Ontario just released 40,844 Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) orders from January to May 2026. Together, they show $204.2 million in unpaid rent and money owing. About 51% of all orders are about unpaid rent, and 85% were filed by landlords.

‍Watch my quick breakdown from Instagram above.

The Government of Ontario, more specifically the Ministry of the Attorney General, has just dropped a huge pile of court orders. My team and I read through the data and spent a week to analyze it.

Uh, wow.

The big number is $204.2 million!!!!

Yes, that's right. That's over $200M of unpaid rent owing across the 40,844 orders released in just January to May 2026!

Whether you’re a landlord or a renter, it impacts everyone in the rental industry.

And oh yeah, don’t forget: these orders are public. You can look them up. I’ll show you how at the end.

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‍What is this data release?

In July 2026, the Government of Ontario published a big catalogue of orders from the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB). The LTB is the tribunal that settles disputes between landlords and tenants in Ontario under the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA).

An “LTB order” is the tribunal’s or board’s written documentation of the decision. It says who the dispute is between, what the dispute was about, and what the board member (also known as the adjudicator) decided.

This release covers orders issued between January and May 2026. Openroom’s own record goes way further back, all the way to 2002.

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‍How much unpaid rent is in the data?

We calculated a whopping total of $204.2 million in disclosed amounts owing across 20,830 orders as 51% of all orders dealt with rent that wasn’t paid (i.e. the L1 and L2). 

Let me repeat, this is just within the first 5 months of 2026. Yikes.

To be honest, I wasn’t super surprised because my team at Openroom.ca as been tracking this unpaid rent data for the last 4 years. The backlog at the Landlord and Tenant Board started after the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s 5 years now. When the backlog was first there, it was also >50% of applications into the Board being for non-payment of rent. Now 5 years after, we’re still sitting at the same percentage. 

The dial has not moved.

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What kinds of cases are these?

The L ones are filed by the landlord and the T ones are filed by the tenant party.

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So many acronyms with numbers and codes, right?

You can find all the official actual forms with instructions on the Tribunals Ontario forms page:

• L1 = a landlord’s application when rent isn’t paid.
• L2 = a landlord’s application to evict for another reason.
• N4 = the notice a landlord gives first for unpaid rent. It comes before an L1.
• T-codes = applications brought by tenants.‍

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Where is unpaid rent the worst in Ontario?

The data maps cases across 485 neighbourhoods. Toronto and the GTA show up a lot, but this isn’t just a main downtown Toronto thing.

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One thing to keep in min are the  raw counts that  follow population. More renters means more cases, naturally speaking. That’s why our page also shows unpaid-rent orders per 1,000 renter households. That tells you the intensity at a normalized rate.

When I searched my own postal code of M5V, it came up to 281 cases this year! What is going on???

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Want to see your own area? Search your postal code on the release page.

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Who decides these cases, and how fast?

285 adjudicators issued these orders. The busiest 10 handled thousands of them so we can’t be complaining they don’t move fast! Like come on.

Here are the top three:

• Kelly Delaney: 1,155 orders, about 10 days from hearing to written order.
• Alicia Johnson: 834 orders, about 13 days.
• Joshua Labbe: 768 orders, about 11.5 days.

Guess who the fastest one is at issuing orders is.

Trish Carson, at just 2.6 days on average. Does Trish write in their sleep?!

The slowest ones stretched out to over 120 days which is way out of the LTB’s service level guidelines of 30 days from hearing to order issuance. 

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On the legal side, 500 legal representatives (mostly paralegals, some lawyers) appear in the orders. The most active, Sean Beard, appeared in 354 cases in just five months.

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Are LTB orders public? Can I look one up?

Yes! This surprises a lot of people. LTB orders are public records because of Canada’s Open Court Principle. The thing is, not all of them are made easily accessible by the public just yet. We’ve been working hard at Openroom to try to aggregate as many of the ones that weren’t made public over the last few years - and it’s still ongoing!

Within the Openroom.ca proprietary database, you can find orders related to tenancy disputes across Ontario spanning from 2012 to today, and across the rest of Canada too.

1. Go to Openroom’s Legal Research.
2. Search by a name, rental address, or file number.
3. Open the order and read the board’s actual decision.

The orders are free to browse as there is nearly 100,000 orders to look through. I guess it can be pretty overwhelming!

To read individual orders, you’ll need a free Openroom account. Landlords use Openroom to screen tenants. Tenants use it to check out a landlord before signing a rental agreement. 

Overall, my team is here to ensure that you make a more informed decision before you rent. 

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What should landlords and tenants do with this?

If you’re a landlord: unpaid rent cases are half the board’s work. If rent stops coming in, you really need to get on it FAST.

The N4 notice and L1 application have strict timelines under the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA)). Stop snoozing k?

Before you rent to someone new, a quick tenant screening search takes a few seconds. 

If a tenant owes you money after an order, file an Openroom Rental Debt Ledger whereby my team will send the data into Equifax (a Credit Bureau) so it hits the Debtor’s credit history. It helps you report the debt and helps other landlords see the full picture.

If you’re a renter: tenants file cases too. Tenants file for issues regarding  maintenance, illegal charges, and rights. Paying off old rental debt matters so that it never reaches the Board. Once it does, these orders are going to be eventually made public where anyone can search your name and find out you hadn’t made a payment in the past.

If a Landlord owes a debt to the Tenant, it can also be filed into Openroom’s Rental Debt Ledger. Because when a debt is owed, it can be owed by any party!

 The Openroom Rental Debt Ledger tracks when a debt has been paid so we can always update Equifax with the most up-to-date information about a Debtor’s unpaid debt situation.

If you have a court order of your own: upload it to Openroom. Every order added makes the rental system more transparent for everyone.

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Questions people usually ask us‍

How much unpaid rent is there in Ontario?

The January to May 2026 LTB release shows $204.2 million in disclosed amounts owing across 40,844 orders. That’s only five months, and only what the government chose to publish.

Across all 100,000 orders Openroom has, the unpaid rental debt is about $600M as of August 2026.

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Are Landlord and Tenant Board orders public in Ontario?

Yes. LTB orders are public records. The Government of Ontario published this catalogue, and Openroom organizes it with two more decades of orders going back to 2002. Openroom has data that no one else has.

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What is an L1 application?

An L1 is a landlord’s application to the LTB for non-payment of rent. It usually follows an N4 notice. L1 cases made up 49% of the LTB’s data release. The official form lives on the Tribunals Ontario website.

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Does this data cover all of Ontario?

Yes. It maps orders across 485 neighbourhoods province-wide, from Toronto to smaller communities.

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What to do next

Go see the full breakdown, maps, and charts on our January to May 2026 LTB data page. Then search your own postal code. I promise it’s super  interesting.