Toronto As luck would have it, I had come to Toronto for the regular spring meeting of ACORN Canada’s lead and head organizers from around the country almost immediately after Toronto members had released their “State of Repair Report” based on a survey of tenants over progress of the RentSafe program in the city.
Reading the report was interesting, because it also provided a history of more than twenty years of struggle by ACORN to win tenant protections and landlord accountability in forcing regular maintenance and repairs. After starts and stops along the way, as smaller victories piled up, in 2017, a building registration program was won under this name. It was short of the landlord licensing program ACORN had demanded but incorporated huge components of ACORN’s demands. The program itself requires regular biannual inspections for all residential units, public and private, with 3 or more floors and ten or more units. Owners have to register and renew every year, forcing accountability on performance.
The ACORN tenant survey was an effort to have an evaluation of the progress of RentSafe from the bottom up. The majority, almost two-thirds, of the tenants in the survey were long-term, having been in their units over five years. Electricity bills or hydro, as they are called here, separate longer term residents from more recent tenants, as landlord practices have changed. Almost 80% of decades long tenants have hydro embedded in their rent, while two-thirds of newer tenants are paying separately. Disturbingly, more than a third of the tenants responding to the survey over the last year were saddled with rents that were above the city’s guidelines.
This survey was one of four over the last ten years with the first being done in 2016 and then subsequently in 2020, 2023, and now, 2026. There was real progress in some areas. Incidence with bedbugs dropped in half over the period, even as cockroach problems were persistent, impacting almost half of tenants. There was some progress in responsiveness to work orders, though 30% still felt threatened by landlords for making them. Heat was a two-edged sword. 43% in the winter experienced low or no heat at times. Climate change was a factor in the biggest jump recorded by tenants. Where in the past less than a third cited extreme heat, in 2026, over 60% reported that extreme heat was a serious issue in their apartments.
ACORN had no shortage of recommendations for making the program better based on these surveys and their daily work of their members and groups. ACORN wants in-unit inspections, not just hallway walkovers, clear standards and follow-up, standardized work orders, stiffer penalties for repeat violations, more transparency on building ownership along with some no-notice inspections of properties to keep them on their toes, and more attention to mold, inside and outside. For landlords reading the report, the kicker was probably the final recommendation. ACORN is asking for a citywide rent escrow account that would allow tentants to withhold their rent, when landlords are cited for a violation and don’t correct the problem. Winning that weapon would not be a shot across the bow for landlords, but a real kick in their wallets to force action.
The report was circulated and, as usual, got attention. After more than twenty years, landlords and the city read the report with interest, because they know when ACORN issues one, it’s not just something to throw on a stack of papers or file away. It’s ACORN sharing its own workplan for the coming years based on what tenants have dictated, and the organization has proven that when it makes its work orders public they covert into policy in the City of Toronto, not making their resistance futile, but making more victories in the future inevitable.