Hundreds of rental units up for demolition vote Tuesday

About 240 rental units in Toronto could move one step closer to being torn down for new developments Tuesday, causing their tenants to be victims of a demoviction in the process.

A demoviction, or demolition driven eviction, is when a landlord evicts tenants from a building so that it can be demolished and redeveloped into new apartments or condos. 

The applications to demolish and replace the units will be before the Toronto and East York Community Council Tuesday, which will decide whether to recommend city council approve the applications or not.

Eighty of those units are in a building near Jarvis and Bloor streets, where Ai Rei Dooh-Tousignant has lived for the past 14 years. She is the head of the building's tenants association and an organizer with the advocacy group No Demovictions. 

"A lot of people are very anxious," Dooh-Tousignant said.

"What is going to happen to them? Are they going to lose their homes? Are their homes going to be safe? If they are going to lose their homes, when is that going to happen?"

Demovictions have been steadily rising in Toronto this decade, according to data from the city's website. In 2020, nine properties were approved for demolition and replacement. In 2023, that number more than doubled to 24. 

Those approvals mean 3,122 rental units, including 1,993 affordable rentals, have been approved for demolition.

While city regulations give tenants the right to return to their units — newly constructed in the new buildings — at a similar price to what they were paying before, people whose homes end up in the rubble say they still suffer in the interim. 

"We are seeing through these many demovictions that the supply of purpose built and rent controlled buildings is diminishing because those are the very ones that are being targeted for demovictions," said Dooh-Tousignant. 

"So we can see very clearly how the supply that tenants will have access to during the displacement is shrinking."

Aside from mandating that people in the demolished buildings get their apartments back in new builds at a similar price, the city also offers support in the intervening period through rent gap funding. That funding is meant to help people living in rent controlled units afford market rents once they find a new place.

While those supports are key, Matti Siemiatycki, a planning professor and director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto, said the act of demolition and replacement is still hard on tenants. 

"It's disruptive to individuals and it's disruptive to communities," he said.