Peel’s nightmare rental market: survey reveals 1 in 3 tenants live in deplorable conditions

The rental market across Brampton and Mississauga is agonizing—residents have long complained about the unsanitary and unsafe living conditions, despite significant demand for units.

A survey of 257 tenants conducted by ACORN Canada (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), between May and June, revealed the disturbing reality many renters in Peel have to deal with. From pest infestations to breathing in mold regularly, poor ventilation in the kitchen and bathrooms, broken ceilings to damaged closets and unsanitized carpets, the litany of nightmarish scenarios was hard to fathom in a country like Canada.

And when repair requests or calls to deal with other problems are lodged with building owners, they are routinely ignored.

The survey and its corresponding report demonstrate how grim the situation is in Peel, where 80 percent of tenants are in need of immediate repairs, according to the survey; while 88 percent reported the need for repairs or other work in the common area of their building. About one third (33.4%) claim there is no point in calling the City of Brampton’s 311 line which handles property standards complaints, while 35 percent had no idea what the service is.

The survey responses were gathered by door-knocking in apartment buildings, at ACORN chapter meetings, phone calls to existing tenant contacts, emails to ACORN’s membership lists and through social media.

The accuracy of the survey’s representation across Peel’s entire tenant population was not reported; it’s unclear if the results were skewed due to the participation of ACORN members, who typically are part of advocacy efforts due to their own experiences in the rental market. 

Of those who participated, 68 percent live in Mississauga, and 32 percent rent units in Brampton. The median income of those surveyed was between $40,000 and $50,000.

The top issues raised by respondents were breathing in mold every day, peeling paint on their walls or ceilings, intense heat in their units during summer, cockroaches and appliances being old and/or broken. 

Regular problems in building common areas include elevators that are slow and/or often broken, cockroaches or other bugs, hallway carpets/flooring that do not get cleaned, hallway walls and/or ceilings that have peeling paint and unclean/poor-smelling garbage chutes.

“There’s mold in the washroom under the sink and in the cabinet and the landlord just painted it, didn’t replace anything,” one survey respondent said. “It gets very hot during summer. The temperature inside the unit is 29 - 30 degrees. There’s also a rodent problem. I placed mouse traps myself in the unit. The dishwasher is old and broken. There are water shutdowns every other day. The staircase carpet is disgusting. There’s rain water accumulation and water leaks from the pipes in basement parking. The owners recently applied to raise the rent above the 2.5 percent rent control guideline despite all of these issues.” 

(ACORN Canada)

The issues raised are experienced despite the high rent tenants pay in Peel. According to the survey, tenants living in their unit for one to three years are paying $2,184 a month, on average, while those renting the same unit for more than ten years pay an average of $1,600. The survey found 65 percent of tenants spent between $1,501 and $2,500 monthly just on rent. 

The number of tenants who pay close to or more than $2,000 has nearly tripled compared to ACORN’s 2023 survey, jumping from 13.6 percent to 38.1 percent of respondents.

In October, The Pointer reported on the deteriorating interior of two apartment buildings in Brampton, 99 Kennedy Road and 51 McMurchy Road where multiple issues were found related to unbearable living conditions and poorly maintained buildings, with damage to ceilings, soiled carpets, peeling paints, doors torn from hinges and water lines out of order for long periods of time.

Conditions inside 99 Kennedy Road in Brampton, where the building’s residents are demanding landlords take action.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer files)

James Thurston, a tenant who lives at 99 Kennedy Road, flagged multiple issues last year, from 5.5 percent AGI (above the guideline rental increases) despite the Landlord and Tenant Board's (LTB) established limit of 2.5 percent; to multiple safety issues in the apartment due to the building's doors being broken and left unlocked for more than a year-and-a-half. This raised concerns as individuals had been able to enter the building and sleep in the stairwells, along with reports of attempted break-ins.

More than a year later, the issues remain unresolved. 

According to Thurston, the building owner, Golden Equity Properties, has ignored his repeated attempts to contact them and has done nothing to fix the issues, which he said he showed to Justyn Valenzano, a Brampton bylaw officer, on his visit to the site for inspection.

“The entry doors at 99 Kennedy Road North are an ongoing safety and security concern. The back door is frequently broken, making the building accessible to anyone and everyone,” Thurston wrote in an email to The Pointer.

“While it's not so much an issue in the summer months, during the colder seasons, there are several homeless persons that seek shelter in the building's stairwells and hallways. Oftentimes, the safety and security issues concerning homeless people in the building include drugs and alcohol use, smoking in public areas, belligerence and violence. Most tenants are resigned to the fact that entryways into the apartment will remain unsecured.”

He said attempts to draw attention to City of Brampton staff only heightened the frustration.

“I showed him (the bylaw officer) both the unsecured back door and the building's east side entrance door, in which the locking mechanism has been removed entirely by management. Mr. Valenzano commented that management has made this doorway an exit only (without any notification to tenants, which I do not know if such a notification of change is mandatory or not). I demonstrated to the bylaw officer that the east side door doesn't latch properly and is, therefore, an unsecured entryway into the building, and that it only closes properly if it is pushed with considerable force. Mr. Valenzano seemed unconcerned and indicated that he would not be pursuing any action with the landlord concerning this issue.”

For years, Peel has struggled with a lack of rental housing stock as developers have shown little interest in building purpose-built units (specifically for rentals, not to be sold on the market later) that meet the needs of tenants.

In a city where the population continues to explode and demand far outstrips supply, it’s a recipe for the poor treatment of tenants. 

The lack of new purpose-built rentals leaves those living in unsanitary and unsafe conditions with few places to turn. 

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing (CMHC) Corporation, since 2014, there has been minimal growth in the development of new purpose-built rentals in Brampton. Only 744 new rental units have been created over the last decade, which brings the total to 11,457 rental units in the city.

In a staff presentation on July 7, Noel Cubacub, a policy planner at the City of Brampton, informed Brampton council that only 2 percent of all new units built over the last 10 years have been purpose-built rentals.

The lack of new units constructed has led to chronically low vacancy rates for rental apartments, which in turn has caused the rental prices in Brampton to skyrocket. In 2024, the average rental price for a 2-bedroom unit was nearly $2,700 a month, with many of these in condos or other non-purpose-built rental accommodations. For similar sized purpose-built rentals (which have the benefit of rate stabilization protected by provincial rental laws) the price was considerably lower, at an average of $1,922. The cost of a 3-bedroom unit in purpose-built buildings last year was an average of $2,046—$1,024 cheaper than the condo and house rental market. 

Cubacub told council that a generally “healthy range” for a municipal rental vacancy rate is between 3 and 5 percent, which would show “a good balance between supply and demand."

In Brampton the vacancy rate has been consistently below 3 percent for the past 10 years.

(City of Brampton)

Amid the mounting problems being raised in the local rental market, Peel ACORN is asking Brampton council to expand the scope of the Residential Rental Licensing (RRL) program to include large apartment buildings. The controversial program currently only covers other rental accommodations like single rental units and Additional Rental Units (ARUs). ACORN is also requesting Mississauga council to strengthen its 2023 Mississauga Apartment Rental Compliance Program (MARC).

Similar to Toronto’s RentSafe program, ACORN urges both councils to implement city-wide landlord licensing and registration system, accompanied by proactive inspections, a requirement for service disruptions and cleaning schedules to be posted in common areas, along with escalating fines for non-compliance. The group also emphasizes that the City must have access to detailed information regarding property owners’ contact information, property description, and building insurance, and landlords should be provided a list detailing all property standards bylaws they must adhere to. 

The tenant advocacy group is also calling for an anti-renoviction bylaw to stop landlords from using renovations as a tool to displace tenants. A renoviction occurs when a landlord moves a tenant out of the building to conduct major renovations and then either does not offer the unit back to them or offers it back at a much higher rent. 

Additionally, in some cases, it has been reported that repairs are neglected until the tenant gets fed up and moves out. 

The group is asking both councils to implement a bylaw framework that would restrict a landlord from applying for a renovation permit within seven days of issuing an N13 eviction notice to a tenant, while permits would only be approved and issued once the landlord has already secured all other required building permits and provides an engineer's report confirming vacancy is necessary to do the approved work.

The proposed bylaw should also mandate the landlord to provide temporary accommodation that is similar to the current unit or a rental top-up until the tenant can return after renovations, and they would have to allow the tenant to return to their unit at the same rate they were paying before the work was done. In case of non-compliance, the City would be required to issue daily fines. 

Tanya Burkart, an organizer of Peel ACORN, said large property owners have an economic incentive to neglect repairs, which in turn allows them to increase rents to boost profits.

"It really speaks to public health issues in buildings. Large corporate landlords are incentivized to keep their units in a state of disrepair," she said.

"It gets tenants out. It frustrates tenants, and when a tenant moves, vacancy decontrol allows the landlord to increase the rent by any amount for the next tenant, so there's an economic incentive to keep the building in deplorable conditions so that the tenant moves out. So there really is; it's a question of money and economics, and the landlord doesn't have to do repairs. He can keep his money in his pocket and pay his investors. So I think these are real health issues."

ACORN is also asking for a Rental Replacement by-law, a similar enforcement implemented in Toronto and Hamilton, which Brampton calls a Residential Rental Conversion and Demolition bylaw, which is now being developed.

Burkart has been delegating to Brampton council since July and voiced ACORN’s demands in front of Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and his colleagues, to no avail.

"There've been no changes. They've expanded landlord licensing for ARUs to more wards across the city, and that's encouraging," she said.

"It means that this program could potentially have the potential to grow and expand in the city, and we're at a point in time to preserve these buildings. We need to make sure that those changes happen because our buildings are at risk. They're at risk of being torn down because the landlords have basically run them into the ground. They're not; basic maintenance is not being done. Things are leaking. We're dealing with mold."

She said residents across Peel desperately need local elected officials to step up.

"Both rent and replacement bylaws and anti-renoviction bylaws go a long way in protecting tenants and also maintaining the supply of affordable housing units."

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