Ottawa ACORN’s Brookmill Gardens Tenant Union fights back and WINS!
Posted June 1, 2023
ACORN members in Ottawa’s Brookmill Gardens recently pressured their landlord to meet with tenants after a persistent petitioning campaign and won all of their demands!
Tenants had been subjected to intimidation from realtor John Barroud, who was going door-to-door pressuring tenants to either sign a new lease and agree to pay almost double their rents or their homes will be sold, and they’ll be forced to move out. Outraged, residents joined ACORN and formed a tenant union, demanding that this intimidation stop and rents returned to normal.
On May 29, the tenant union invited their landlord to come down to the neighbourhood to talk with the community. Around 40 members came out to the meeting and issued their demands to the landlord, including ending door-to-door intimidation, reversing illegal rent increases, providing tenants with the right of first refusal for home sales, expediting repairs requested by tenants, providing a rebate for the removal of the neighbourhood pool, and holding a community consultation to discuss neighbourhood improvements like streetlights and garbage cans. The landlord signed onto all the demands and committed to working with the ACORN tenant union to implement them! This is a huge victory for the Brookmill Gardens community and for Ottawa ACORN!
ACORN members will continue to hold the landlord’s feet to the fire to ensure all the demands are fulfilled, but this victory shows that organizing works!
Join ACORN today and organize your community!