#EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE CORNER - Opening #Remarks - " LET THE #WORD GO FORTH"

 

Professional, Progressive, Leadership

WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU

MAKES YOU STRONGER

Executive Committee Corner

               MESSAGE FROM YOUR COMMITTEE

                       August 30,2022

                           

            

     

 WORKING HARD EVERY HOUR,EVERY DAY, FOR YOU

                                                                                            

“We have full confidence that if all do our duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best 

arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again

 able to defend our endearing principles, to ride out the storm of injustice, and to 

outlive the menace of drugs and crime, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

At any rate, that is what we are going to do. That is the resolve and heart

 of this great Association and every person of them. That is the will of our cause

 and the people.

This Tenants' Association along with our many powerful allies are linked together 

in and by cause - to their needs, and will defend to the utmost our sacred 

human rights, aiding each other - like good comrades in turmoil with the endless passions 

of our boldest strengths.

So we say today to friends, allies and foes alike -

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in the Highest Courts,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the arena, 

we shall defend our Rights, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight in the media,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight wherever injustice, dishonesty and crime prevails;

We shall never surrender, and even if, which we do not for a moment 

believe, this Association or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, 

then our Humanity beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the soldiers of 

freedom and truth, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, 

the New Generation, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue 

and the liberation of the greatest principles that constitutes the one and 

truly great cause - Freedom and Justice for All.”

                                              CLICK HERE

                    https://youtu.be/Xn676-fLq7I

In closing, we again say and pray to inspire you to 

have these words go forth and resonate in the hearts

 of good people everywhere to dance on 

the shores of the last eternity...

So Welcome to Woodgreen Tenants' Association

 We are an incorporated, not-for-profit organization.  Our mission is to:

• Improve conditions in your apartment buildings
• Deal respectfully and responsibly with the landlord/property management 
• Educate tenants on their rights and obligations
• Organize tenants
• Support tenants in developing their skills
• Provide information and assistance
• Lobby government
• Provide quarterly general meetings and special meetings
• Festivals and Local Educational Events

We are a solution-driven association that practices acceptance without discrimination. We strive to provide leadership and support in helping to establish more quality associations.

Thank you for choosing to be a member.  Thank you for volunteering your time and abilities.  Thank you for co-creating our continuous success.

With Warmest Passions,

Your Executive Committee

August 30, 2022

                         WE ARE FAMILY

CLICK HERE

      https://youtu.be/jdsqht1m1rE

     Professional, Progressive, Leadership

                  

#Toronto Residents Deliver #Cockroaches to #Landlord - BlogTO

 

How Bad It Can Get

A Toronto resident group fighting a wave of evictions in the Crescent Town neighbourhood delivered a message to their landlord Monday—in the form of live roaches caught in their own homes.

Seventeen families are currently facing evictions from their apartments at Crescent Place, a trio of buildings owned by Pinedale Properties.

On Valentine's Day, members of Crescent Place's tenants association and community organization People's Defence Toronto visited the home of Robin Bookbinder, VP of Finance of the property group, demanding an end to eviction applications.

Their doorstep offering included balloons and scores of cockroaches that tenants caught in their own units. 

"For years we have been asking Pinedale Properties to clean up our building and remove the pests," said Dil Begum of Crescent Town Tenant Union to blogTO. 

"We left these cockroaches as a present for Mr. Bookbinder along with our letter of demands. Pinedale Properties needs to know the conditions they make us, our families, and our neighbours, live with every day."

According to Sam Nithiananthan of People's Defence, "the anger has been building."

"This isn't just a tactic of agitation. This union is trying to take care of its own. This has been going on for months, every time people complain about cockroaches, mice, bed bugs. This is the conditions people live in." 

Pinedale Properties representatives were not available for comment at time of publishing. 

Since April, residents of Crescent Place and other properties like Goodwood Park, owned by Ranee Management, have been demanding rent relief while fighting eviction applications filed by landlords at the onset of COVID-19. 

In September, protestors formed a human blockade to prevent 14 police officers from evicting a resident from 108 Goodwood Park. 

Tenants say that requests for proper building maintenance, such as aid with pest infestations, have gone unanswered by property owners. They say that messages from tenants to Bookbinder regarding their demands have been blocked.

In an LTB process hearing Tuesday between Crescent Town tenants and Pinedale Properties, the cockroaches tactic was described as intimidating and threatening by Pinedale's legal team. 

But the tenants association and People's Defence are crying foul, pointing to the hypocrisy of the conditions that residents are forced to live in every day. 

"If Mr. Bookbinder is angry for the cockroaches, what do you think me and my neighbours feel everyday?" said Begum.

The action outside Bookbinder's house was part of a two day-long public event that included handing out 70 free bags of groceries to tenants of the building. There is another LTB hearing on Thursday morning that is open to the public.

The Landlord and Tenant #Board is escalating its institutional #hostility against #Tenants with new Administrative Closure Practice

 Toronto, ON - November 26, 2021 - After months of delaying tenant matters, this week the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) unexpectedly instituted a new practice in an attempt to purge tenant applications before they have the chance to be heard at the Board.

 The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) has learned that the Board has sent tenants email notices advising them that their applications will finally be scheduled in early 2022. However, they are asking tenants to respond by December 7th, 2021 (via email) to confirm they would still like to proceed with their application. Tenants who fail to do so may have their application “administratively closed.” Tenants have been waiting months, and even years, for their tenant rights application to be heard by the Board. A message from the Board that ends up in the wrong folder or address could result in a tenant’s matter being dismissed without a hearing. These applications deal with serious health and safety issues, harassment and privacy violations, or illegal lockouts. The Board is not, however, asking landlords if they still wish to proceed with their applications. This is an unprecedented practice that is harmful to tenants amidst delays The ongoing delays for tenant applications, and this alarming new practice of administrative case closure, raises concerns about access to justice for tenants. It also undermines the integrity of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 (RTA), whereby both landlords and tenants are bound by a set of rights, rules, and responsibilities. The Board should treat both landlord and tenant matters with the same degree of urgency. In practice, however, landlord matters are routinely scheduled for hearings much faster than tenant applications. “This is part of an increasing escalation of hostility against tenants in Ontario since the pandemic began,” notes Ryan Hardy, Staff Lawyer at ACTO. “Landlords are not experiencing the same lengthy delays as tenants and have not, as far as we know, received notices that their applications may be administratively closed after months of delay.” Tenants also face challenges to raise their issues and make a full defence at landlord’s eviction hearings for arrears – despite it being a right afforded to them under the Act. After Bill 184 passed in August 2020, amended section 82 in the RTA provides tenants the right to raise tenant issues at their eviction hearing for rental arrears. Since then, the Board has chosen to interpret the new requirement so restrictively so as to deny tenants engaging this right. Tenants are instead told to file a separate tenant application, which is an onerous process that may take months to be heard. If they have been evicted in the meantime, this is a process a tenant is unlikely to pursue. “When you consider how arrears hearings proceed at the Board and the Boards refusal to allow tenants to make section 82 arguments, the result is that tenants can be evicted without being able to provide a proper defence,” says Dania Majid, Provincial Director, Tenant Duty Counsel Program at ACTO. “And once that tenant is evicted, they are very unlikely to bring a subsequent tenant rights application to the Board. It leads us to believe the Board is counting on the majority of tenants giving up on their pursuit of justice to speed up cases going through the queue.” The LTB should immediately cease this new practice ACTO is calling on the Board to immediately cancel this new practice and void the “administrative closures”. This new process is unfair, arbitrary, unprecedented, and harmful to tenants. The Board should also change how they are scheduling these tenant applications. Tenant rights applications should be treated with the same urgency as eviction applications and should be given proper time to be heard. The Board must also re-commit to taking s.82 claims seriously and hearing these matters when raised by tenants. “At the end of the day,” continues Majid, “tenants across the province should also have their rights upheld and protected with the urgency and gravity that is already extended to landlords.” -30- About Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) is a specialty community legal clinic with a province-wide mandate to advance and protect the interests of tenants living on lower incomes. ACTO specializes in housing issues related to tenants. The clinic also coordinates the Tenant Duty Counsel Program (TDCP) across Ontario, which provides legal information and assistance to self-represented tenants appearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board.

Landlord and Tenant Law Ontario 

 For more information, including interviews with ACTO representatives, please contact: Genrys Goodchild Communications and Public Affairs Specialist, (ACTO) goodchg@lao.on.ca 416.597.5855 ext. 5170

Housing #affordability for whom? How supply-side solutions fall short in addressing #Ontario’s housing #crisis

 

This past November, Ontario’s provincial government announced the creation of a Housing Affordability Task Force. The task force had a mandate to explore measures to address housing affordability across the province. Many housing advocates expressed concern that the task force appointees overwhelmingly came from the private sector. The majority of those appointed did not have expertise in core housing need, non-market housing solutions, and/or lived experience of homelessness.

The final report of recommendations was published on February 8th. The majority of the task force recommendations focus on increasing the supply of housing and making it easier and faster for developers to get municipal approvals for development.

We welcome the province’s renewed focus on housing affordability, and agree with some of their recommendations, such as eliminating “exclusionary zoning” and legalizing multi-tenant homes. However, it is important to be clear: supply-side, market based solutions alone will not solve Ontario’s housing crisis. If we do not also make serious efforts to keep the remaining supply of affordable housing stock, things will only become worse. It is, therefore, disappointing that the task force made almost no mention of any government investment in retaining the existing supply of affordable rental housing.

For 15 years, we have lost affordable housing units without building enough units to replace them. As a result, average rents have skyrocketed. There are several factors responsible for the continuous loss of affordable rental housing across Ontario. Two of these were policy decisions made in the 1990s. The first is the removal of rent controls for new units, which first applied for buildings constructed after 1991. According to the neo-liberal wisdom of the day, the idea was removing rent controls would incentivize developers to increase their development of purpose-built rental housing. This supposed influx of rental housing would be all that was needed to keep prices affordable for renters.

The 1991 policy failed. In 2017, there was a brief period where the 1991 loophole for new builds was closed by the Wynne government. In 2018, the Ford government decided to reverse the decision and deemed that any unit first occupied as a residence after November 15, 2018 would be exempt from rent control rules. This means landlords do not have to abide by the set yearly increases in rent for tenants of newer builds. Ontarians are already beginning to see the devastating impact of this change. The lack of rent control on new units will be felt even more deeply by rapidly developing communities with a high percentage of newer builds, such as municipalities in the GTA.

There is another policy that came into effect in the 1990s, called vacancy decontrol, which removed rent controls for vacant units. The absence of rent control for vacant units allows landlords to charge incoming tenants whatever they want, making it financially rewarding for them to routinely kick long-standing tenants out. Tenants will often pay hundreds of dollars more per month for their new rental housing if they are evicted. In Toronto, it has been estimated that “asking rents in the City for existing purpose-built rental housing are up to 40% higher than average market rents.”

There can be no proven causal effect between these rent control exemptions policies and an increase in new purpose-built, affordable rentals. Rental demand continues to be met through condos and secondary suites. From 1995 to 2020, Ontario has only averaged building 5,500 new housing units each year. That is less than half of what is needed to fulfill demand.

Neither of these 1990’s era policies have delivered what was promised. Instead, we witnessed an explosive increase in rental rates and a rise of no-fault evictions in the 30 years that have followed. Without bringing real rent control back, we will continue to see affordable rental housing disappear.

Another factor in the current housing crisis includes a disparity across municipalities regarding their demolition and conversion control bylaws. Some municipalities – such as Mississauga and Toronto – have established rental property protection bylaws to preserve their affordable rental housing stock, but they are in the minority. These bylaws are flexible and responsive because they often only prevent demolition and conversion of rental units when vacancy rates are below a certain percentage, typically 3%. Having consistency across in the province would be another way to preserve the current supply of affordable rental housing.

For all of these reasons, the decision made by the province to have the Housing Affordability Task Force focus mostly on supply-side market based solutions is misguided. Treating housing primarily as an investment opportunity for developers and landlords has gotten Ontario into this mess; more of the same will not get us out of it.

HISTORICAL ONTARIO HOUSING CRISIS

#PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of a storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind
Walk on through the rain
For your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone

Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone

SING ALONG

''I am 82 years old and sometimes feel so alone. I love this song, but always ending up shedding a few tears as I listen to it. ''

PEGGY KELLER

 

#Landlord #Renovictions Up 300% in #Toronto -blogTO

 

Toronto's fast-rising rent prices are forcing low and middle-income workers to make daily sacrifices in order to simply keep roofs over their heads (if they can even get a roof at all) according to a jarring new report from The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario.

And skyrocketing rents aren't alone in proving that shady landlords will do whatever it takes to make bank off Toronto's historically low vacancy rates.

The ACTO revealed on Friday in a report called "We Can't Wait: Preserving Our Affordable Rental Housing in Ontario," that rates of landlords pushing tenants out for "renovations" or "personal use" have spiked even faster over the past four years than rent prices have.

SOCIAL UNREST IS GROWING QUICKLY

"Since 2016, we are seeing disturbing trends in the rise of evictions across the city," reads the report.

"In particular, there is growth in no-fault evictions: evictions based on the claim of a landlord (or their immediate family members) planning to move into the unit they are renting to a tenant (L2 + N12 application) or the landlord needing the tenant to vacate the rental unit for major renovations (L2 + N13 application), also known as a renoviction."

The ACTO reveals that, since 2016, the Landlord and Tenant Board has seen an 84 per cent increase in N12 applications, and a staggering 294 per cent increase in N13 applications.

N13 Renovictions are a growing problem in Toronto. Looking forward to attending this meeting being hosted by @394Dovercourt tenants, who have been intrepid in their fight against eviction.

Facing an N13 renoviction? Call us 647-955-2371. pic.twitter.com/qmVgLcjeFs

— Truax Legal Services PC (@Tenants_legal) September 19, 2019

We've all heard horror stories from residents who've been served N13s and moved out from their Toronto apartments, only to find that same unit put right back on the market with minimal changes and a much higher price tag.

It is not known how many of the studied renoviction cases that went before the LTB were legitimate and how many were illegal, but the numbers indicate that more and more people are being forced out of their homes through no fault of their own.

In a climate where even basement apartments are rising beyond the financial reach of many, those with leases on rent-controlled units are increasingly willing to put up with landlord neglect, harassment and disrepair in an effort to keep their homes.

FASCIST GOVERNMENT IS NOT FOR THE PEOPLE

"Our place needs repairs and maintenance, but when we ask our landlord to fix things, he threatens us with an eviction and reminds us of how good of a rent we have," reads a testimonial from one Toronto resident in the ACTO report.

"I'm at the whim of this rent never changing. My income is too low to afford anything higher. If my rent increases, I would have to work more to stay because I can't find a place at this price point," wrote another.

"Many commute long hours to get downtown and some are homeless. These jobs aren't good enough to sustain people's living situation but the options are limited."

WANT TO JACK UP RENTS - THEN RENOVICT

#Wanted #Poster