Years of advocacy by a local tenant union to implement a renoviction bylaw is finally coming to a head this week.

Since June 2023, Waterloo Region ACORN has been asking the City of Kitchener to provide better protections for people getting priced out of rentals after a renovation.

City council will be voting for or against the renoviction bylaw during a meeting on Monday. The bylaw has already moved through the finance and corporate services committee last week with a 5-3 vote in favour of the bylaw.

“We’re excited to have this finally happening. It’s been exhausting,” said Jacquie Wells, chair of the local chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

“We’re also just determined as ever to get this bylaw passed and get a good bylaw passed. So not half measures, but something that includes tenant compensation,” Wells said.

If passed, new rules for landlords could come into effect January 2027, according to a report that went before the committee last month. Under the new rules, landlords would need to obtain a licence when they issue an N13 notice to tenants for renovations requiring a unit to be vacant.

Wells is hoping Kitchener city council takes notes from the City of Waterloo.

“The fact that Waterloo passed theirs in January and they added tenant compensation to their bylaw … such as moving costs and rent gap payments that the landlord has to pay throughout the duration of the renovation,” Wells said.

“We were really, really pleased to see that in Waterloo. And so we’re really hoping and pressuring Kitchener council to do the same.”

During the committee meeting in March, Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic raised concerns that requiring landlords to provide tenants with supports during a renovation may become too costly and deter necessary renovation work.

“If it becomes too cost prohibitive to make a renovation we could find that people may be living in substandard conditions because a landlord may not want to pay for the cost of the renovation,” he said.