My apartment had been my affordable refuge during divorce. Then my landlord sent me the email all tenants dread

Hamilton Spectator

26-05-2025

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'I would like to present a proposal for your consideration,' the email from my building manager began.
Here we go
, I thought. After years of worrying about it,
I was being asked to move out of my affordable rental.
The email went on to say that a plan to renovate the roof would cause a significant amount of dust and disturbance to me in my top-floor unit. The property manager offered to move me from my one-bedroom apartment in Humewood—Cedarvale into a studio in another building a short distance away in Briar Hill—Belgravia. The rent would be reduced from the market rate — though still above my current rent — and I was offered a $15,000 incentive that I could take either in the form of a lump sum or a monthly rent reduction for one year on top of the reduced rate.
While there was nothing in the email that indicated they planned to force me from the unit, it felt like the writing was on the wall.
I'd already successfully ignored a similar email from the property manager a couple of years prior. With a second proposal now looming, and my rent well below market rate, I believed I had to play ball. Saying no felt like kicking the problem into a future where maybe there wouldn't be a deal and where I'd have to compete for a home in Toronto's expensive rental market.
It wouldn't be until I was installed in my new apartment that I would start feeling a deep sense of loss and sadness.
Tenants don't have to move unless they receive an eviction order from the Landlord and Tenant Board, but standing up for tenant rights requires time, health and money. Last August, I didn't have an abundance of any of those things. With very little time to make the decision, what I did have was anxiety.
I didn't want to move but weighing the choices wasn't straightforward. If I did, I'd have a renovated unit with new appliances, but I would be paying a lot more for a smaller space. At the time, I was paying $1,049 for my one-bedroom unit, whereas comparable listings were going for about $1,300 more on average. If I went to the open market, that $15,000 incentive would be eaten up in less than a year. In the studio they were offering, I'd give up my bedroom but gain a balcony. I'd never missed having one, but I imagined that a future me might enjoy reading outside.
But my old apartment was where I mended my heart after a divorce, where I reimagined who I was and what I could be, where I decided to return to school at age 40, where I completed the work of two degrees, and where I survived a pandemic. Indeed, uprooting my life at someone else's behest was much like my divorce, except back then the act of moving made me feel powerful whereas now I felt powerless.
In the end, there were two factors about the new location that tipped the scales toward accepting the landlord's proposal. The new unit overlooked a quiet residential street, which would bring me an unfathomable amount of serenity compared to the screeching buses on Bathurst and racket from the 24-hour gas station I lived above. And importantly, the new building had an elevator. This would mean that my mother, who hadn't been able to climb the stairs to my current unit for years, would once again be able to visit me.
So, I took the deal. I thought it would keep me safe.
A neighbour in my old building used to joke with me that our rent-controlled walk-up would have to burn down around us before we considered moving. That's because for many years we had an individual landlord who, content with the extra income the building generated, never raised our rent. But great deals on rent come with a catch. Over the 17 years I lived there, the once well-maintained building began to fall into disrepair.
That changed when the building was sold to a corporate landlord. Soon, the new landlord began making welcomed safety and cosmetic improvements to the property. As tenants moved out, their apartments were renovated and rents for those units subsequently increased. Eventually, only a handful of us 'OGs' remained.
Then, one month from the day the proposal landed in my inbox, I was unpacking in my new home.
In late October, I found Statistics Canada's Canadian Housing Survey in my new mailbox. The questionnaire, which collected data until March 31, sought insights from Canadians on housing topics such as affordability, needs, satisfaction, aspirations and discrimination. It also included a section on what it called 'forced moves.' These are defined as situations where 'you were made to feel there was no other option but to move.' This was the validation I needed to start making peace with my decision. Still, months later, my cheeks blaze with shame that I didn't put up more of a fight.
I'm still close enough to my old neighbourhood to visit my favourite haunts, but when I do, I remember that I'm just a visitor passing through and a lump balls up in my throat. I'll never know my new neighbourhood or any other one as intimately as the five-kilometre radius around St. Clair West and Bathurst, having walked and rewalked every nook and back alley during pandemic lockdowns when all I could do as a single person was walk and walk and walk.
I don't regret my decision — I feel strongly that staying would have simply postponed a similar outcome — but it's been hard to recover from the trauma and exhaustion of packing up in panic-mode.
Meanwhile, I've learned that some of my new neighbours describe themselves as 'OGs' in this building, just like I used to at my old place. Soon after I moved into my new unit, I arrived home from work and found a piece of Bristol board posted at the elevator along with some cheerful balloons. Everyone was invited to write a message to a neighbour celebrating her 85
th
birthday. The residents in my old building tended to be youngish single people and couples due to the one-bedroom units and the nature of it being a walk-up, which excluded older people. My new home feels more like a community because there is greater diversity in unit sizes and tenant ages.
On the other hand, being forced to move from my one-bedroom to a studio feels like sliding backwards in life. I had to make many painful decisions about what came with me, including letting go of the piano I had taken childhood lessons on and a dining set that my father had refinished. But my formerly feral cat, who remains deeply distrustful of most humans, is thriving in a home where she can easily survey her entire domain. I try to take my cues from her, and in doing so I am learning that this can be a creative container to hold who I am now as I transition from university into a new career.
Nevertheless, the circumstances here are all too familiar: a rent-controlled building and long-term tenants paying below-market rent. There are similar cases all over town and affordable rentals are disappearing.
In November, the city passed a bylaw designed to prevent renovictions — evicting tenants in bad faith under the guise of renovations. Among other things, it will require landlords to pay for a $700 per unit renovation licence and prove that their intended renovation requires the tenant to vacate their home. Enforcement is set to begin on July 31. While the bylaw is well-intentioned, I worry about unintended consequences, should landlords race to beat the incoming regulation. Once enforcement begins on July 31, will landlords simply find new ways to get rent-controlled tenants out?
For now, my housing feels secure, but the situation has revealed how vulnerable I am as a single tenant. It's left me wondering how long I can continue to live in a city that doesn't seem to love me back.
Leslie Sinclair is a Toronto journalist who reports on culture, social justice and religion. In 2024, she won a National Magazine Award for her work exploring access to information in Canadian prisons. She is still unpacking in her new apartment.