Toronto newcomers paying up to 12 months' rent up front to secure housing
Toronto newcomers paying up to 12 months' rent up front to secure housing
For two months, Carranza and her husband slept on a couch in a small, one-bathroom apartment in downtown Toronto that they shared with two other couples as they searched for a home.
The real estate agents Carranza was working with said the reason they were rejected was because they were newcomers with no credit scores, no reference letters and — at the time — no jobs. So the agents suggested they offer up to a year of rent up front.
Desperate, Carranza started looking for options on Kijiji. There, she found a one-bedroom-one-den apartment near Kipling Station for $2,250. The landlords were willing to meet with Carranza and her husband in person.
They ended up handing over $28,300 — their life savings — to prove their reliability to the landlords and, finally, secure a home. (CBC News has seen emails that confirm the transaction.)
No job, no credit, no references, and a backed up landlord-tenant board, meaning that the landlord can't evict for at least a year if they don't pay the rent... no surprise that they had to put cash up front.
The bigger issue, though, is why stay in downtown Toronto? It's the second most expensive real estate market in Canada and an extremely competitive job market. There are a hundreds other less expensive places of live that would greatly value an influx of people with skills. Where I live (not Toronto), half of our IT department are newcomers from India and Africa who were smart enough to realize that there is more to Canada than Toronto.
Yet another case where under-funding the LTB is bad for both landlords and tenants, and yet, the backlog continues...