Thank you for having me here today.
I am Dr. Nemoy Lewis and I'm an assistant professor in the school of urban and regional planning at Toronto Metropolitan University. Primarily, my work looks at the financialization of rental housing across this country, including in the cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal. My work looks primarily at how these particular types of landlords impact the lives and neighbourhood choices of Black Canadians across this country.
To begin, what is a financialized landlord? A financialized landlord is a purchasing company that's privately held—an asset manager—or a publicly traded company—real estate investment trusts—that acquires rental properties at scale and applies financial logic, metrics and priorities to generate returns to shareholders and investors. These categories include asset managers, private equity firms, public pension funds, insurance companies and real estate investment trusts, both private and public.
Examples of asset managers are Starlight Investments and Hazelview Investments. In terms of REITs, there are CAPREIT and InterRent REIT. In terms of public pension funds, there are BCIMC, which is the investment management arm of the B.C. public pension fund and which widely invests in multi-family housing, and AIMCo, which is the investment manager of the Alberta public pension fund. Also, the federal public pension fund, PSP, invests in financial intermediaries like Starlight Investments, which acquires multi-family properties and turns these assets into profit-generating assets.
In an examination of the Toronto rental market, we examined multi-family transactions over a 27-year period, during which over 223,000 units were transacted. Financialized landlords, we've been able to document, account for 65% of those units transacted over the last 27 years in the city of Toronto. We estimate that this is most likely an undercount, because, as some of my colleagues alluded to earlier, a lot of these companies use very ambiguous corporate names and numbered companies to help conceal their true identities.
When we break down the core business practices of some of these landlords, we find that asset management firms account for 40% of those transactions over the last 27 years in the city of Toronto. Real estate investment trusts account for only 7% of those transactions. I make that statement not to vindicate REITs. REITs do apply the same acquisition and management practices, which, as we know, undermine Canada's duty to fulfill housing rights for all Canadians.
In understanding where these particular landlords are acquiring, we did a demographic analysis. We found that 6.85% of all these transactions are happening in dissemination areas where the Black population is between 50% and 80% in the city of Toronto. Those DAs actually represent only 1.1% of all DAs in the city of Toronto. Dissemination areas are the smallest standard geographic census areas that make up a census tract. Financialized landlords account for 72.86% of all those units that have been transacted in those particular geographies.
We also found that income appears to be influencing the acquisition patterns of landlords in the multi-family rental market, especially at the bottom end of the household income spectrum, where the median household income is below $76,500. Financialized landlords accounted for 66.37% of all those units in those particular dissemination areas in the city of Toronto.
We looked at this in terms of displacement problems and financialized landlords. We examined evictions in the city of Toronto over the last four years, between 2018 and 2021. There were approximately just under 63,000 evictions in the city of Toronto. Financialized landlords accounted for 42% of those evictions. In terms of evictions for non-payment of rent, financialized landlords filed just under 80% of those evictions.
We looked at one particular property that was acquired by Starlight Investments. As my colleague mentioned, once these landlords acquire these properties, there's a significant increase in evictions. In late 2018, in the north Etobicoke community of north Albion, Starlight acquired a property, and by 2019 had filed just under 500 evictions in that particular building. Ninety-five per cent of those evictions were for non-payment of rent.
When we did a demographic analysis of evictions, we found that 10% of all evictions between 2018 and 2021 were happening in DAs where the Black population is between 50% and 80%. Financialized landlords account for 73% of all of those evictions in those dissemination areas. We know that 84% of those evictions are happening in high-rise buildings, which are 10 storeys or more.
When we increased the threshold to 70%, 5% of all the evictions in the city of Toronto were happening in dissemination areas where the Black population is between 70% and 80%. Financialized landlords account for 85% of all of those evictions in those communities. Nearly 100% of those evictions—