Today our neighbours at 2 Laxton visited their
landlord, Gojko Kuzmanovic at his residence off Royal York Road. Tenants
put him on notice to do long neglected repairs in their units and common areas
in the building.
“When I
moved in the unit was filthy and I had to stay with a friend while I cleaned it
up,” said Tsering, a member of the building committee. “My stove is broken and
I have had to spend money to eat out for the past month.”
This morning tenants
delivered 20 work order forms detailing disrepair in their units to the
landlord. They also delivered a letter demanding repairs to common areas, such
as replacement of soiled and torn hallway and stairwell carpeting. Tenants say the
City of Toronto and Landlord and Tenant Board have failed to address conditions
at the building which threaten their health and safety.
“A couple
of tenants tried complaining to the City and the Board but it didn’t work,” said
Steven, an organizer and tenant of fourteen years. “We have to organize the
building and pressure the landlord directly. This isn’t about me or any one
tenant, it’s about all of us, the whole building.”
When tenants confronted Kuzmanovic at his door he committed to
starting work this week and replacing the hallway carpets by the end of September.
Tenants say they plan to hold him to his word.
Today our neighbours from 116 Spencer blocked
their landlord from stealing their patio furniture and barbeque.
“We sat here having coffee and donuts while he
tried to throw out our stuff. He says he has the authority, but he’s not in the
right, and he can’t make us leave,” said Sadie, a tenant at the building.
In 2017 investor Shafik Kassam bought the building.
Since then he has repeatedly tried to evict tenants. Tenants at the building pay
$600-900. Meanwhile, the landlord has advertised a vacant, one-bedroom unit for
$2095
“The landlord is doing this to get rid of us. He
wants to raise up the rents on the units,” said Jim, a tenant who has been
dragged in front of the Landlord and Tenant Board by Kassam.
In July, tenants got notice the landlord would be
removing “all furniture and objects” from the front porch on August 23. Tenants
use the porch to socialize and hold tenant committee meetings.
This morning the property manager arrived at the
building with private security and a hired truck. When tenants refused to move
from the porch, the property manager called police. Responding to the call, a Toronto
Police Services officer admitted he had no authority to remove tenants from the
porch. He suggested the landlord remove the tenants’ belongings in the middle
of the night.
Tenants say they will continue to defend their homes
and use of the porch. They also have a message for their neighbours in
Parkdale. “Talk to your neighbours because you’re stronger together. Don’t be
intimidated by your landlord or other people who claim to have authority over
you,” said Sadie. “Be prepared. Stand your ground. Not every confrontation
is a bad confrontation,” added Jim.
@dsherwoodb reports on LAO Board Chair’s real estate connections…
Last week Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) made front page news when it announced a major attack on Parkdale, cutting 45% of its funding to Parkdale Community Legal Services (PCLS). What wasn’t reported was LAO’s Board Chair Charles Harnick’s connections to Toronto real estate interests. We think they go a long way to explaining the decision to target PCLS.
For landlords, developers, and their investors, Parkdale represents a giant pot of potential money. They can buy property here relatively cheap, jack up rents, and massively increase their return on investment. Standing in their way are the tens of thousands of working-class people who rent in Parkdale.
Landlords want us out of Parkdale. They know that they are best served when they can take us on one at a time. In courts and tribunals already set up in their interests, landlords almost always come out on top. Parkdale tenants have learned that we are strongest when we are organized and exercise our strength in numbers.
PCLS supports tenants who want to organize and fight back and provides legal defense against eviction. So, it is in landlords’ interests to have PCLS shut down or severely cutback. Our interest as tenants is in a well-funded PCLS.
Having established whose interests are served by legal aid cuts, we come to Charles Harnick. Harnick was a Cabinet Minister in the Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government of the 90’s, and in April 2019, the Ford government appointed him Board Chair for Legal Aid Ontario. In the interim, he’s been busy establishing himself as a high powered lobbyist under Philip Dewan, former president of the Ontario landlord’s association, the Federation of Rental Housing Providers (FRPO). One of Harnick’s recent clients, for example, was AirBnB — beloved by property owners for making it possible to be a landlord with tenants who have no rights. One of his current clients — Westdale Construction Co — is a major Toronto landlord. Through its subsidiary Westdale Properties, it owns 14 large residential buildings in Toronto alone, and nearly 7,000 apartments in total.
The interests Charles Harnick is being paid to represent are vested in the gutting of our neighbourhood. Parkdale tenants, when faced with eviction or exploitation, impoverishment or deportation, rely on PCLS. Harnick’s attack on PCLS is an attack on us and makes clear which side he’s on.
This morning at 8:00am, in the midst of our daily grind, over 300 Parkdale parents, students, teachers and workers met on Jameson. We came together to demonstrate our strength in the face of attacks on our neighbourhood. We made a commitment to stand together in the struggles ahead. We committed to defending our homes, our schools, our jobs, and our services. We came together with one message: to defend ourselves, we must be organized.
Today was the first step in building the organization we need in Parkdale. In each and every struggle – whether in our buildings, our schools and workplaces, at the Ontario Food Terminal, and throughout Parkdale – the independent organization of working-class people is our greatest strength. We must involve every one of our neighbours and co-workers. In doing so WE become the decision makers in these struggles.
Now is the time to prepare ourselves because bosses, landlords, and politicians are preparing too. Those of us who stood on Jameson today must go back to our buildings and workplaces and share the news. We are Parkdale and Parkdale depends on us.
At 8 AM on June 5 Parkdale tenants, students, teachers and workers will stand together on Jameson Avenue to demonstrate our power and unity against threats to our jobs, schools, services and homes.
At 8 AM on June 5 Parkdale tenants, students, teachers and workers will stand together on Jameson Avenue to demonstrate our power and unity against threats to our jobs, schools, services and homes.
The Parkdale Community Legal Clinic is facing closure. Our schools are facing cutbacks. Refugees no longer have access to legal support. The Ontario Food Terminal is at risk of closure. We now face faster and easier evictions.
We fight for schools where students have the support they need and deserve.
It can sometimes feel like we’re surrounded. It feels like we’re under attack. In a lot of ways we are. Every week (even every day) brings a new threat to our homes, our schools, our jobs or the services we rely on. There’s no easy way to put it: Parkdale is in danger. It’s important we understand the level of danger we’re in but also the ways we can fight back and defeat these threats – TOGETHER.
Immigration
The Provincial government has cut all funding to legal assistance for refugees trying to build a life with some safety here in Ontario. Hundreds of our neighbours are now in even more danger of deportation than they already were. Deportation to places where they and their families face discrimination, violence and persecution. Our neighbours come from all over the world and now call this neighbourhood home. Something they have every right to do. They build lives here, they build up and contribute to the life of Parkdale. The provincial government is trying to destroy that with this racist cut.
Education
Teachers in Parkdale struggle to educate, support and help raise the youth in our neighbourhood. One of the biggest struggles schools in this neighbourhood have faced is not having the resources to do these very important jobs. Now the provincial government plans to make what was a difficult job one that is impossible to do well. They plan to gut almost every program and support students and families in this neighbourhood rely on schools for. On top of that they want to cram 40 students in to classrooms that were already too full.
Legal Aid
For decades people in this neighbourhood have turned to Parkdale Legal Services for assistance in dealing with landlords, bosses, immigration and social assistance. Without the workers at Parkdale Legal over those years, literally tens of thousands of people would have been railroaded through the courts with no chance whatsoever. If Legal Aid Ontario has its way, that’s exactly what is going to happen. PCLS is in real danger of being shut down. If that happens thousands of us in Parkdale will be left with no legal support in courts that are built to side against us.
Food Security and Job Security
Every year over 1 million trucks arrive at the Ontario Food Terminal at The Queensway and Parklawn filled with fruits and vegetables. Every day and night workers unload those trucks and make sure we have food to eat. Many of those workers live in Parkdale, and MOST of the fruits and vegetables people in Toronto eat come through the Food Terminal.
In the last few years workers at the Food Terminal have organized and gone on strike for better wages and working conditions. Now the Provincial Government is making plans to shut down the Food Terminal, destroying the progress workers have made and leaving the flow of produce east of Manitoba under the control of only the biggest grocery store companies. If this happens, our neighbours will lose the jobs they’ve fought so hard to make better and we’ll be forced to pay whatever price Loblaws and Metro want us to for fresh fruits and vegetables.
Our neighbours work to bring us good food and fight for good jobs
Housing
The majority of the units people in Parkdale rent are owned by three very wealthy and powerful companies. Metcap, Akelius, and Timbercreek have been gouging people in Parkdale Parkdale teachers and students demand and deserve on rent, failing or refusing to do repairs and better. pushing people out of the neighbourhood with rent increases and evictions. There are plans to make all of this much easier to do. There are plans to make evictions and rent increases even easier for landlords. The government and landlords want none of our homes to be safe and they are working hard to make that a reality.
Working class people in this neighbourhood, city and province have never had it easy. Everything we get we have to fight for. In the next few months people in this neighbourhood will be organizing and fighting against attacks that threaten all of us. If that fight is going to be successful we must support each other and get organized – TOGETHER.
WE ARE PARKDALE: ALL HANDS ON DECK
Every working class person in Parkdale – and Ontario – is under attack. We have a handful of powerful enemies that are threatening us. But we have literally millions of potential allies, too. We have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to fight and defeat these enemies. It’s not enough to wait and hope for an election. It’s not enough to sign petitions and send emails. Protests at parliament on a Saturday afternoon won’t stop this.
In the coming weeks and months workers will go out on strike, people will occupy offices and courts, picket lines will go up and organizing will happen. We need to be a part of that. We need to make it clear that when push comes to shove, working class people will shove back.
In order for us to do this we need to be serious. We need to take these threats and our response seriously. We need to prepare for, plan and participate in a real fight against those that threaten all of us. This means real things we can do right now. Conversations with our family, friends, neighbours and coworkers need to turn in to meetings and plans at our buildings and workplaces. Those plans need to turn in to actions. Those actions need to turn in to a fight that people can join.
It won’t be easy to win this fight. But it won’t be half as hard as life will be if we lose. This fight isn’t going to be won or lost in Parkdale. But we can use the lessons we’ve learned and the strength we’ve built in this neighbourhood to fight in a way that can be an example for other working class people. An example of how we can actually win – together.
On Saturday, March 30, our neighbours at 1 Springhurst and their supporters delivered a letter to landlord Ryan Rakowski at his Forrest Hill home. Rakowski is trying raise tenants’ rents by more than 8% to pay for repair work that was needed after years of neglect. Our neighbours can’t afford this huge increase.
When our neighbours tried to meet with Rakowski at his office he refused to speak to them. Then he hired a lawyer to send out eviction notices to tenants for what he alleges was an “uninvited” visit to his office.
Rakowski thinks he can price working-class tenants out of their homes in Parkdale. He thinks he can harass and intimidate his tenants with bogus eviction notices. Today, our neighbours showed up with Parkdale Organize to show Rakowski that we are not intimidated and we are not going anywhere.
We demand that Ryan Rakowski withdraw the evictions and withdraw the rent increase by no later than April 5. Should he not meet our demands we are prepared to take further action to defend our neigbours’ home.
The struggle against displacement in Parkdale continues…
Today our neighbours at 103 and 105 West Lodge occupied the head offices of Timbercreek Asset Management. Joined by Parkdale teachers whose students live at the buildings, tenants delivered more than 150 work orders detailing disrepair in units. Today West Lodge tenants put Timbercreek on notice: we will not be pushed out of our homes in Parkdale.
In October 2018 Timbercreek took over the West Lodge Towers and immediately launched a concerted drive to displace tenants from the buildings. This is consistent with Timbercreek’s business strategy: buy older, neglected buildings and remove the working-class residents before renovating and raising rents. Timbercreek describes this process as putting buildings through a “car wash”. Timbercreek sees working-class people as dirt they need to wash away.
Already in 2019 Timbercreek has dragged dozens of West Lodge tenants to the Tribunal to evict them. Hundreds more have received eviction notices. Timbercreek alleges tenants have not paid rent when in fact their own accounting is wrong. Timbercreek has intentionally obstructed direct payment of rent from government agencies for tenants who receive social assistance. They then claim the tenant is in arrears and take them to Tribunal to evict them.
In the midst of a critical city-wide housing shortage, Timbercreek refuses to rent our vacant units in the West Lodge buildings. They plan to hoard vacant rental units until they’ve pushed out enough working-class tenants for the buildings to be marketable to higher income people. Only after our neighbours have been pushed out does Timbercreek intend to improve conditions.
Since Timbercreek took over the buildings West Lodge tenants have been plagued with frequent floods, fires, and electrical outages. Running water is often only available as either scalding hot or completely unheated. The buildings often go long periods without any working elevators. Timbercreek promises repairs and improvements but timelines are not met and disruptions to tenants’ lives persist. Timbercreek is manufacturing a crisis at West Lodge designed to push tenants out.
The following excerpt is from the demand letter West Lodge tenants delivered to Timbercreek today along with the repair orders:
We see Herongate. We see 200 Dufferin. We are prepared to organize our neighbourhood against you and your business interests. Our neighbourhood has developed methods of dealing with matters such as these. Methods that tend to be both very public and effective. We hope it doesn’t come to that, here. But we are not willing to see more of our neighbours pushed out on to the streets.
Our demands include: – A timeline for completion of all collected repair forms in writing within 2 weeks; – Unit repairs should be completed before cosmetic repairs to common areas; – No more evictions; – No Above Guideline rent increases; – Vacant units, currently being held empty, should be rented out.
Back Issue: “We don’t have to be stepped on like cockroaches” interview with an organizer
Deborah Savage is a working-class organizer and long-time friend of Parkdale Organize. She and her neighbours made news this week when they occupied their homes in response to their landlord locking them out. You can read their story in the Toronto Star.
In light of their recent struggle we are re-posting this interview with Deborah from the very first issue of This Is Parkdale neighbourhood newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 1 – June, 2015.
An interview with a Parkdale
organizer
Deborah Savage is a long-time
Parkdale resident. In 2013 she and her neighbours on Spencer Avenue went on
rent strike in a fight with their slum landlord.
Parkdale: Organize!: Tell us about
your connection to Parkdale
Deborah Savage: I’ve mostly lived in Parkdale since 1995. My father is from the
neighbourhood.
Recently they’ve been trying to
upscale the neighbourhood. There are a lot of new people living here now and it
has got a lot preppier. It used to be more tight knit here. But still, the
people living here have fought for the things they need in the neighbourhood,
the services, and everything is nearby and accessible.
PO: Why did you start organizing with
your neighbours?
DS: Looking for
affordable places to live in the neighbourhood I ran up against slum landlords.
At first I didn’t try to organize. A few years ago I was living on King Street
in a place with all kinds of problems, bugs and everything else. I tried to
fight by myself and take my case through the Landlord and Tenant Board and I
felt like I was being stomped on by the system.
Then I moved to another building on
Spencer and that building was even worse–no heat, broken doors and windows. I
started speaking to my neighbours and they had the same problems. I made it a
point to speak to every single one of my neighbours. I would stand by the
mailboxes in the front of the building and chat with people as they came in and
out. I gave people my phone number and I said to give me a call if you want to
do something about it. We started getting together and talking about what we
could do. I started sending mass text messages to all my neighbours to share
information so we could respond collectively. We also went to Parkdale Legal to
get advice
PO: What led to the rent strike?
DS: My neighbours
and I went together to the landlord and requested to have our apartments fixed
up. He did nothing. So we decided to withhold our rent collectively. We all
paid our rent into a trust account instead of to the landlord. That got his
attention. To him it was all about money and we weren’t giving him his money.
We were on rent strike for seven months. All that time we were gathering
evidence of all the problems so if he decided to take us to court we’d be
ready, but he never did. Instead he hired a paralegal to negotiate with us. We
elected a committee of tenants to negotiate for us. In the end we all decided to
move out. We used the money we saved to get better places. In the end the
landlord lost $50,000 in rent from us.
PO: What did you learn from all this?
DS: The rent
strike empowered us. It gave us strength to know we don’t have to be stepped on
like cockroaches. You don’t have to let landlords do this to you. Parkdale
Legal showed us how important it is to document everything, keep all your
paperwork, and gather evidence to support your case.
PO: If you could change one thing
about Parkdale what would that be?
DS: They’re
upscaling all the housing around here. Why can’t they build housing people can
afford? We need low-income housing in Parkdale.
Today our neighbours from 109 Jameson along with members of Parkdale Organize visited the Forest Hill home of landlords Angelo and Linda Scioscia. We delivered a letter and twenty repair orders and demanded they do the repairs and stop threats of eviction against our neighbours now.
109 Jameson is one of the few remaining mid-rise buildings in Parkdale still owned by a private individual and not a large, financialized company. The building is in serious disrepair. Our neighbours live with infestations of pests (mice, cockroaches), inadequate heat, lack of lighting in stairwells and building lobby, as well as cabinets, counters, windows, doors, and flooring in severe disrepair. When tenants submit repair orders at the building office the landlord responds by charging tenants for repair work and issuing eviction notices. Our neighbour Kelsang recently received an eviction notice for distributing flyers for a building committee meeting. The notice included a bill for nearly $200 for the cost of removing flyers from tenants’ doors.
Angelo and Linda were home when we arrived. Linda answered the door. When she saw Parkdale tenants she quickly slammed the door closed. Rather than accept our letter, Angelo and Linda cowered behind their door and called the police. Only after Toronto Police Services arrived did Angelo open the door and begin yelling accusations of trespassing at us.
Unless the repair work begins, and eviction notices are withdrawn, Angelo and Linda will face further action by tenants at 109 Jameson and organized working-class people throughout Parkdale who support them.
