{"id":37848,"date":"2026-03-26T16:26:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37848"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:26:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:26:40","slug":"scope-of-renoviction-problem-in-aurora-needs-to-be-clear-before-scope-of-solution-councillor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/scope-of-renoviction-problem-in-aurora-needs-to-be-clear-before-scope-of-solution-councillor\/","title":{"rendered":"Scope of renoviction problem in Aurora needs to be clear before scope of solution: Councillor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Town needs to understand the scope of the renoviction problem within Aurora before identifying the scope of a potential solution at the municipal level, according to Ward 1 Councillor Ron Weese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue of renovictions \u2013 a situation when a landlord evicts a tenant ostensibly to perform renovations \u2013 was before Council earlier this month following a motion from Councillor Weese. While municipal staff recommended against proceeding with a renoviction bylaw citing enforcement and administrative concerns, Councillor Weese hopes this spring could see Aurora-appropriate action on the file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Weese anticipates a report on the feasibility of a renoviction bylaw coming before Council as early as the month ahead, including experiences in other, larger, municipalities, and how the work in these larger catchment areas can be scaled down for Aurora\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to identify the scope of the problem as it exists in Aurora and we have to identify the scope of the solution. Once we have all that, a choice can be made to do something,\u201d says Councillor Weese. \u201cSince these bylaws [elsewhere] are so new, I think there\u2019s probably better solutions that have been proposed in other larger communities that are scaled down to our own circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the most interesting [details] to me is, first of all, where should the responsibility of administering this program lie? Should it be within Bylaws, as it is in one of the larger municipalities, or should it be with the building department who receives the applications for these renovations? The other thing that is not really clear in any existing legislation is that they don\u2019t really cover renoviction in the existing legislation, and there\u2019s no province-wide renoviction bylaw. These municipalities are trying to create their own renovation bylaws because the provincial legislation doesn\u2019t regulate them. This creates a circumstance that we\u2019ve got a province that doesn\u2019t seem to be doing much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Province has an active file on renovictions, but it hasn\u2019t yet borne fruit, while the housing and affordability crises continue. Work done by the communities of Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener, Waterloo, and Guelph, however, have laid some of the groundwork, says Councillor Weese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These details include requiring landlords and property owners to obtain a licence before renovating and putting out an eviction notice, requiring proof that the renovation requires a vacancy and, in some cases, tenant relocation assistance and compensation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a matter of putting a bylaw together, it has to consider all the other circumstances and the Province right now hasn\u2019t announced a province-wide renoviction bylaw,\u201d says Weese. \u201cOne of the signals I\u2019m getting from all the documentation is that it\u2019s been relatively mixed from a policy standpoint; some of the housing advocates are calling for a Provincial ban or some standardized rules and recently the Provincial housing legislation has been aimed at speeding up construction and actually may limit some of the authority to create additional licensing requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got these competing policy tensions around tenant protection and the reduction of barriers to housing construction, so what I\u2019m saying here basically is there\u2019s really no provincial protections put in place, although they are thinking about it, and municipalities are being left to work on this because that\u2019s where the evictions and problems exist. They\u2019re looking at some amendments to the existing policies that are there, and municipalities are acting\u2026. The fact for me is that our staff should be coming back with a report that makes a clear suggestion of how the renoviction bylaw would be administered, who would administer it, and what would be the cost of administering this bylaw. That\u2019s where we are right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think everybody on Council and any reasonable person would say that if tenants are not adequately protected from a renoviction, which is understood to be you\u2019re being evicted because the landlord wants to renovate your property\u2026 everybody believes tenants should have some protection against this, particularly in a situation where landlords and tenants have rental agreements that are affordable, and then those rental agreements after renovations should become affordable. Now we\u2019re losing affordable housing stock and we shouldn\u2019t be doing that. That\u2019s a problem when you look at an Affordable Housing Action Plan \u2013 you should be able to protect the lower rents that you have for people and not be evicting them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Town needs to understand the scope of the renoviction problem within Aurora before identifying the scope of a potential solution at the municipal level, according to Ward 1 Councillor Ron Weese. The issue of renovictions \u2013 a situation when a landlord evicts a tenant ostensibly to perform renovations \u2013 was before Council earlier this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9Qs","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 05:52:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37849,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37848\/revisions\/37849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}