For years, tenants have swallowed the landlord line that rent increases are simply a routine levy to provide necessary upkeep to buildings. Too often the profit-driven mechanisms of the real estate industry are hidden behind the curtain of landlord spin and nice-guy superintendents. Since the growth of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and other more aggressive forms of investment into multi-residential properties, working-class tenants have been feeling severe pain and insecurity over their housing, forcing them to organize out of the sheer necessity of collective self-defence. Peeling back the surface layers of the landlord industry, they see where the rent increases that they’re forced to swallow actually go: into mansions — big mansions — and luxury cars, $10,000 suits, yachts, and every other gross display of opulence imaginable.

Such was the case last weekend when striking tenants from the Stoney Creek Towers in Hamilton trekked to Ottawa with their supporters to confront the executives from InterRent, a REIT with an investment strategy based around displacing working-class tenants from their neighbourhoods. Read More …