Domicide 001: Smoke Alarms and Rooming Houses

Domicide is a Toronto Compass original series of news stories and documentaries. The term derives from the idea of the murder of housing as a shelter and right. Instead, housing has been reborn as a financial asset, an investment for the rich to get richer at the cost of safety, dignity, and a human right.

A man is dead, and a half dozen more people in eastern Toronto are displaced after a house fire. 

Earlier this year, in the summer, 7 people died in an old Montreal home fire. 

Both cases share alarming similarities and point to an alarming trend with potentially deadly effects. 

An unassuming house from the outside, the rowhouse in eastern Toronto was home to 8 confirmed residents on Jan 17th, 2024, when a fire started. No official story has been given about the cause of the fire, but a key detail is being reported. Tenants state that for a while, the building lacked smoke alarms. This illegal rooming house is just one example of a trend springing up around Toronto and Canada as a whole. As cities shift to allow rooming houses, many welcome the change, saying it adds lowered rents to areas and creates an accessible path to having a roof over the head for many. And this isn’t wrong, but blindly welcoming rooming houses and dusting our hands leads to dangerous and deadly games. A game where only one player wins: slumlords. Slumlords is a dubbed term for landlords who gobble up housing to list it on the market for students or other low-income groups, only to then neglect the home, usually dividing it as much as possible and charging high, but still below average amounts for it. These landlords are commonly found cutting corners in all ways possible and are why we have jokes and a shared imaginative image of what a “student house” physically looks like, condition and appearance-wise.  While the house in this case was illegal, a trend of apathy towards enforcing pro-tenant legislation, like the regulation of rooming houses, is leaving many to wonder if it will be enough.

In Montreal, an old home was bought by a landlord with an extensive portfolio and converted into multiple studio-sized units, of which most were below-grade and illegal. Yet, some were listed regularly as short-term rentals on official websites, and some were rented as long-term terms. These units are considered below grade for a reason: a deadly reason. When a fire breaks out, even assuming it’s not because of overloaded circuits wired shoddily to save costs during renovations, tenants are trapped in units. Gut-wrenching 911 calls reveal tenants were stuck, blocked by fire, and a lack of legally required alternative routes, crying out for help. 

When slumlord costs are cut, so is safety. Illegal bedrooms, shoddy wiring, passing capacity, and not maintaining life-saving equipment like smoke alarms are a few common ways that tenants' live are at risk purely for extra lining in a landlord or holding companies pocket. Room houses can provide crucial housing to many, but until we actually enforce the laws we pretend we have for ease of mind, we will find said crucial lifeline to housing chokeholded by slumlords and being held hostage for $950 a month per bedroom, utilities not included. 

What can be done?

A quick response: Cities need to take action on illegal below-grade units and slumlords cutting costs in life-risking manners. In just 3 minutes on 'Facebook marketplace,' and similar times on other common apartment listing sites, I found multiple units that I would flag as potentially illegal. All levels of government must use their resources to fight this.

A longer solution: A recurring theme in investigating Domicide is the need for more options. Tenants are forced into the hands of a slumlord because there are no other options. We need to demand more and better options. Co-ops, rent-to-income, and affordable housing are tried and true methods that our government, on all levels, refuses to utilize.

A rooming house regulation act is set to come into effect in Toronto that will crack down on illegal rooming houses has to be enforced. But as rent costs rise everywhere, we must ask ourselves what about other towns and cities, most of which have rooming houses (legal or not) but often no protections for the tenants inside them.