As of March 30, 2024 the city of Toronto has legalized shared rooming houses. A shared rooming house is a house with multiple rooms rented to different tenants and a shared kitchen/living room/bathroom. The house must have more than four rooms/more than four tenants. While this has been going on for eternity it has been illegal and legalizing this is a huge step for Toronto residents in our current economy. The only exception would if the landlord or a member of the landlord’s family is a resident of the rooming house in this case the Residential Tenancies ACT and the Landlord Tenant Board are not applicable/able to hear the matter, In that case it would go to the Small Claims Court. Small Claims Court is a civil court and not a tribunal.
This has been a very long time in coming with a lot of previous and current city officials working very hard to make this happen. This was happening and would continue to happen with or without making it legal, by making it legal we are simply acknowledging it and making proper rules for it as seen on the city of Toronto website. By ackowledging and legalizing it we can now regulate it.
https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/multi-tenant-rooming-houses/