Ontario's labour movement got involved in a no COVID evictions campaign. Rent strikes surfaced again as an issue in Canada and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many lower-income workers lost their jobs and could not afford their rent.
And in the United Kingdom, university students launched a string of rent strikes between 20. Tenants have staged strikes throughout the world, and throughout history, including strikes in Glasgow's tenement buildings in the 1880s, in Barcelona in 1931 and in Harlem, N.Y., in 1963-4.
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It invites people to become members for free but also encourages optional contributions. In the case of one of the groups of tenants currently on strike in Toronto, the York South-Weston Tenant Union is an umbrella group of smaller tenant associations. Their efforts can be financially supported through donations or membership dues. Other times, tenants officially form a union and collaborate with housing advocates or other activists. Oftentimes, they involve tenants of a building banding together to take action on their own. What's a rent strike?Ī rent strike can be as simple as it sounds - a group of tenants refusing to pay their rent until their conditions are met. Here's what a rent strike entails, and what one could mean for tenants. "I think it speaks to how much they have been pushed to the limit by the overall housing situation and by a specific landlord that they would take such bold movement to withhold rent."īut such strikes are not without risks. It's a bold movement, Tranjan, author of The Tenant Class, said in an interview with CBC News. Rent strikes in Canada are on the increase - and with good reason, says Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Ottawa. It happened again in Hamilton, Ont., the following year, though with a different outcome. More than 300 tenants in 12 buildings in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale went on strike for three months in 2017 - and successfully fought (new window) a substantial rent increase. And it's not the first time tenants in Canada have staged a rent strike. The strikers are saying enough is enough.
In another part of the city, more than 100 tenants in an apartment complex have stopped paying rent to protest proposed above-guideline increases of almost 10 per cent over the last two years, according to a tenant advocacy group. It's their form of protest against the owners of the building, where longtime tenants have experienced six above-guideline rent increases in the past decade. In Toronto, about 200 residents of a highrise are on strike - they're refusing to pay rent.
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