Toronto ACORN Budget Victory – Nearly $2 million bucks!

Last week, on Thursday February 15th, City Council voted on their final budget for 2023. ACORN members were fighting for money to protect tenants, build affordable housing, stop evictions, and provide affordable internet access. By working with our allies on council and across the city, as well as mobilizing ACORN members to call, email and speak up, we were able to win nearly $2 MILLION in new funding.

Thanks to Councillor Josh Matlow’s motion, the RentSafe program will receive $847,000 in new funding to hire 8 bylaw officers who can be used to go out and crack down on bad landlords who violate property standards! This builds on our 2022 victory of $500,000 for 7 new bylaw officers.

Thanks to Councillor Shelly Carrol we won an additional $1 MILLION in new funding for the rent bank, to prevent evictions for low income tenants who are struggling to make ends meet. This builds on our 2022 victory, worth $3.5 MILLION, which converted the rent bank from a loan to a non-repayable grant.

This wasn’t everything that we wanted, but it shows that organizing works! We have a HISTORIC mayoral by-election coming up and we need to make sure the demands of low and moderate income communities are front and center.