Population and Housing

[ijmorlan]

In commercial real estate you typically use "lessor" and "lessee".

I actually prefer landlord...

There is an inherent power imbalance (through financial resources, legal resources, and through the renter being beholden to the landlord for their home) between typical residential renters and landlords. The terms make that imbalance clear. I don't think changing the words would eliminate the power imbalance so I don't think we should change the words until we remove that power imbalance.

Well one thing I would point is that in Ontario right now part of the power imbalance comes from the fact that tenants cannot, in practice, use the Tribunal to deal with landlord problems. Why? Because they’re massively backlogged, and in order to prevent the entire system from collapsing they are prioritizing rental arrears hearings. This is necessary because if it becomes known that paying rent is optional, everything falls apart completely, in a way that it doesn’t if some tenants/landlords take advantage of and mistreat their landlords/tenants.

If there was an express process to force ongoing payment of rent, then those who are taking advantage of the system to avoid paying rent would be removed from the market (or shape up), and then tenants (in particular) could actually get action when they file an application against a bad landlord. Overall, this would lead to an improvement in conditions for everybody (except for the freeloaders).

The rules in Ontario are actually pretty fair for the most part. They could be improved, but rules on things like rent control and notice periods are reasonably well designed. The problem is that nothing can be enforced promptly; in this specific area, this is a massive boon, not to tenants in general, but to thieves (theft of services is still theft), because the theft continues every day that the parties are waiting for the hearing; and to bad landlords. All a bad tenant has to do to stay in a property for free is cause delays; and a bad landlord knows it will take a long time for a tenant to get a ruling against them.