City Hall may let it happen in 2009, but two big obstacles will stand in the way of legal rooming houses in North York and Scarborough.
One is the antipathy of homeowners who see roomers as a threat to "single family" neighbourhoods.

"People in my area do not want them," Ward 37 (Scarborough Centre) Councillor Michael Thompson said during a city committee debate last week, adding if his constituents heard legal rooming houses were coming, "they'd be in an uproar."

The second roadblock is the fact that without continuous financial support through City Hall or permission to crowd people together in unhealthy ways, running a for-profit rooming house makes little sense right now.

That much was suggested by rooming house advocates themselves last year, when they researched the business case for converting a Scarborough house, an Etobicoke lodging house and a commercial plaza building in North York.

Only the Scarborough plan - turning a three-bedroom home with no mortgage into five rentable bedrooms - broke even with rents of $500 a month.

The lodging house, which already has a communal kitchen and dining room, only works if it squeezes 14 tenants into its nine bedrooms, "not a recommended practice" according to a report for the city's Rooming House Working Group.

The plaza-building conversion is so expensive the report rules it out. 

Opponents such as Ward 39 (Scarborough-Agincourt) Councillor Mike Del Grande say the owners of illegal rooming-houses are "making a killing," but it may be because they can crowd in more tenants beyond the view of city inspectors. Last year, co-owners of a Scarborough rooming house were convicted of renting out 18 rooms in a single Scarborough house.

Illegal rooming houses persist, even in parts of Toronto where others can be licensed and run well, because they serve those roomers who can't afford $500 a month, Pablo Escobar of WoodGreen Community Services told the committee.

Escobar, who relocates tenants when illegal rooming houses close, said he's seen conditions ranging from "very, very horrendous situations" to some houses of high quality. The cheapest rooms, the ones in reach of people on social assistance, are $300 or $350 a month, he said.

Those cheap rooms "are generally front and centre in people's consciousness," while better-run rooming houses - the legal ones start at $450 or $500 a month - often blend into neighbourhoods, with tenant turnover and problems with drugs or mental health decreasing as rents go up, Escobar said.

Escobar added there's "strong anecdotal evidence in Scarborough" that large numbers of people in illegal rooms there are not on welfare but are recent immigrants, students and the working poor. 

It wasn't mentioned last week, but advocates are prepared to advance the idea of paying out a rent supplement or subsidy to the city's legal rooming houses, both to make them profitable and to keep restaurant workers as well as welfare recipients from turning to illegal rooms.

That, they have said, is the price of ensuring roomers live in safe and healthy conditions.

It may also keep the stock of legal rooming houses from declining. 

There were 450 licensed in pre-amalgamation Toronto and parts of Etobicoke last fall, but as many as 1,200 in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, supporters say continuing to ban rooming houses in Scarborough, North York and East York is illegal discrimination, despite the arguments of opponents such as Del Grande who say the city should let "single family" communities remain what they were built to be.

Last week, however, more councillors disagreed with Del Grande than agreed with him, allowing the city to prepare a bylaw this year that harmonizes the rules for rooming houses across Toronto.

"We don't zone people," said Ward 14 (Parkdale-High Park) Councillor Gord Perks, implying some opponents want to keep the poor or new immigrants who cannot afford better housing away from houses on their streets. 

"We don't segregate that way."

Ward 15 (Eglinton-Lawrence) Councillor Howard Moscoe said he received a hostile reaction from Scarborough when he proposed licensing rooming houses there last year. But rooming houses are there already, he said.

Illegal rooms are home to immigrant hospital workers on two streets north of North York General Hospital's Branson Division, are used by students near York University and Seneca College and have been spreading along the Bathurst Street corridor, said Moscoe, arguing legalizing and inspecting rooming houses is the best way to control the situation.

There is no way yet to know how many low-income residents live in the city's illegal rooming houses, though some guess it could be 100,000. Some of that number, however, may be living as legal boarders. Two are allowed in each Scarborough home, which local councillors argue is enough.

Some are undoubtedly living as undocumented tenants in other people's apartments, a condition one local housing advocate calls a "hidden homelessness" that has placed many overcrowded suburban high-rises under a strain.

Ultimately, rooming house supporters may also try to advance their cause by changing the term to something more "neutral." For many, the working group report says, a "rooming house is associated with stereotypes about what properties look like, how they are maintained, who owns them and who lives there."