The New Middlemen of the Rental Market
With demand high and renters desperate, property management companies like Urby Housing are using non-standard rental agreements that try to sidestep the protections of the Residential Tenancies Act in creative, increasingly brazen ways.
The Apartments the Union Built
In the 1980s, aircraft workers in Malton were struggling to find housing—so they built their own. What can this obscure Rexdale housing co-op teach us today?
Landlord and Tenant Board Wait Times Continue to Grow
Wait times for tenant cases have risen by four months since last count, as a new report from the Ontario Ombudsman declares the LTB to be “fundamentally failing in its role.”
What It Takes to Get Someone Housed
Each day, housing support workers like Madison McElroy are asked to do the near impossible: get clients out of homelessness and onto a lease in the midst of a raging rental crisis.
Stuck in Social Housing
With an 80,000-household waitlist, just getting affordable housing is hard enough. But once they’re in, residents find themselves with few options to leave.
When a Guest Takes Over
Unit takeovers are a hidden crisis in Toronto social housing, at the intersection of unaffordability, social isolation, and an epidemic of addiction.
Meet Your New Landlord: a Local Non-Profit
The Neighbourhood Land Trust has been snapping up buildings across Toronto, taking them off the market and into the community. Over 200 units later, they say they’re ready to do much more.
The Realities of Renting While Black
Black renters have always faced discrimination in Toronto. The rental crisis makes it worse.
The Airbnb Loophole Pushing Out Long-Term Tenants
Despite regulations, short-term rentals continue to keep apartments off the market in neighbourhoods like Kensington Market.
How to Protect Seniors From Eviction
A new report on seniors in TCHC buildings shows that current eviction prevention methods need to be strengthened.
At the Landlord and Tenant Board, Tenants Wait Twice as Long as Their Landlords
Applications by tenants take up to seven months longer than those by landlords. Behind this disparity is a skewed system of Zoom hearings and inexperienced adjudicators that can’t keep up with a mile-high case backlog.
How We Misunderstand the Housing Crisis
The “housing crisis” isn’t a crisis for everyone—for some it’s a windfall. That fact infuses every aspect of our response to it.
Maybe I’ll See Raymond
For years, I walked the city doing street outreach overnight—handing out socks, listening to people’s stories, always scanning the crowd for a familiar face.
As the World Grew Quiet, Inside Got Loud
Overlapping Zoom calls, fights between siblings, enraging neighbourhood pool parties—the maddening, unending sounds of a stay-at-home crisis.
Where the Pandemic Hit Hardest
COVID has amplified social issues that have long existed at Jane and Finch. It’s also revealed the resiliency of the community.
Tuesday in Allan Gardens, Where the Police Guard the Benches
With shelters crowded and drop-ins closed, the police and the homeless play a strange game of cat and mouse.
How it Feels to Be “Revitalized”
A revitalization project promises to transform this public housing community into a mixed-income neighbourhood. But meeting the needs of existing residents while appealing to affluent newcomers is a difficult balance.
A Park for All, or a Park for Some?
How a small group of parks and rec staff called "parks ambassadors" became unlikely mediators in the growing battles over the city’s public space.
Mapping Our Divisions
A bird’s-eye view of Toronto in 2019 reveals a city where geography is destiny and a person’s postal code can be as telling as their medical chart.
My Home, Moss Park
Life in a neighbourhood where death comes too often and too early.