Downtown Hamilton ACORN hosts Slumlord March through Corktown neighbourhood
Posted June 30, 2022
Posted June 30, 2022
On June 29th 2022, tenants from across Hamilton organized a march to raise attention to slumlord-like behaviour in the downtown core; the Slumlord March.
Led by Janicka Glasnova and Marnie Schurter, the march toured by a few apartments being poorly managed in the Corktown area, tenants speaking out at 150 Hughson, 100 Forest, and 170 Charlton.
Landlords often let existing tenants’ units fall deeply into disrepair offering little more than emergency repairs, poor pest management, issuing illegal AGIs for mandated cosmetic work, or plain rental harassment – combined with tactics not dissimilar to renovictions, landlords drive tenants out and drive prices up.
Since 2017 ACORN has been demanding and continue to call on the City of Hamilton to create a city wide landlord licensing program to ensure landlords are keeping their properties in good repair & protect tenants from renoviction.
Complaint-based inspections don’t work for many reasons; a landlord licensing program would involve annual inspections of apartment buildings, a public database so that tenants can check how their building or prospective building performed, requirements for repairs to be done in a timely manner, improved communication to tenants, escalating financial penalty for landlords that do not comply and many more measures to crack down on neglectful and absentee landlords.
While we have seen some progress with the passing of a landlord licensing pilot last year it only covers some rentals (low density) and only in Wards 1, 8 and part of 14 and improvements to the city’s property standards to cover more of the issues tenants are facing.
ACORN Hamilton tenants continue to fight for affordable, safe, and healthy homes!
