Should You Allow Pets? An Honest Look at Ontario's Rules

By Solutions Property Management — Thu Apr 09 2026

You can't ban pets in Ontario after move-in. Here's what that actually means for landlords.

Section 14 of the Residential Tenancies Act voids any "no pets" provision in a lease. That's the law. Landlords in Ontario cannot enforce a blanket pet ban once the tenancy has started.

Read that twice, because it's the source of more landlord frustration than any other single rule.

**What you can actually do**

• Refuse to rent to someone during the application phase because they have pets. That's legal — but be careful with service animals, which are protected under the Human Rights Code.
• Evict for damage caused by a pet, if the damage is real and documented.
• Evict for a pet that is causing serious problems — allergies to other tenants, aggressive behaviour, excessive noise. The bar is high and the burden is on you.

**What you can't do**

• Include "no pets" as an enforceable lease term
• Charge a pet deposit or pet rent
• Evict just because a tenant got a pet after moving in

**How to actually handle this**

Screen honestly. If a family shows up with two large dogs and you have a top-floor unit above a professional's home office, that's a conversation to have during the application, not a policy to enforce afterward.

If you accept pets, do it deliberately. Add a pet addendum listing the specific animals (with photos), specify tenant responsibilities (clean up, leash rules in common areas, damage repairs), and note that additional pets require written consent. None of that changes the RTA, but it creates a documented baseline that helps at the LTB if things go wrong.

The landlords who fight this hardest are the ones who lose the most. The ones who accept pets on their own terms — clear expectations, honest screening, insurance for the odd claim — end up with lower vacancy and, weirdly, better tenants. Pet owners move less.