Peel ACORN’s Beat the Heat Campaign in Mississauga!

Yesterday, Peel ACORN launched our Beat the Heat Campaign. Members took to the streets of Cooksville to hand out flyers and collect signatures in support of our campaign to demand the city to expand the Adequate Temperature Bylaw.

Mississauga’s current Adequate Temperature Bylaw states that landlords must provide adequate and suitable cooling at 26 degrees celsius, BUT ONLY IF the units already have air conditioning. This leaves out a huge number of low-income and other vulnerable tenant communities living in apartment buildings with no access to cooling.

Send a message to the City of Mississauga to BEAT the Heat and PROTECT tenants.

So many Mississauga renters that members spoke to are living without air conditioning during extreme heat events, and Peel ACORN’s 2023 Mississauga Tenant Survey highlights that 69.6% of respondents have experienced a problem with heat in the summer in 2023. The city of Mississauga has the power to ensure rental housing is safe during heat events. Tenants should not have to boil alive in their apartments!!

Peel ACORN is calling on the city of Mississauga to take the following actions:Peel ACORN is calling on the city of Mississauga to take the following actions:

• Expand the current Adequate Temperature By-law to include:

1. Mandating that adequate and suitable cooling be provided and maintained by the landlord to ALL tenants and forms of rental housing (all densities, market and social housing)

2. Support from Mississauga’s licensing department to ensure landlord compliance

• Development of a municipal program to provide air conditioners to low-income tenants and/or people most vulnerable to heat
• Temporary cooling measures available in apartment buildings for the remainder of summer of 2024. Such as a designated space available to all tenants that is air conditioned.
• Tracking of heat-related deaths and illnesses in Mississauga
• Free transit passes for low-income people on extreme heat days to allow for mobile cooling and to make it easier for people suffering from heat to travel to cool public and community spaces.