Scott Terrio, a manager at insolvency trustee Hoyes Michalos, says in the past three months alone he’s had a half dozen people come to him in dire financial straits because they’ve been evicted by landlords planning to renovate their buildings, a lawful excuse to evict, experts in landlord-tenant law say.
But relocating within Toronto means coming up with first and last month’s rent in an expensive rental housing market — so expensive that ousted tenants are finding themselves pushed to the edge of bankruptcy, Terrio says.
“Some of them are actually resorting to going to a payday lender, or an instalment loan of some kind, and of course those are huge interest,” he said.