Press Hits

Committee members, city staff, and residents were split on Monday night as to whether or not a bylaw would help put an end to renovictions in Kitchener. When it comes to the effectiveness of the bylaw currently in place in Hamilton, Jacquie Wells, chair of the Waterloo Region chapter of ACORN, claims that the statistics show that the bylaw is working. “I just showed you that in Hamilton they’ve had a 99 per cent reduction in the number of N13s issued in the first five months, so even if they receive more in the remaining seven months, this is still a significant reduction,” said Wells.

Tenants of a Guelph apartment complex are celebrating a “huge victory” after a year fraught with worry during a battle to remain in their homes. Last summer, residents in 4, 6 and 8 Brant Ave. found themselves in a legal tangle with notorious renovictor Michael Klein, after a corporation he’s tied to purchased the complex. Klein is a figure associated with numerous other renoviction cases across the province, including in Cambridge and Toronto. Earlier this year, he was dubbed “Ontario’s biggest renovictor” by the tenant advocacy group ACORN, and linked to 21 buildings across Ontario that house an estimated 1,750 tenants.

The City of Kitchener took the first step in implementing a renoviction bylaw to thwart “unscrupulous” landlords on Monday. Pivoting away from a staff recommendation for a more passive approach toward renoviction — which is a forced eviction of a tenant for renovations — by forming a Landlord-Tenant Forum and creating educational tools for landlords and tenants, the planning and strategic initiatives committee voted 6-3 Monday in favour of forming a rental renovation licensing bylaw.

After a long night of discussions, a Kitchener committee voted to move forward with plans to create a bylaw targeting renovictions. Protestors gathered outside Kitchener City Hall for the Planning and Strategic Initiative Committee meeting on Monday night. The group called on the committee to commit to developing a renovictions bylaw, despite a recommendation from staff not to do so. They held signs with slogans such as ‘Bylaw or Bye-Bye!’ and ‘We aren’t moving. No renoviction.’

Monique Gordon’s second-floor apartment in Rexdale is sweltering hot all year-round — even in the winter. She keeps track of the temperature in her home with a small digital thermometer and records it as proof. Recently, on a cool, rainy 20 C afternoon, her unit was 27.3 C, an indoor temperature that’s unsafe to live in, health experts and environmental advocates say. Gordon, who is chair of ACORN’s Etobicoke chapter, has lung granulomas. Paired with the heat, it makes it difficult to breathe. “Thank God, I don’t have any asthma because I don’t think I’d be able to make it through with the heat,” Gordon told CBC Toronto.

« Vous avez ma parole. » Face à l’insalubrité, à la moisissure et aux inondations à répétition qui rongent les immeubles de l’avenue Bergamot, dans le quartier Rexdale de Toronto, la mairesse Olivia Chow promet que les choses vont changer. « Cette situation est moins que parfaite, mais elle s’améliora », lance-t-elle, alors que les locataires, excédés, dénoncent ces « conditions déplorables ». Dans un communiqué, l’association de défense des droits des locataires ACORN soutient que des locataires dénoncent depuis longtemps les conditions déplorables auxquelles ils sont confrontés aux appartements du 9 au 27 avenue Bergamot.