A year ago, she says she and fellow tenants were told their building had been sold and that they would be making some improvements.
After pushback from fellow tenants over it being illegal to change them a retroactive rent increase, she says the new landlord dropped the costs but did give them all a significant rent increase moving forward.“We were shocked… We’re a small business, like we’re busy in the summertime, but the rest of the year, it’s slow; we can’t do this, and they said, ‘Well, we’re surprised that you didn’t know about this, and it’s quite common in Toronto.
“I have to save up to five months of payments because it is so slow as soon as the summer ends. So, you know, it’s not as if we’ve got huge amounts of money to be able to pay these landlords’ expenses. We don’t have it,” she says, “What we’re hoping for is a more streamlined approach to a lot of these issues so that both landlords and tenants can negotiate rents better. So something like a standard lease will help facilitate that and make sure that both parties truly understand the lease that they’re signing,” he says.