Waterloo Region ACORN members brave the pouring rain to fight renovictions at 145 MacGregor!

On Saturday, March 29th, dozens of ACORN members and allies braved the cold and rain to rally against renovictions happening at 145 MacGregor Crescent. To kick off the action, ACORN leader and tenant of 145 MacGregor Emanuel Melo shared what was happening in his building: the landlord, a faceless company called “MacGregor PIM Inc”, is attempting to displace low-income tenants under the pretense of renovations – an all-too-common tactic used to push out long-term residents and jack up rents. Emanuel called out the lack of enforcement of provincial regulations (the Landlord Tenant Board has only fined landlords for bad-faith evictions a total of 13 times in 4 years – with most fines being less than $3000!) and emphasized the urgent need for renoviction bylaws in every city to put a stop to this.

For the next part of the action, ACORN leaders took everyone on a “renoviction walking tour” of the property, pointing out the other tactics their landlord was using to push out tenants, such as cutting services like cleaning, snow removal, and garbage removal, ignoring repair requests from tenants, and jacking up laundry prices over 250%! SHAME!

Leaving the building, the group then marched through the neighborhood chanting in unison “THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!” Tenants shared their stories of living with these renovictions at 145 MacGregor, before the group finished the action by mass calling Waterloo City Councillors to leave messages in support of a renoviction bylaw!