After participating in a months-long rent strike in an effort to get issues resolved after years of complaints, tenants at two Toronto apartment buildings are scheduled to attend a week of highly anticipated Landlord and Tenant Board hearings.
Several residents at 1440 and 1142 Lawrence Ave. W., just west of Keele Street, gathered for a brief rally Sunday afternoon to call attention to their ongoing situation. They were holding large fake cockroaches as well as a banner saying, “Stop raising rents.”
CityNews was taken to different parts of the complex where tenants and advocates showcased issues they said still haven’t been addressed, such as water ponding outside a rear entrance and burned-out garbage and debris after a fire a couple of weeks ago.
Inside a second-floor unit, two people showed a crumbling but partially plastered back wall, a kitchen oven that appears to have been damaged in a small fire, and a hole under the sink. He said some repairs were done, but the issues shown are still ongoing.
“That is the report (to the building’s management), like, the last three years … very bad condition,” Soyab Kastura, a fellow resident speaking on behalf of the two tenants, said while explaining the damage to CityNews.
Kastura is one of the residents who said he’s participating in a rent strike.
“We are struggling so much in the last five years,” he said.
“My kids also [are] scared … We have so many issues like cockroaches and the bed bugs and [mice] and every day we go downstairs to complain, but they are not listening and not fix(ing).”
Bruno Dobrusin, an organizer with the York South-West Tenant Union, said he has been working with those affected.
“Unfairness I would say. A basic landlord task is to maintain the units where they live,” he said, summing up the situation.
CityNews contacted Barney River Investments in writing through different avenues on Sunday, but a response wasn’t received by our deadline. An on-duty superintendent told us to come back on Monday after 9 a.m., saying they weren’t able to comment.
Collectively, many tenants have withheld rent for eight to nine months in a bid to get action.
“You put the rent aside as a way to collectively force the landlord to negotiate … nobody is asking for free rent, it’s asking for fair rent,” Dobrusin said.
In addition to complaints over property standards, Dobrusin said applications to raise the rents above the annual cap through an above-guideline increase (AGI). The current annual rent cap is 2.5 per cent and he said the property owners are looking for three per cent on top of that.
He said it’s a growing tactic among corporate landlords in Toronto, adding it’s done under claims of capital improvements.
“Landlords are supposed to fix the apartments and the buildings where they are operating, so this is a loophole they’ve taken advantage of. But also I think it was meant to be exceptional,” Dobrusin said.
As the case goes before the Landlord and Tenant Board in Toronto starting on Monday, there’s a strong hope the board and the property owners will listen to all the testimony and take action.
“We need to ask for help. [Landlord and Tenant Board] must be help,” Kastura said.
“We’re going to fight for compensation given the situation that they have to live in, but we’re actually also hoping that the landlord is going to come down and negotiate and use the Landlord and Tenant board as a space to do that. It has happened before,” Dobrusin added.
