlords citing renovations or demolition are referred to as “renovictions” and “demovictions”, respectively.
SLP could increase their income by over 400% by evicting the current tenants.
The most recent building being targeted for redevelopment is in Centretown at 178 Nepean and 227 Bank, where Bank Block Tenants who are predominantly low-income, are currently facing a potential mass eviction from their homes. In 2022, a holding company owned by Tamer Abaza and Rakan Abushaar, senior executives of SLP, and Dr. Binny Kuriakose, a frequent investor in their mass eviction projects, bought the property where these tenants live. Kuriakose was the landlord who mass evicted the Osgood tenants in 2020. The landlords, Tamer and Rakan, submitted a development proposal to the City of Ottawa on January 26, 2023, then served the tenants with N13 notices in October 2023. Some tenants have lived in their apartments on this block for over 40 years and pay under $500 for rent. BBT views the proposed redevelopment of their building as a profit-driven decision by their landlord. As of October 2024, mortgage company Nesto reported that market-rate rent in Ottawa for a one bedroom is currently $2,042, meaning SLP could increase their income by over 400% by evicting the current tenants.
BBT has little reason to believe that a LTB hearing would amount to more than a formalized eviction process. SLP’s own Alexandre Traboulsi was appointed to the LTB in 2023 and currently sits on the board. During the LTB appointment process, Traboulsi was questioned by one of the Standing Committee on Government Agencies’ members on SLP’s history of mistreating tenants and the extent of his involvement in the examples mentioned. Traboulsi indicated that he did not think his employers’ alleged actions or inaction had any relevance to his potential appointment to the LTB. Following his appointment, the NDP released a statement highlighting concerns of the appointment given Trabousli’s history as a senior manager for SLP, who had been accused of putting tenants in dangerous and unsafe situations and renovicting Ottawa residents. It is difficult for tenants to have faith in a board where the decision-makers of their home have an inherent interest in the commodification of housing.
People are being displaced from their homes so that landlords can use housing to maximize profit. The law currently helps landlords to do this and does not include any meaningful safeguards for tenants defending their homes.
Mass eviction of the tenants is central to SLP’s plan to maximize the return on their investment, but the redevelopment has not been approved by the city yet. In a Freedom of Information Request made by the BBT, hundreds of Centretown residents have submitted comments to the city’s planning committee expressing opposition to a mass eviction of another block of tenants in Centretown.
The current shortage of affordable and accessible housing is unfolding in a larger context of the financialization and commodification of housing. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, financialization of housing is the process where “financial actors with large amounts of money, such as private equity firms or Real Estate Investment Trusts, use housing as a financial instrument for profit”. The Canadian Human Rights Commission indicates that housing is being treated as a speculative commodity, rather than as a basic need.
Long-time Leveller contributor and author of Resisting Eviction: Domicide and the Financialization of Rental Housing, Andrew Crosby argues that rental properties are now a key target of financialization. He explains that there are two groups at odds in the financialization of housing: tenants paying rent for a home, and landowners using housing as an “instrument of profit making”. This practice plays out as a struggle between classes: those who have enough wealth to purchase property, versus those who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads.
People are being displaced from their homes so that landlords can use housing to maximize profit. The law currently helps landlords to do this and does not include any meaningful safeguards for tenants defending their homes. While all levels of government claim to have a plan to solve the housing crisis, these plans ignore addressing the fundamental issue: the lack of rent control and regulation. Tenants are left with a violent system that puts their homes and lives at risk. BBT, along with other tenants associations across the country have demonstrated the power of tenants organizing collectively. Tenants have united to defend their homes and confront landlords directly.
