Tenant Dispossession and Landlord Accumulation under COVID-19: A Case Study of Toronto

Keywords: COVID-19, Toronto, Canada, Evictions, Financialization
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 62

Abstract

This paper analyzes the COVID-19 rental housing crisis in Canada: the tenant rent arrears and evictions crisis as well as landlord profits and property consolidation. I track the expansion of financialized landlord holdings at the national scale. I provide a case study of the pandemic triple crisis – health, housing, unemployment – in Toronto, by mapping the relationship between rates of COVID-19 and rates of rent arrears and evictions. Landlord strategies are examined by reading shareholder reports, news media interviews, and industry magazines, and attending apartment investment conferences. Tenant perspectives are analyzed through interviews with tenant organizers involved in the Keep Your Rent campaign and by attending Landlord and Tenant Board Zoom eviction hearings. The case study draws on my comprehensive analysis of eviction orders issued in Toronto during 2020 and 2021. I argue the pandemic accelerated landlord strategies of tenant turnover and asset repositioning. Landlords maintained or increased rates of rent collection and profit, in large part due to state bailouts, either indirectly through the national Canada Emergency Response Benefit or directly through municipal rent banks. Landlords’ eviction strategies were enabled by a piecemeal eviction moratorium and an overhaul of Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant tribunal to become a fully online, streamlined ‘courthouse of the future.’ Certain working-class neighbourhoods in Toronto saw an explosion of organizing activity – collective rent strikes, eviction hearing shutdowns, direct confrontation of landlords and sheriffs – and ultimately a decline in eviction rates compared to pre-pandemic years.