FROM NOVEMBER 2021 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

In the two buildings at 103 and 105, more than 200 units sat empty during the pandemic while property management conducted upgrades that will increase rental rates. In the November issue of WEP, we revisit the West Lodge towers, parachuting into the homes of tenants who are locking arms to remain living in a place they can afford.

Scroll down to read a selection of our first-person reports from West Lodge tenants and the community groups that support them. For the full feature and more accounts from inside the buildings, order the issue here.

CHARLES DOUCETTE:
WEST LODGE TENANT

“In March 2020, [building management] was supposed to be replacing riser pipes in the building. At the time when everything got shut down, they had already taken out my drywall. I contacted them several times. They sent two people to look at the two holes left behind, and then nobody reached out to me about it after that.

In early April, I stopped paying my rent in protest of this and in solidarity with other people who were also having problems. It took them nine months before they finally fixed the walls in December 2020, after there was an article written [in the Toronto Star] and I complained to the city.

I continued withholding my rent. I want a repayment plan. I want them to negotiate with me to give me some sort of relief for what they have done and the nine months of having holes in my walls and them ignoring me about it.

I asked for four months of rent relief [along with other neighbours as part of the tenant committee]. And they are giving me no rent relief. They put in a rent support program for April that was offered to residents who were financially impacted by COVID-19. My income has not changed because I live on ODSP, so I was not eligible for that. The other program offered one month of rent relief, but you had to be in good standing. Basically, you couldn’t be behind on rent to even apply for it.

I’ve been served two eviction notices, one for non-payment of rent and one for ‘continuous late payment of rent.’

They’re also trying to evict me because I’m not letting pest control in here for a treatment that I don’t even need. [On October 21, Charles received a warning letter for refusing to allow access to his unit to treat bedbugs. The letter states that if access is not granted and the unit is not prepared properly, “this matter will be escalated to legal and may result in eviction.”]

I don’t have bedbugs. And [Hazelview] says the pest control treatment is mandatory and I have to have it done. I don’t want it done and they can’t make me do it.

When I got my bed, it came with two bedbug sheets that protect it from bedbugs. I also have bedbug spray if I do need it. Before I lived at the Broadview Hotel and there were bedbugs all over that place and I was absolutely terrified of getting bedbugs again. So if I get bedbugs, I will know about it and I will deal with it myself.

I’ve saved most of my rent; it’s just over $1,000 a month. So, if the Landlord and Tenant Board does not give me any rent relief, then I’m going to have to pay it back. But at the same time, we’re still going to fight.

I want them to know that they’re not going to get rid of me. I’m still going to be here.”

ASHLEIGH DOHERTY:
TEACHER AT PARKDALE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND MEMBER OF PARKDALE ORGANIZE

“I’ve been at Parkdale Public School full-time for five years, but before that I was working as a supply teacher, both at Queen Victoria and at Parkdale Public School. It’s always been my plan to teach in Parkdale.

Housing-related issues really come up every day. I’ve had dozens of students whose families have faced eviction or been threatened with eviction. There’s no way to shelter kids from those issues. They are forced to face them in their everyday lives, and kids are very observant.

But I think the most important part of the discussions that happen is the focus on solutions. And in this neighbourhood, that doesn’t mean just writing a letter to a politician. It means having ongoing discussions about the organizing that’s happening in these buildings, and the idea that there’s power when people band together and fight back. Kids will ask about a tenant meeting that they saw happening at their building. They want to talk about the protests. They want to know who owns their buildings and what their plans are. And those kinds of questions, asking what the root causes of these issues are, have become increasingly common conversations over the years.

Teachers at the school have been working with the tenant-run food bank at West Lodge. When we have food that’s left over from our snack program or lunch program, we’ve been donating that to them. Teachers have been doing diaper drives and collecting items like canned food as well to support the families at our school and other people in the building. When Hazelview was threatening to shut down the food bank [which operates out of a vacant unit], teachers came together and signed a petition delivered to Hazelview about the importance of that tenant-run initiative for families at our school.

When Hazelview took over, the next thing we know there were more than 200 vacant units, and a significant decrease in enrollment in our school because the West Lodge towers are the largest single source of students for us. And because of that, our school has lost funding and teaching positions. We’ve lost our Model Schools for Inner Cities status because of it. We’ve lost funding for a lot of special activities and support programs that really would have benefited the kids who are left at West Lodge. When you affect people’s housing, it doesn’t start and end at the doors of the apartment building. It really has these ripple effects throughout the neighbourhood.

The pressures that people face as tenants in the neighbourhood have increased over the years. Tenants are being pushed out of their homes and the rents are increasing all the time. We see lots of families stuck in one-bedrooms or rundown buildings when they really wish they had two bedrooms. That’s the thing that bothers me the most – seeing families being forced to choose between the community that they rely on every day and the housing that they wish that they had. But even when families look further out at places like Scarborough, or further north, or Mississauga, people aren’t even finding cheaper apartments there anymore. So I do know that a lot of families feel stuck and that people don’t have the option of moving. But at the end of the day, what that means is that we need to fight for better conditions, lower rents and fight for our homes.

I live in a Parkdale highrise myself. I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for a long time and I think as much as there are struggles that working-class people and families face in this neighbourhood, I really don’t see it as a tragedy. I see the strengthening of organizing happening in this neighbourhood. I see students who are involved in the West Lodge tenant-run food bank. I’ve seen students making anti-eviction banners for the balcony of 55 Triller. I see kids who are increasingly aware and a part of this organizing happening throughout Parkdale. And I do see this growing understanding in the kids themselves that when people come together and make decisions together, we have the power to change our lives. And that [being] working class is not something to be ashamed of, but that there’s power in caring. There is ingenuity and strength, and that identity is something to be proud of. And I think that growing understanding – that being someone who lives in Parkdale means that you are a part of this collective struggle –has actually been a really positive thing for the kids. It’s been an example for them, and one that’s very close to home, of the power of resistance.”

SAMUEL MASON:
LAWYER AT PARKDALE COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES, HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS DIVISION

“In Parkdale, there are many, many tenants for whom English is not the first language, who live with disabilities or who live in poverty. And all those other social conditions can make it very difficult to understand an eviction notice and that you can fight an eviction. The tenants’ committee is able to provide support and solidarity for everyone, but especially those most at risk of being taken advantage of or being denied their legal rights.

We’re at the Landlord and Tenant Board weekly, defending tenants in Parkdale against eviction. The vast majority of cases the board hears are landlord applications for eviction, and a minority of the cases they hear are tenant applications for tenant rights. With the shift to virtual hearings, blocks might have 90 matters to be heard, all of which are tenants who are allegedly in arrears, and a board member will want to get through the hearing block as expeditiously as possible.

Practically, the Landlord and Tenant Board can return to in-person hearings. That would be an immediate positive change for tenants. A person who is physically in a room with an adjudicator is much more able to connect with that person and understand what is happening than someone who is in a Zoom meeting with 90 other people.

Theoretically, once a tenant is given an eviction notice, they can always negotiate with the landlord for rent relief or repayment. And that’s something that we would try to negotiate with landlords at the Landlord and Tenant Board, or even before a hearing if the landlord is open to it and the tenant is able. But for tenants who live in poverty, defaulting on rent in a particular month doesn’t mean that money is generally building up, and they may not be able to pay it back later. So with the risk of something like COVID-19 and mass layoffs, many tenants are often not able to pay back that debt. They usually have other debts that they’ve had to incur to feed themselves. And so it’s really, really difficult to preserve these tenancies.

And eviction will permanently change the fabric of this community. People being displaced out of Parkdale by gentrifying forces are not readily able to re-enter this market. Vacant units are overwhelmingly more expensive to rent than a unit that has been rented out for 10 years. And so tenants being evicted from their one-bedroom that they pay $900 a month for will not find a one-bedroom unit in Parkdale for under $1,500. And so for someone who lives on Ontario Works, or ODSP, the outcome of these evictions is that they are permanently displaced from the community. It changes the way the community looks, the way the community speaks, the demographics, everything.”

MERCEDES SHARPE ZAYAS AND MIRU YOGARAJAH:
MERCEDES (LEFT) IS PLANNING COORDINATOR AND MIRU IS INTERIM COMMUNITY BENEFITS COORDINATOR WITH PARKDALE PEOPLE’S ECONOMY

Mercedes: Throughout all of our years of doing community planning in the neighbourhood, there are so many stories of people being evicted, and being renovicted specifically. And of course, that comes down to the fact that there aren’t vacancy controls when people are pushed out of their units.

Miru: I think a lot of people are moving out of Parkdale if they have the ability to afford housing elsewhere because it’s so unsustainable. A woman I spoke to said she was living in a one-bedroom with her daughter and granddaughter that was $2,000 per month, which is how the pricing is in Parkdale nowadays. So they had to move to Etobicoke. And there are definitely renovictions happening where people end up displaced or houseless.

Mercedes: Housing justice is the number one priority we continue to hear, but really closely tied to that are issues around mental health and harm reduction. There’s deep turmoil that comes with having your right to housing and shelter taken away from you, and [not knowing] how you’re actually going to be able to find a place to live, especially in Toronto where the housing market is skyrocketing. There are very few efforts to actually address deeply affordable housing, especially for people who are on social assistance or who are working minimum wage. The more that people are driven into these states of insecurity, the more likely it is that it’s going to have a really deep impact on people’s mental health. During the pandemic, we heard about a huge increase in mental health crises. Truly, people are in such a dire need for housing, and the alternatives are so limited that it does often lead to houselessness.

Miru: What worries me about how the neighbourhood has been changing is that there’s nowhere to live. From personal experience as a middle-class person, I’m having a hard time securing a place, let alone people who are working class or on ODSP or OW. I live in a large building in Parkdale, and all the people who reside here are starting to look like me versus the people who originally occupied this place. And as a result of that, I imagine Toronto becoming a city of buildings and tall towers with upper-middle-class to wealthy people occupying those spaces. So where does the working class go? Everything is kind of at risk of redevelopment, which is really scary when it’s your source of community. Housing is a human right and everyone deserves access to that. Stability is such an important thing, especially for people who have experiences of trauma. The one thing in their life that they can count on should be housing.

Mercedes: “Affordable housing” has become such a widely used term that it’s basically become void of any meaning. The big question we constantly have to ask ourselves is, “Who is this actually affordable for?” We need to push for deeply affordable units, especially for folks who are on fixed incomes or living on low incomes.

MPP Bhutila Karpoche’s office is pushing for the Rent Stabilization Act, to make sure if tenants do leave a unit that that same rent is maintained for the next tenant. There are efforts to advocate for things like the expropriation of private buildings, holding real estate investment trusts accountable, the movement around defunding the police, which is very much also tied to housing, especially considering the violent evictions we saw taking place at Lamport Stadium.

Miru: There’s also the current inclusionary zoning policy that’s being discussed by the city. Inclusionary zoning would actually not apply to Parkdale because it’s not considered a major transit area. So in Parkdale, as well as other communities that are more racialized or working-class, if they’re not near these major transit areas, new developments that may come up won’t need to have affordable housing. It’s kind of terrifying.

Mercedes: I think that there’s been a lot of amazing community momentum pushing for change. And then you see the ripple effects eventually taking place where some politicians are trying to push for change, although the majority are not. That’s a dire challenge, and it’s why tenants are constantly looking for ways to find justice outside of the system.

Miru: I think it’s also just super empowering. I see a lot of racialized women who are a part of these movements who may have been displaced or experienced oppressions because of their identity, and it just really gives them a sense of agency.

Mercedes: There’s such a strong community mobilization in the neighbourhood. It’s something that’s at the forefront for many Parkdalians. We have the privilege of being able to hear this constantly, day to day, from people on the ground. It’s really inspiring.