Summary#
Bill 64, the Housing Equity and Rental Transparency Act, 2025, would amend Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 and Technical Standards and Safety Act, 2000. Its stated purpose is to change rules for residential tenancies; it does not create a new agency. The changes include new landlord duties, tenant rent-abatement rights, municipal inspection duties and elevator reporting rules.
- Landlords would have to keep common areas at or below 26°C from May 15 to September 15. Municipalities would have to investigate tenant complaints and appoint inspectors; inspectors who find a breach would have to issue a work order.
- In buildings with at least 100 rental units, landlords would have to provide visitor-parking registration systems where visitor parking exists, install and maintain video surveillance, and engage a security guard for each building. The cameras must cover interior and exterior common areas, subject to limits on their use.
- Landlords would have to give tenants a paper guide to building amenities and an annual paper newsletter. Larger complexes would also have to upload yearly maintenance-request statistics to a provincial portal.
- Tenants could receive rent abatements for certain interruptions to vital services or elevators, and for some failures to follow a work order or repair surveillance equipment. Some abatements require an application to the Landlord and Tenant Board.
- Elevator owners would have to use remote monitoring. For elevators in buildings with rental units, owners would have to report outages lasting more than 24 hours to the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA); tenants may also report them.
- The bill would also change rules on rent increases, rent arrears, visitor-parking fees and some tenancy notices. Most provisions would start on Royal Assent; some would start after 12 months or three years.
What it means for you#
- Tenants: You could complain to your municipality if a landlord fails to meet the common-area temperature limit. If the landlord breaches the resulting work order, the Board may order work and/or an abatement of 1% of rent per day after the work-order deadline, until the Board’s order.
- Tenants: On application, the Board would have to order a 20% rent abatement if the reasonable supply of a vital service is withheld for more than 24 hours over three months. Time lost for reasons beyond the landlord’s control would not count. An elevator outage lasting more than 48 hours over three months would trigger a 5% abatement on application.
- Tenants: If surveillance equipment is damaged or malfunctions, the landlord must replace it within seven days after written notice. If the Board finds the landlord failed to do so, it must order an abatement, but the bill does not set its amount.
- Tenants: A landlord could not charge you for visitor parking. Persistent late-rent termination notices would not apply where some or all rent is paid directly to the landlord under Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program. This is not a general protection from eviction.
- Landlords: Complexes with at least 10 rental units or three storeys would have to report maintenance-request details each year, including dates, the work and the person who did it. Landlords may add photos; tenants may add photos and comments. If under 90% of requests meet the bill’s definition of resolved, the landlord could not apply for an above-guideline rent increase.
- Municipalities and elevator owners: Municipalities would have to appoint inspectors and investigate complaints. Elevator owners would have to monitor elevator availability; owners of elevators in buildings with rental units would also have to report qualifying outages and submit a follow-up report after service returns.
- Other tenancy changes: The bill would require a building permit with certain repair or renovation notices, change wording in a tenant-notice rule, and make other changes to rent-increase rules and Board fees. The parent Act was not supplied, so the exact current-law effect of these changes could not be verified.
Money#
No publicly available information on the bill’s total public or private costs.
- The bill requires municipalities to appoint inspectors, landlords to provide staff or contractors for security and new systems, and elevator owners to monitor and report outages. It gives no cost estimates or staffing numbers.
- The Minister must make an online portal available. The bill gives no portal cost estimate.
- Rent abatements would reduce rent paid to landlords when the stated conditions are met. The bill does not estimate how often they would be ordered.
- The Board could not charge a fee for applications under section 57.
What is unclear#
- The bill leaves regulations to set rules for monitoring, collecting and storing video footage, including when tenants may access or keep it. Those rules are not included.
- It does not set the amount of an abatement for a surveillance-system repair failure, or explain the process for claiming one.
- It does not explain how security guards’ duties would work in practice, or what training or qualifications they would need.
- It does not say how municipalities would fund inspections, or how the province would fund and operate the portal.
- The Residential Tenancies Act and Technical Standards and Safety Act were not supplied. The exact current-law baseline and the effects of several changes to existing provisions could not be checked.
- The bill’s start dates are staggered: some duties would begin on Royal Assent, some after 12 months and some after three years. It does not give calendar dates because they depend on Royal Assent.
Case for#
- The bill appears intended to set clearer minimum standards for common-area heat, building security and maintenance reporting.
- A required municipal investigation and work order could give tenants a way to raise temperature complaints and require landlords to address confirmed breaches.
- Public elevator-outage reports and maintenance statistics could make service problems easier to document. The Board could consider portal information when it is relevant to a case.
- Required rent abatements for specified service interruptions could give tenants a direct remedy when those conditions are met.
Case against#
- The bill imposes broad surveillance and security duties on large buildings, but leaves important privacy rules to regulations that are not included.
- Municipalities, landlords and elevator owners would face new duties without cost estimates or specified staffing needs.
- Some remedies depend on a tenant making an application, and the bill does not set an amount for one type of rent abatement.
- The bill does not explain how its new maintenance reporting and rent-increase restrictions would interact with existing programs or rules.