This report provides strong empirical evidence resolving ongoing debates about financialization’s impact on housing security. Through analysis of over 385,000 eviction filings in the Greater Toronto Area (2010-2021), the study reveals how treating renters’ homes as financial assets creates systematic displacement patterns that undermine tenant security and exacerbate regional inequalities, specifically along racial lines.
The report, written by Sean Gisdale, reviews and analyzes robust data on evictions filings, coming to four key conclusions:
1. Financialized Landlords Drive Eviction Rates Across All Periods
Financialized landlords consistently file the most evictions, maintaining the highest eviction filing rates both pre-pandemic and during COVID-19, even when overall filings decreased substantially following lockdowns and eviction moratoria.
2. Racialized Communities Face Compounded Displacement Risk
Tenants with financialized landlords in majority-Black neighbourhoods were three times more likely to experience eviction filings than average Toronto renters.
3. No-Fault Evictions Signal Market Manipulation and Secondary Stock Targeting
No-fault evictions rose from under 10% (2010) to nearly 25% (2021) of total filings. During the pandemic, approximately 70% of no-fault filings targeted secondary rental stock (condos, houses), with investor landlords in suburban areas driving much of this increase.
4. Evictions as Tools for Capital Gains During Market Volatility
No-fault evictions in suburban secondary stock between 2018-19 and 2020-21 strongly correlated with house price increases from early 2020 through end of 2021, indicating tenants in secondary stock face unique vulnerability to housing market fluctuations. In other words, tenants are being evicted because of rising house prices, as there are major pressures for sellers and buyers to have an unoccupied unit they can rent out at market rate- a clear incentive for landlords to evict.
For more, click below to read the full report.
Read the Full ReportThe Balanced Supply of Housing is a SSHRC-CMHC funded community-based research project at UBC that focuses on land use and housing financialization across Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
