Safety in rental housing is a shared responsibility between landlords, residents, staff, and government systems. Across Ontario, housing providers are increasingly navigating complex situations involving criminal activity, violence, and safety risks within apartment communities, while working within a regulatory framework that can make timely intervention difficult.
Under Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act, landlords can pursue eviction for safety-related incidents using notices such as the N6 (Illegal Act or Misrepresentation) and N7 (Serious Problems in the Rental Unit or Residential Complex). These tools exist to address impaired safety, willful damage, violence, and illegal activity affecting residents and communities.
In practice, however, removing a tenant who presents a demonstrable safety risk can be slow, uncertain, and operationally complex. Applications must be filed with the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB), and even in serious circumstances, landlords must request expedited hearings rather than receiving immediate authority to end a tenancy. Whether an expedited hearing is granted, and the outcome itself, remains at the discretion of an adjudicator.
Delays at the LTB continue to affect both housing providers and tenants. Sector reporting and tribunal experience indicate hearings for many applications can take five to seven months to schedule, with some matters approaching a year from filing to order depending on backlog and complexity. During that time, property managers must continue operating communities where safety concerns may still exist.
At the same time, the operational reality of managing rental housing has changed. Over the past several years, with a sharp increase during COVID-19, landlords have invested significantly in additional security measures. Many housing providers now rely on on-site guards, mobile patrols, expanded camera systems, and controlled-access technology to help deter criminal activity and maintain community safety.
These measures come with real and ongoing costs. Property management teams are regularly monitoring footage, coordinating incident reports, responding to suspicious activity, and supporting residents affected by safety concerns. What was once occasional has, in many communities, become part of daily operations.
Compounding this challenge, many landlords report reduced police response to lower-level but still disruptive incidents such as trespassing, theft, and repeated disturbances. Increasingly, landlords, employees, and contracted security providers are managing these situations directly, absorbing both the responsibility and cost of maintaining day-to-day safety within rental communities.
Another limitation within the current eviction framework is that N6 and N7 processes are largely tied to illegal acts occurring within the rental unit or residential complex itself. When criminal activity occurs outside the property, landlords often have limited ability to rely on those events as grounds for eviction.
This creates difficult situations when a tenant has been publicly charged with a serious criminal offence or is incarcerated, yet the tenancy remains legally intact. Residents may feel unsafe, some choose to move out, staff require additional protection, and landlords face reputational and operational strain. In many cases, housing providers must rely on indirect grounds such as non-payment of rent or abandonment rather than the criminal charges themselves.
At the same time, landlords continue to carry obligations under the Occupational Health and Safety Act to take every reasonable precaution to protect workers from workplace violence and harassment. Property management staff across Ontario have experienced verbal abuse, threats, digital harassment, and physical violence while managing situations involving tenants who cannot be removed quickly through the current system.
Housing providers are often the first responders within residential communities. They coordinate with police, support affected residents, protect employees, and manage communication, all while continuing to operate buildings responsibly and fairly.
Ontario’s rental housing system is built on principles of fairness and housing stability. Those principles matter, but stability cannot come at the expense of safety.
There is an opportunity to strengthen the system by ensuring housing providers have practical tools to respond when safety risks are real and immediate.
Expanding the N6 and N7 framework to allow adjudicators to consider verified criminal charges that materially affect community safety—even when incidents occur outside the residential complex—would help balance tenant protections with the safety responsibilities landlords carry.
Housing providers are not seeking to weaken tenant protections. They are seeking timely, predictable mechanisms to respond when the safety of residents, employees, and communities is at risk.
Strong rental communities depend on both stability and safety. When housing providers are equipped to respond effectively to serious safety concerns, residents feel more secure, employees are better protected, and communities remain stronger. Supporting landlords in this work is not only good housing policy—it is essential community policy.
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