When Emanuel Melo received a letter from his landlord saying he had to vacate his Waterloo apartment of six years so workers could renovate the unit, he started looking for another place to live.
\nBut after speaking with his neighbours in the 15-unit building at 145 McGregor Cr., they invited an organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to a meeting.
\nSoon after, Melo and his neighbours joined a struggle against what they call renovictions and a provincewide campaign for better rent controls organized by ACORN.
\n\u201cWe want to fight this,\u201d said Melo. \u201cNobody here feels like leaving.\u201d
\nIn the spring of 2023, some tenants in a building on Traynor Avenue in Kitchener protested against orders to vacate units for renovations. They found supporters from around Kitchener-Waterloo and eventually, the landlord backed off and sold the building.
\nInspired by that success, some of them founded ACORN Waterloo Region.
\nIt currently works with tenants in apartment buildings on Frederick Street and Borden Street in Kitchener, and others in Guelph and Cambridge. Tenants have all been told to move out so units can be renovated.
\nEven with current high rents, landlords cite the need for renovations to force tenants out, only to increase rents by 100 per cent or more for the next tenants, said ACORN. The group calls this process renovictions.
\nMelo and his neighbours received notices they must be out of their apartments by March 31, but they learned from ACORN a landlord can\u2019t evict someone from a unit for renovations. Only a tribunal can do that after a hearing, he said.
\n\u201cPeople need to know their rights,\u201d said Melo. \u201cIt is very important, especially with the cost-of-living rising.\u201d
\nWhen an apartment is vacant in Ontario, landlords are free to increase rents by any amount. To counter that, ACORN has collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for better rent controls. All apartments should be covered by rent controls, and empty units should also be covered, said ACORN.
\nThe group has successfully lobbied for renoviction bylaws in Toronto, Hamilton and London.
\nCity staff in Kitchener are now preparing a report on a renoviction bylaw. The bylaws protect the tenants\u2019 right to move back into a unit at the same rent after it is renovated. The landlord must pay moving expenses and help tenants find a place to live while renovations are completed. Landlords must also take out building permits and demonstrate the renovations are needed.
\nMelo has lived in his apartment since 2018 and now pays $1,060 a month. There is a senior in a neighbouring unit who has lived there for 45 years. Tenants started receiving notices, known as N-13s, after the building was sold in October 2024.
\nRenovictions are one of the main reasons for the dwindling supply of affordable apartments, said ACORN.
\nDaniel Kaufmann knows all about it.
\nKaufmann rents an apartment on Brandt Avenue in Guelph that he shares with his aging father. They moved there in 2014, and during the past year the building was sold. The new owner started charging for window-mounted air-conditioners, removed all of the storage units from the basement with two weeks notice, and then tenants received N-13s.
\n\u201cA lot of people are afraid,\u201d said Kaufmann.
\nWith the help of ACORN Waterloo Region, tenants are fighting back, and have started to lobby Guelph city council for a renoviction bylaw.
\n\u201cAn N-13 is a request for you to leave for a renovation, you can choose to comply with an N-13 or you can dispute it, at which point a landlord has to file with the Landlord Tenant Board. At that point, they are supposed to prove their case for why they need you gone for the renovation,\u201d said Kaufmann.
\nKaufmann has a date set for a hearing at the LTB.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t know if I am going to have a home in the next couple of months,\u201d said Kaufmann.
\nCurrent regulations say existing tenants are allowed to move back into a renovated unit and pay the same rent as before. In reality, few tenants move back so landlords charge new tenants much higher rents. If anyone complains, landlords pay a fine that is not high enough to deter the practice.
\nACORN said the number of renovations skyrocketed across southern Ontario as rents increased dramatically.
\nThe group has successfully lobbied for renoviction bylaws in Toronto, Hamilton and London. City staff in Kitchener are now preparing a report. They bylaws require landlords to demonstrate the renovations are necessary, pay for the moving expenses of tenants, help the tenants find places to live while the work is done and move them back into the renovated units at the same rents.
\nAfter Hamilton city council adopted a renovictions bylaw, the number of N-13s issued in that city dropped to zero from 300 the year before, noted ACORN.
\nRenters make up a big part of the housing market and ACORN wants better protections for them. According to a CMHC survey in December 2024, 39 per cent of residential properties in Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge are rentals, and 40 per cent are owner-occupied.
\nBut renters are almost always excluded from public policy debates about housing, said the group.
\nAislinn Clancy, Green Party incumbent MPP in Kitchener Centre, said she will work for a provincewide law to prevent renovictions. She also wants a moratorium on rent increases above the annual limit set by the province for rent controls. And rent controls should be extended to stop landlords from increasing rents dramatically for new tenants moving into a vacant unit, she added.
\n\u201cI have a constituent who had a heart attack because he gets an N-13 every six months,\u201d said Clancy. \u201cHe goes to the Landlord Tenant Board and he gets a new one the next day.\u201d
\nThe number of homeless people has more than doubled in Ontario during the past few years to 80,000, according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. In Waterloo Region, the number of unhoused people increased to 2,300 from about 1,000 a few years ago, said the Region of Waterloo. Before the pandemic, about 500 people in the region were homeless.
\nHundreds of affordable apartments were lost to renovictions or demolished to make way for new condo buildings in parts of this region.
\n\u201cIt is election time, and I think you need to ask all the candidates about this,\u201d said Clancy.
\nThe New Democratic Party candidate in Kitchener-Centre is Brooklin Wallis, a co-founder of ACORN\u2019s Waterloo Region chapter. For the first time, the issues of rent controls, above-guideline-rent increases, renovictions and the supply of affordable apartments could be among the big issues in urban ridings.
\nJacquie Wells, another founding member of ACORN Waterloo Region, has rented apartments all her adult life.
\nSupporting tenants \u201cis something I am really passionate about, and is so needed,\u201d said Wells. \u201cIt was past time in our community to have a group like this around.\u201d<\/p>\n