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Category: CANADA
All content related to ACORN Canada.
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ACORN Ontario Hosts “Boiling Point” Meeting to Tackle Extreme Heat in Housing
ACORN Ontario brought together over 120 members and allies in a high-energy online meeting called Boiling Point to demand urgent action on extreme heat in housing. Leaders from five cities shared updates on local campaigns, including maximum temperature bylaws and tracking heat-related deaths. ACORN Hamilton celebrated a major victory after months of organizing, successfully negotiating with a landlord to drop a rent increase and secure affordable housing for over 30 residents.
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ACORN Ottawa and Waterloo Region Achieve Major Wins for Tenant Protections
ACORN Ottawa hosted a citywide Healthy Homes meeting to demand safe and livable housing and called on the city to implement landlord licensing. Waterloo Region ACORN members secured a major win when the city voted to move foward with a renovication bylaw, a real step toward tenant protections in Kitchener! 27 ACORN members and allies stormed the council chamber to share their lived experiences, and demanding councillors side with tenants, and it worked! The committee voted to move the bylaw forward, becuase they couldn’t ignore the power in the room!
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ACORN Canada Celebrates 20 Years of Organizing and Demands National Tenant Rights at 7th Biennial Convention.
ACORN Canada celebrated 20 years of community organizing at their 7th Biennial National Convention in Oshawa, with over 250 members attending from coast to coast! Members marched to the CMHC office in Toronto to deliver 300+ tenant testimonials and demand that the Renters Bill of Rights set National Tenant Rights Standards.
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Toronto ACORN Secures Unanimous Council Vote for Stronger Inspection Bylaw, Ensuring Healthy Homes for Renters
Big win for Toronto ACORN when members won a unanimous council vote to beef up an inspection bylaw that ensures healthy homes for renters- ensuring it will be adequately enforced to protect residents. ACORN Canada members gathered outside of city hall in Ottawa to launch the Roadmap to ‘Save Affordable Housing’ platform, pressuring council members to vote YES on a Renoviction Bylaw that would protect renters.
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ACORN Ontario released a new report detailing the effects on renovictions on tenants.
ACORN Ontario released a new report detailing the effects on renovictions on tenants, and called on cities across the country to stand in solidarity. ACORN Canada has called on the federal government to tax excessive profits from grocery stores across the country, which they have been raking in profits while working people struggle.
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Major Victory for ACORN Hamilton: First Ontario City to Restrict Renovictions
After five years of tireless organizing, ACORN Hamilton had a MAJOR win in January, when the city became the first in Ontario to pass a bylaw to restrict renoviction! ACORN Canada is keeping this incredible momentum going to pass similar legislation in Waterloo and London!
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ACORN Canada : Hamilton, London, and Toronto ACORN Hold Joint Action against Family Properties
ACORN Hamilton, ACORN Toronto, and ACORN London members held an action in front of 140 Tycos Drive in North York, Ontario on June 22 to deliver a demand letter from tenants who are fed up with the tenant displacement tactics employed by Family Properties. Finding an address with an active office to drop a demand letter was challenging, and illustrates the need for one of ACORN Canada’s national Stop Corporate Landlords campaign demands: the right to know your landlord.
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ACORN Canada 08/21
Toronto ACORN members had a great Internet for All rally on Tuesday, July 6th at 11 am at City Hall, demanding the City to make connections to community-owned, community-controlled, and $10 internet for all low and moderate-income people.
ACORN Vanier Rallies to save homes from N13 Demoviction!
ACORN Montreal meat with the mayor of the Côte des Neiges borough
Tenants Speak out in London To Demand Healthy Homes:
“London ACORN member Samantha, had a Tenant Speak Out event outside her Landlord’s office to demand a healthy home for her and her daughters. Samantha has been asking for repairs to be fixed in her home so she and her daughters can live comfortably. Instead of fixing the repairs, the landlord has told Samantha she can just move out.
Hamilton will draft a vacant home tax bylaw for public review:
“Several representatives of ACORN Hamilton, a tenant rights group, backed the idea of a vacant housing tax.”
“Dayna Sparkes, ACORN’s east Hamilton chair, said the tax would discourage landlords from keeping units vacant. This is an important tool Hamilton can use to prevent speculation.”<< Read More Here >>
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Tenant Advocacy Group Arrives In N.B.
A national tenancy advocacy group has established a New Brunswick chapter.
ACORN New Brunswick will join previously established chapters in British Columbia, Toronto, and Nova Scotia.
Their first goal is to push Blaine Higgs’ PC government toward reinstating the eviction ban that was rolled back last spring.
“There are so many people facing economic pressures in their personal lives, and the government as of now hasn’t really done anything to accommodate that,” said Raven Blue, an organizer with the new chapter.
The newest ACORN chapter has released a petition calling on Higgs’ government to freeze evictions through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Blue says the Higgs government doesn’t understand the issues many New Brunswickers are facing during the Public Health emergency.
“The government has not shown interest in protecting people during a pandemic when you have exceptional market pressures that are causing rent increases to spike,” he said. “People are being evicted, and so my sense is they are not really aware of the issues. They are more interested in enabling gentrification in our communities, rather than helping tenants or people at risk.”
Blue says he’s noticed changes in the rental market provincially and locally over the past five years, and he himself has been evicted under what he called questionable circumstances.
“It’s a widespread issue where housing market pressures are taking advantage of very low tenant protections in New Brunswick,” said Blue.
While many have called for rent control in the province, similar to what Nova Scotia’s government rolled out in late 2020, Blue says it isn’t a cure-all for the issues faced by tenants here.
In provinces like Quebec, Blue says tenants have 21 days to pay off late rent, and then receive a tribunal hearing. But in New Brunswick, tenants can be evicted after just seven days without paying rent with no recourse.
“In New Brunswick it’s among the worst in Canada, the triggers for eviction,” said Blue. “So if you can easily evict a tenant then rent controls don’t really matter a great deal. You can evict somebody and just name your price for the rent.”
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Residents of Manor Village to rally outside city hall Wednesday
Leaders from the Ottawa advocacy group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), along with impacted tenants of Manor Village, in Nepean, will be gathering outside Ottawa City Hall this week, in an effort to prevent the community from being demolished to make way for a future light rail transit (LRT) station.
As part of the Stage 3 LRT planning, city staff recommended that 120 units of low-income housing be demolished, in order to build the future Knoxdale LRT Station. The move would force the eviction of over 300 low-income and working class families.
According to a statement from ACORN, city staff say tenants will have multiple years to find a new home if the city goes forward with the plan, but residents are concerned they will be unable to find somewhere as affordable as Manor Village, given the rising cost of rent in Ottawa.
ACORN leaders, along with affected tenants, will be gathering outside city hall at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, November 25.
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