UPDATE, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025: The Ontario government’s municipal affairs and housing minister today announced that they “are not proceeding with consultations on potential changes to Ontario’s tenancy lease framework regarding month-to-month leases,” meaning rent control will not be scrapped. The government still plans to make other reforms to rental laws.
See our Oct. 28 article for a detailed update.
Every tenant in Ontario will be at risk of losing their home if Premier Doug Ford’s government follows through on its latest housing plan, advocates are warning.
“If the government is able to enact what they’re proposing, it would basically spell the end of security of tenure for renters in Ontario,” Dania Majid, a lawyer for the Toronto-based Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO), tells The Grind. “That means that for renters, once your lease ends, you could be subjected to forced eviction or a massive rent increase.”
“These proposals are nothing short of a disaster for tenants,” ACORN Canada says in a statement. ACORN is an organization of low- and middle-income people. “They would make it easier for landlords to kick people out, harder for tenants to fight back, and make housing even MORE expensive.”
Ford’s government tabled a new law, Bill 60, on Thursday, and also released a briefing document outlining changes it could make to housing policy through the measures in the bill. Though the bill does not technically end rent control in the province, the government said it will look into allowing landlords to “adjust tenancy arrangements based on market conditions, personal needs, or business strategies.”
This would effectively end rent control as we know it, empowering landlords to end tenancies or change the price of a tenant’s unit once their lease expires.
The bill has not yet become law and will be debated first.
How would Bill 60 impact renters?
Currently, tenants are protected by what is called “security of tenure.” That means that after a fixed-term lease ends (typically one year), tenants can stay in their unit on a month-to-month basis. Landlords can only remove tenants for violating their lease agreement, for example when tenants don’t pay rent, or when the landlord or an immediate family member of the landlord needs to live in the unit.
In the briefing document, the government said it will consult on “alternative options” to security of tenure, “that could allow landlords to control who occupies their units and for how long, allowing them to adjust tenancy arrangements based on market conditions, personal needs, or business strategies.”
“At the end of the day,” Majid says, “this means no tenant knows what their housing is going to look like at the end of their lease. They won’t know where they’re going to live, if they’ll still have their unit, or what their rent will be.”
Chiara Padovani, founder of the York South-Weston Tenant Union, likens Ford’s proposal to the “apocalypse for tenants.” Speaking to The Grind, she warns that without security of tenure, renters will be less inclined to exercise other tenant rights.
“No tenant’s going to want to ask their landlord to fix a leaky faucet or challenge an illegal charge, or anything like that, because it puts a target on their back that after their lease is up, they won’t be allowed to stay.”
The law could lead to mass homelessness in every town and city in Ontario, says Diana Chan McNally, a community worker who works with people experiencing homelessness in Toronto and a fellow at the anti-poverty organization Maytree. Renters make up at least 30 per cent of Ontario’s population and 48 per cent of Torontonians.
More than 80,000 Ontarians were already homeless in 2024, according to a comprehensive study conducted by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, a number that has grown by more than 25 per cent since 2022. The study also estimated that homelessness could double in the next decade, even before this bill had been tabled.
People who have a history of homelessness, seniors, and people on social assistance or with low incomes would be at a particularly high risk of losing their homes, McNally tells The Grind. “You’re going to see mass evictions of these folks because landlords do not want to accommodate, and they want to make sure that they are earning top dollar, and that’s ultimately what this is all about.”
Landlord lobby backs the changes
The entire bill “reads very much like an early Christmas wish list for the landlord lobby,” Majid says.
Tony Irwin, president and CEO of the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario (FRPO), was quoted praising the government’s proposed law: “Together, these actions will help strengthen Ontario’s housing sector, support fairness for rental-housing providers and residents, and make it easier to bring much-needed rental homes to market.”
FRPO’s board is made up of executives from big corporate landlords like Hazelview Properties and Realstar Management. Both companies are linked to investment firms with billions of dollars in assets, and are among the top applicants for above-guideline rent increases, or annual rent hikes that are above 2.5 per cent. Hazelview has boasted that rising rents protect investors from the impact of inflation.
Attorney General Doug Downey told reporters at a press conference that the government had “heard from stakeholders that these evergreen leases that just go on with no end in sight may not be appropriate.”
Majid, the lawyer with ACTO, says that the Ford government’s approach to tackling the housing crisis is “completely unfactual and not supported by evidence or data.” She says that it is instead premised on the idea that removing tenant protections will incentivize the private landlord sector to create new housing.
“When we got rid of rent controls in the 1990s, that was because they thought developers and landlords would come into the market and produce new rental housing. That never happened. We somewhat closed the rent control loophole in 2017, but then as soon as Doug Ford was elected, he closed it,” removing rent control for all units built after 2018. “And again, this didn’t work.”
The problem with this theory, Majid argues, is that it is premised on the idea of a traditional landlord who was in the business of providing stable, predictable housing to long-term tenants. Today’s housing market, however, is driven by financialized landlords, who are not in the business of providing housing but using rentals to generate profits for investors.
“This is a model that encourages high turnover, so that landlords can increase rent as much as they want for new tenants,” Majid says.
Will tenants fight back?
Though Ford’s proposed changes have caused panic among renters, both Majid and McNally say that this is not a time for hopelessness or despair.
“It’s not a done deal. There’s still plenty of time to impact this law,” Majid says.
Ford “is not immovable,” McNally says. A mass movement of renters and their friends and family members could prevent the rules from changing, she said.
Majid says now is the time for renters to form tenant associations or connect to existing ones, and take part in campaigns and protests in opposition to the bill.
“This moment calls for mass mobilization and organizing. The government has only heard from the landlords and the investors. Now they need to hear from renters.”
With files from Fernando Arce
CORRECTION: Monday, Oct. 27: A previous version of this story said that Bill 60 removes the requirement that landlords or their family members live in a unit after they remove a tenant for their own use. In fact, the bill retains the own-use rules, but eliminates the requirement that landlords compensate tenants who get evicted for this reason.