“Words can’t communicate realities like the ones we’re currently experiencing. There can be no words to describe a condition which never existed before, which changes from one moment to the next and which has no known stages or outcomes.” – Yarostan Vochek Read More …
What follows is a brief and rather belated update on the East Hamilton Rent Strike, a seven-month campaign waged by tenants of the Stoney Creek Towers against their landlord, InterRent Real Estate Investment Trust and property manager, CLV Group. To those who’ve been wondering what was going on, or who have asked us for updates on how the strike was going, apologies for the delay in getting this out. This article is the product of many one-on-one conversations with Stoney Creek Towers tenants, a ‘rent strike review’ mass tenant meeting, and internal discussions amongst members of the Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network who supported tenants in the campaign. Read More …
On the morning of Monday November 19, striking tenants from the Stoney Creek Towers assembled and filed into the office at 40 Grandville to pay back their rental arrears, effectively bringing an end to their seven month rent strike. Or at the very least… putting it on pause. Since May 1, when tenants first began withholding rent, they have made two demands of their landlord, InterRent Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT): 1) Drop the proposed Above Guideline [rent] Increase (AGI); and 2) Make long-standing repairs to tenants’ units. Read More …
As the Stoney Creek Towers rent strike enters its sixth month, CLV is starting to lose it!
Over the past several weeks, CLV has escalated tensions with the residents of the Stoney Creek Towers, in a vain effort to isolate and intimidate tenant organizers. They have installed over 100 new surveillance cameras, and have hired private security to patrol each of the four buildings 24/7. These rent-a-cops have harassed tenants, in some cases demanding they show ID to prove that they live in their building. They have also instituted a blatantly illegal ‘NO LOITERING’ policy covering the buildings’ common areas in a transparent attempt to criminalize tenants for holding their weekly lobby meetings, which have been taking place for months without incident. Read More …
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 …
Report from solidarity action with the ongoing rent strike in Hamilton, which started on May 1st.
On Friday morning of June 29th, in concert with actions in Hamilton, Burlington, Guelph, London, and Montreal; community members and Ottawa GDC Local 6 marched to CLV hq offices at 485 Bank St (Bank & Argyle) to deliver a letter of demands on behalf of the East Hamilton Rent Strike to David Nevins (Vice President) and Michael McGahan (CEO). Read More …
