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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

<< Read More Here >>

ACORN Vanier Rallies to save homes from N13 Demoviction!

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ACORN Montreal meat with the mayor of the Côte des Neiges borough 

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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. 

<< Read More Here>>

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 >>

From CKNI:

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.”

News from Ottowa:

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.

From ACORN Canada: This has been an explosive week for the Rent Control Now campaign in Nova Scotia! Over the past few months ACORN has been collecting rent increases from across the province. The results are grim but not shocking, members have gotten increases upwards of $900 a month.

One rent increase went viral over social media, Grace – a tenant who works at the local gas station – got a $650 increase designed to force her to move from her apartment so the landlord can renovate the unit. The response from the Province? Rent Control doesn’t work. According to the provincial government it’s a “philosophical issue” – try telling that to Grace and the hundreds like her who are forced from their homes by greedy landlords!

Since then tenants have been coming forward with their stories and ACORN has been more active than ever, getting tenants rallied, sending hundreds of emails to Stephen McNeil and local MLAs, and pushing the province closer to rent control.  We are organizing a rally Saturday (Facebook event here) – with upwards of 1500 people from across the HRM interested in coming – to force the province to act in the best interest of tenants and enact Rent Control Now! Can’t make it? Click here to send an email to your MLA to demand Rent Control!

PRESS:

CTV News: ‘It’s ridiculous’: Calls for affordable housing in Halifax area grow louder (with video!)

Nova Scotia Advocate: News brief: We need rent control and landlord licensing everywhere in Nova Scotia

The Chronicle Herald: Rally calling for rent control in Nova Scotia to be held Saturday in Halifax

Global News: Habitat for Humanity pushes for more affordable housing options in the HRM

The Coast: Halifax to rally for rent control this weekend

ACORN Canada is organizing to support tenants who are being forcibly evicted by their landlord due to repairs and renovations on the buildings. Organizers say that it is the responsibility of the landlord to find accomodations for these tenants.

“We are in the midst of a pandemic, there is no room to rent and it is expensive! We ask them to leave when Montreal is in code red and we are told not to leave home! ” says Theodros Wolde of ACORN Canada.

Read the full post (in French) from ACORN Canada.