Some Ontario landlords are calling for 'automatic' evictions for tenants who don't pay rent

When Zahid Mahmood bought a house in Oshawa, Ont., in 2021, he hoped rental income would help him and his wife save money to pay for post-secondary education for their three children. 

Walking into the house last month, Mahmood says he was faced with piles of trash, bottles of urine, rodents and dog feces — the mess left behind by former tenants. 

Mahmood says the tenants moved into the house in May 2022 and stopped paying rent a year later. In August, he and his wife gave the tenants an N4 eviction notice and filed an application with the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) to end the tenancy due to non-payment of rent. 

After waiting months for a hearing, the LTB issued an order last month to terminate the tenancy. According to the order, the total unpaid rent owing exceeds $24,000. 

"Going through all this [caused] stress and mental torture and financial crisis as we had to pay the mortgage during this whole 10 month period," Mahmood said. 

Mahmood is among a group of landlords calling for changes to provincial rules to make it simpler and faster to evict tenants in cases of non-payment of rent. However tenant advocates say changing the rules could make it easier for bad landlords to exploit the system and illegally evict tenants. 

Landlord Christopher Seepe is behind a petition circulating online that's calling for "automatic eviction" for tenants who don't pay rent.  

Seepe says his admittedly "extreme position" was born out of frustration with LTB delays and some small landlords facing dire financial consequences as a result. 

"It was a reflection of years of pent-up emotion," Seepe said. 

In 2022-2023, the LTB received more than 37,000 L1 applications to evict tenants for non-payment of rent, making up more than half of all applications from landlords. 

That year, only seven per cent of hearings were scheduled within the target time frame of 50 or 55 calendar days depending on the application type. The LTB has been working to reduce the backlog, including by hiring more adjudicators. 

More recent indicators published on the Tribunals Ontario website show hearing wait times are improving, with 73 per cent scheduled within the target time during the second quarter of the 2023-2024 fiscal year. 

Seepe argues there shouldn't be a need for many cases to go to an LTB hearing at all. His petition advocates for a system similar to what's in place in B.C., where landlords can easily get an eviction order without a hearing in cases where the notice is uncontested. 

In B.C., if a tenant has not paid their rent, a landlord can serve them with a 10 day notice to end the tenancy. The tenant then has five days to either pay the rent or apply to the province's Residential Tenancy Branch to dispute the notice.