Landlords gouge, scam and exploit student renters who don’t know their rights. Julian Sharma speaks with tenants who aren’t putting up with it any longer
Rebecca* had been living in Canada for two years when she decided to move out of her aunt’s house. She turned to a site called University Living, which connects students with accommodation in 10 popular countries for international students like her. She was contacted by an agent who showed her a room in a downtown Toronto highrise from Urby Housing, a property management company which rents units largely to international students.
According to a 2023 story in The Local, Urby has claimed to manage properties for landlords, arranging tenancies and renovating rooms for renters.
After viewing the room once, Rebecca decided to move in. It was what Urby calls a “flex room”—a space that’s been created by subdividing a larger room. There were five rooms in total—two flex rooms and three standard bedrooms. It seemed strange, she thought, but the price was good—$1,200 a month for the room, the building amenities were nice and the location was convenient for her—not far from George Brown College’s waterfront campus where she studies. She was 18 at the time and didn’t know much about housing in Canada, but if anything went wrong, she thought, she could always move back in with her aunt.
However, not long after she moved in, things took a turn for the worse. She began to be bothered by gaps in the makeshift walls around her room, which allowed her roommates to see inside, leaving her with almost no privacy.
Rebecca reached out to Urby multiple times, who eventually sent someone to fix the problem—but the issues didn’t stop there.
They showed up without prior notice, rearranged the layout of her room but her privacy concerns remained. Rebecca said between the ceiling and the top of the wall, there was a large empty space.
“Literally, looking at that wall made me cry so much,” Rebecca says.
She reached out to Urby again, and was essentially told, ‘if you don’t like it, you can leave.’ They declined to send in someone again, so Rebecca attempted to mend the issue herself, using various materials to cover the gaps.
Rebecca’s housing woes don’t exist in a vacuum. She’s one of many student renters who face difficulties with their landlords.
Students are one of the most vulnerable groups when it comes to renting. Many are living in rented spaces for the first time—and many more have never lived away from home. It’s common for young people and students not to know their rights when it comes to renting. And it’s just as common for landlords to take advantage of this lack of knowledge.
According to the National Right to Housing Network and the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights, young people are more likely to be evicted or exploited by landlords. This goes double for international students, like Rebecca. According to Statistics Canada in 2024, international students are more likely to experience unsuitable housing conditions than their domestic peers. Language barriers, stigmas, a lack of familiarity with Canada’s housing system and financial challenges are all factors which make them particularly vulnerable to unsafe conditions.
Recently, Toronto City Council has been making attempts to crack down on predatory landlords. In March, mayor Olivia Chow introduced a motion to hire more RentSafeTO officers—bylaw officers who are tasked with ensuring landlords comply with maintenance standards. In July 2025, city council also approved the introduction of a colour-coded system to publicly display which buildings are meeting these standards and which aren’t. Chow’s motion was largely influenced by 500 Dawes Rd., an East York apartment complex where conditions were so poor that Canada Post stopped delivering mail to the building earlier this month.
Students are facing issues with housing across the country. Affordability is a barrier from coast to coast, according to The Housing Observer at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
On-campus housing is also scarce at many campuses across Canada. According to Global News, in Saskatchewan, student housing is at capacity and there aren’t enough affordable options available on the market, a similar story to Calgary and Ottawa according to CBC. Here at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), there are approximately 1,144 beds for a student population upwards of 44,000. Even when the recently-announced Bond Street Residence is completed in 2030, the number will only rise to around 2,500. If students can’t rely on universities to provide housing, they have to find it themselves. This sense of desperation can leave students even more reluctant to stand up for themselves when facing problems with landlords, so as to not jeopardize their access to housing.
Additionally, students may not have the time or necessary resources to take action against their landlords. Toronto has seen collective action from renters rise, particularly since 2023, when tenants at three Thorncliffe Park high-rises went on a rent strike, sparking others in their wake. In March, residents at 75 Spencer Ave., a Parkdale apartment building, went on strike. But these kinds of actions can be more difficult to undertake while keeping up with the demanding life of a student. They can also feel less worthwhile for students who may not intend to stay long-term.
Benjamin Deans, the founder of the Toronto Centre Tenant Union, a grassroots organization which provides resources for tenants, puts it simply. “You’re sort of balancing priorities,” he says. “Do you want to spend your time fighting your landlord or studying for your exam?”
For many students, these factors create a perfect storm for exploitation from landlords. And when the resources or protections students need aren’t available, many learn the hard way that landlords don’t always have their best interests at heart.
In June 2025, Clare Anderson was preparing to move out of her downtown Toronto apartment, when she was told by her property management company she had to have her unit professionally cleaned before moving out.
Under section 33 of the Ontario Residential Tenancies Act (RTA), tenants are required to maintain “ordinary cleanliness” within the unit, but this doesn’t indicate a requirement for professional cleaning. Anderson, who is a fourth-year creative industries student at TMU, and her roommates decided to clean the apartment themselves. The day the lease ended, a representative came to pick up the keys and inspect the apartment. He walked around the unit, taking pictures of small marks or scratches on the walls, which Anderson says were typical wear and tear.
Once the inspection ended, Anderson asked about the $500 key deposit they’d given the company at the start of their lease, with the expectation that they would get it back once the lease was complete. The representative told her they would not be getting their deposit back.
After he left, Anderson received an email stating that due to ‘damages’ in the unit, they would not be receiving their key deposit. Only if they were to come back and have the apartment professionally cleaned and paint the walls, would the deposit be returned.
Anderson said if it had been a security deposit, it would’ve made sense for them to keep the money. However, because it was charged as a key deposit, not a security, she knew she was owed the money.
She communicated with the company first, sending emails that cited the RTA and telling them what they were doing was against the law.
After more refusals, Anderson turned to the Rental Housing Enforcement Unit, a free provincial government agency tasked with assisting tenants who believe their landlord is violating the RTA. After around two months, Anderson and her roommates got their deposit back.
Persistence is key when dealing with landlord problems, Anderson says. “That’s the rebellion to all of this, you just need to follow through,” she says. “You need to fight them on it. Don’t let them take advantage of you.”
Jessica* moved out of her first apartment to escape one bad landlord, only to find herself living with one who was even worse.
She had moved into a house near Bayview and Finch at the end of May 2024. She’d found a listing on Kijiji and after speaking with the landlord, she thought he seemed really nice. He offered her the chance to move in a week early and to help her move out of her current unit after hearing her qualms with the landlord.
Come winter, she found him to be a lot less accommodating. When the heater broke in her unit and Jessica asked him to fix it, he refused, blaming her for the cold because she was ‘wearing shorts during the wintertime.’
Then one morning, Jessica woke up and found a small space heater sitting in her room. Her landlord had seemingly bought a heater, came into her room at night while she was sleeping, and placed it inside her bedroom. It was then that she knew she couldn’t stay there anymore.
“It was really creepy, so it was like, I need to move out,” she says. “No matter what happens, I need to move out.”
The incident was the last straw, but it was far from the first time he’d made her uncomfortable.
A few months into her lease, Jessica got a cat on the condition her landlord could raise her rent by $50. She says once she got the cat, her landlord began asking her for help with small things, like assistance with his phone. He’d say she owed him because he let her keep a cat in the house.
Her landlord had written in the listing he had an apartment downtown where he lived while renting out the house. But after moving in, she realized he was running some kind of business in the basement of the house and ended up sleeping there more often than his apartment. When Jessica would dress up to go out, he’d make comments, calling her sexy.
Jessica was an international student at Seneca Polytechnic while living in the apartment. During her walkthrough of the unit prior to moving in, the landlord asked Jessica what her ethnicity was and if she was an international student. The majority of her roommates were also international students.
Deans says this is not uncommon. “I’ve heard about landlords threatening international students with immigration issues,” he says. In 2024, CityNews reported some international students in Brampton were being sexually harassed by their landlords. They were afraid to speak out for fear of legal repercussions.
Jessica felt targeted by her landlord for seven months before she managed to move out in February 2025.
She and her roommates also experienced continuous problems with utilities. They didn’t have hot water for almost a week in the winter and had to boil water and keep a bucket in the bathtub for showers. The basement unit of the house flooded and the landlord paid one of the tenants staying there just $50 to clean it.
Jessica now lives in a new apartment with a friend. She’s glad to have gotten out of the situation with her previous landlord. “I don’t know how I lasted that long.”
Two years later, Rebecca is still living in the same unit.
She says it’s exhausting for her to have to constantly reach out to Urby and it’s frustrating to have to deal with dismissals from agents.
“As long as they get their money they don’t care,” Rebecca says.
She says she has stayed for so long because moving out would’ve been complicated. She’s a full-time international student taking six courses a semester.
“I basically have my entire life in this room right now,” she says. “So it’s hard to just pack everything up and leave, you know?”
Rebecca is still studying at George Brown College. It’s up to her to decide if the stress of her unit is worth enduring for the convenience of having a place to stay, or if leaving and finding somewhere new is the next logical step for her future.
*These sources are anonymous for privacy reasons. The Eyeopener has verified these sources.
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