This summer, 3,600 apartment buildings in Toronto will have new colour-coded signage displayed near main entrances.
Starting June 15, landlords in the city must put up green, yellow, and red signs that indicate how well an apartment building is maintained. Originally adopted in July 2025, this effort was finally passed in city council on Tuesday. It was backed by Councillor Josh Matlow, who has long been in favour of imposing harsher penalties for landlords.
Similar to food safety program DineSafe, these signs are part of the city’s RentSafeTO, a bylaw program that ensures “apartment building owners and operators comply with building maintenance standards.”
Landlords must register with RentSafeTO if they operate an older building with three or more storeys or 10 or more units. Under these regulations, they must tell current and prospective tenants about the building’s rating before signing the lease, one a year, and upon request.
Will Doyle, a realtor at RE/MAX Realtron Realty, says the colour-coded signage is “a nudge, not a fix.”
He says the idea rests on the DineSafe analogy of going next door if a restaurant isn’t up to code. In a Toronto housing market that’s slowly favouring tenants, “a red sign out front could actually push someone to sign [a lease] next door instead.”
Doyle says buildings most likely to get a red sign are older and cheaper, which means a red sign might not even deter renters who need affordable housing and are out of options.
“Those units are still in heavy demand because the people living in them usually don’t have anywhere else affordable to go, and buying isn’t an option for most of them.”
Here’s how the colour-coded system works
Green means the building is maintained satisfactorily, yielding a score of 85 to 100 per cent. The building “meets most or all City of Toronto minimum building maintenance standards and may have few to no violations.”
Yellow means the building needs improvement, with a score of 70 to 84 per cent. The building “meets some City of Toronto minimum maintenance standards and may have some violations.”
Red means the building needs significant improvement and carries a score of below 70 per cent. The building “meets few City of Toronto minimum maintenance standards and may have several violations.”
Problems with the signage
Buildings only get formally evaluated every two years, says Doyle, “a building can pile up problems for most of a cycle before the colour category would even change.”
“And once a score does shift, the landlord gets 14 days to swap the sign. So realistically, a neglectful landlord could sit on a green rating well past the point where they’ve earned something worse.”
According to Doyle, there’s also a problem with the scoring, because “buildings with cockroaches and mold still come in at 70 to 80 per cent,” which feels disingenuous.
“Staff are reviewing that this April, but any changes won’t take effect until 2027. The first year of signs will run on a system the motion’s own sponsor admits is too generous.”
