Landlord Maintenance Obligations Under Ontario's RTA

Ontario law requires landlords to maintain rental properties to a specific standard. Here's what's required.

Lease and Rental Management

The Residential Tenancies Act requires landlords to maintain rental properties in a good state of repair and fit for habitation, complying with health, safety, housing, and maintenance standards. This is a non-waivable legal obligation.

Vital services — heat, electricity, water — must be maintained at all times. Landlords cannot willfully interfere with vital services. Heat must be maintained at a minimum 20°C from September 1 to June 15 in Ontario.

Ontario Tenancy Law

Maintenance requests must be addressed in a timeframe appropriate to the urgency. Emergency conditions (no heat in winter, significant water leaks) require immediate response. Routine maintenance must be addressed within a reasonable time.

The property must be pest-free. Rodent and insect infestations are a landlord responsibility to remediate. Bed bug treatment, mouse extermination, and cockroach remediation are landlord obligations under maintenance standards.

Protecting Landlord Rights

Appliances provided at the start of the tenancy must be maintained in working order. If a landlord provides a stove, refrigerator, or dishwasher, it must be maintained. The landlord isn't required to provide appliances, but if they do, maintenance is obligatory.

Structural and safety elements must be maintained: doors with functional locks, windows that open and close, heating systems in working order, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors (functional and tested), and safe egress from every sleeping room.

Tenant remedy for maintenance failure includes filing an application with the LTB for abatement of rent, repair orders, and potentially termination of tenancy if the unit is unfit for habitation. Proactive maintenance management avoids the LTB process entirely.

Devon Moore, Operations Lead Co-Founder & Operations Lead — D&D Property Management

Devon Moore is the co-founder and Operations Lead at D&D Property Management, managing rental properties across Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, Guelph and Waterloo Region.