Ontario Landlords Association ‘Advocacy Campaigns’ to Organize and Reach Out To Make Positive Changes for Good Landlords

The news at the Ontario Landlords Association site that Mississauga landlords no longer need to get a landlord license was met with a huge positive response from thousands of landlords in that City. 

We will let one of our Mississauga landlord contributors explain how she felt during the landlord licensing process and how she feels now. She wrote this post (and chose the picture and everything else.)

Her story is typical of how landlords in Mississauga appreciate the years of hard work the Ontario Landlords Association has done communicating landlord issues to governments, media and the general public and lobbying governments (often behind the scenes) with the goal of making positive change for small residential landlords in Ontario!

A Mississauga Landlord Story

I’m a small landlord in Mississauga Ontario. When we heard the news about the plan for the Mississauga City government plan to license landlords many of us wanted to know more.

We found the information was difficult to come by and no one was explaining how license would really affect our business.

We mean impact our rental business in a real ‘matter of fact’ way and not in the language of city bureaucrats. After all the government bureaucrats have nice big government salaries. They also have large guaranteed pensions, unions, legal protections at work, and paid vacation time.

Meanwhile, small landlords aren’t protected. And not only are we not protected, we have to deal with tenants who can abuse the Ontario system and rip us off.

Small Landlords Need a License?

The news about the Mississauga landlord licensing program was pretty shocking.

We posted at the Ontario Landlord Association forum years ago asking about the issue, wanting to communicate with other Mississauga landlords, and to let others know that if this was happening here, it could happen in other areas of Ontario.

Our post in the Members Forum was:

“This is a question for landlords in Mississauga and also important (we think) for the thousands of other members here from all over Ontario. We were told that we would require a license to continue to rent our basement out. Yes, really! It seems this rumour is actually true and I wanted to post here to discuss this important issue.”

The replies came fast and furiously.

Yes, Mississauga Landlord Licensing Is Coming

We quickly heard from other landlords in our area that the rumours were true.

Are They Serious About the High Fees?

The discussion turned to the details of getting a license. One of the biggest issues was the high fees the city wanted to charge us for the “honour of having a basement rental unit.” Give me a break, I though. And others agreed!

Should I Even Bother Renting Out My Second Unit?

Many people also thought about just leaving the rental industry altogether in Mississauga. After all, if we aren’t appreciated and they want to gouge us then we can quit and invest somewhere else.

There are lots of other places to be a landlord. For example, Newmarket landlords are saying their city is a great place to invest. Some people said they were thinking of investing in the United States, and others said they could buy in other provinces as Alberta landlords had a lot of rights and a fair playing field.

Mississauga Landlord Don’t Require a License Now!

This is terrific news. You don’t need a costly license, we now only need to be registered. We need to be registered to make sure our rental units are up to code and safe. I don’t have any problems with that. It’s great that finally landlords have a voice, we worked together, and bad policy was changed to help both good landlords and good tenants in Mississauga!

Ontario Landlords Association Communication and Advocacy for Small Landlords

On behalf of my fellow landlords in Mississauga we would like to thank the team at the Ontario Landlords Association through this difficult process. The OLA provided us with the information we needed, a way to network with each other, and we got the positive result we needed.