Rent Strike Update and Eviction Resistance in Ontario

From Embers podcast continues its coverage of the rising wave of renters struggles and rent strikes across the province of Ontario.

On May 1st, tenants in the Stoney Creek Towers in Hamilton declared a rent strike, demanding that their corporate landlord drop an above-guideline rent increase of almost 10% over three years, and that the property managers perform numerous needed overdue repairs to their units.

I first interviewed Jason of the Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network back in May. The HTSN helped initiate the rent strike and works to support tenant self-organization and struggle across the city of Hamilton, and increasingly in coordination with like-minded groups across Ontario. In this follow-up interview we discuss the East Hamilton Rent Strike as it enters its fifth month.

The second interview in this episode is with a tenant organizer in the neighbourhood of Herongate in Ottawa, where another massive real estate company is attempting to conduct the largest urban eviction campaign in Canada, after having bought up a literal quarter of the neighbourhood. But the residents of Herongate aren’t going to leave without a fight.

All the music tonight is by Lee Reed, who actually just released an EP to fundraise for the rent strike – check it out!

The audio clip at the end is Ikram Dahir, a resident of Herongate. It is part of a series of resident statements collected by Neal Rockwell.