RENTERS REJOICE

THEY FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT AND WON. They got their landlord to back down.

It took months of struggle and a three month rent strike, but they did it: more than 300 tenants living in 12 buildings in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale got what they wanted and more.

Their landlord agreed to give the tenants:

• a substantial reduction in proposed rent increases at each building
• a program of maintenance and repair work in each building
• a program of additional rent relief for tenants in financial hardship.

The tenants took the promise of rent relief for low income tenants as recognition from the landlord of their strength and solidarity. It had not been part of their original requests.

Years of neglect and disrespect

The tenants had been in a running battle for years and years against Metcap, the company that owned the buildings they lived in.

Metcap was a notoriously bad landlord. It did next to nothing to keep its properties fit to live in. Tenant complaints ranged from no running water and continuous electrical breakdowns, to buildings filled with infestations of cockroaches and bedbugs.

Metcap also engaged in shady practices to drive tenants out. It even hounded tenants for not giving proper notice to quit—even though it was Metcap that had forced them out. The corporation’s long term goal was to empty out the rent-controlled buildings, to free them to charge new tenants higher rents.

The final straw for the tenants came when Metcap announced plans to take advantage of a loophole in the law to raise rents far above provincial guidelines. The battle with Metcap was on.

Solidarity wins the day

The tenants came together to build a formidable organization from the ground up. They linked tenants in 12 building and won strong neighbourhood support. They tried to get Metcap to sit down and negotiate. Nothing worked.

So the rent strike began. Threats of eviction loomed, but the tenants held firm.

At one point, Metcap CEO Brent Merrill nearly ran down a member of a tenant delegation. The tenants had gone to the Metcap office to ask the company to put an elderly couple up in a motel for two nights while necessary repairs were being made to their apartment.

Faced with much unwelcome publicity, and organized tenants who wouldn’t budge, Metcap had to negotiate. But no halfway measures would do—and the company knew it.

On August 3, the rent strikers’ negotiating committee announced that the rent strike was over. Metcap agreed to all the tenant demands.

It was an unqualified victory, a practical demonstration of the power that can be exerted when people, rooted in their community, join together to demand fairness. But for the tenant activists it was just a good start, as they said in their announcement of victory:

“We won our rent strike because it expressed the collective strength of working class people in Parkdale. Yet we feel we have only made a beginning. We will continue to organize in our buildings. We will reach out to neighbours facing rent increases in other buildings throughout the neighbourhood. We are prepared to take up the struggles of all working class people in our neighbourhood whether around housing, education, employment, or any other area of our lives. By continuing to organize, we will become stronger and build our power in Parkdale.”