It was around 1 a.m. on Saturday when a group of bleary-eyed Torontonians finally arrived in Montreal, after driving more than five hours through the night. After a short rest, they would confront the mysterious new owner of their Parkdale apartment building.
For the last six months, these travellers — alongside dozens of other residents at 75 Spencer Avenue — have refused to pay rent in protest of a proposed 5.4 per cent above-guideline rent increase (AGI) at their apartment building. But they say negotiations with the building manager, MetCap Living, have gone nowhere.
Frustrated by a lack of response from the building’s owner, whom they were told was “adamant” that the rent hike go through, eight tenants decided to track down and meet the owner at their Côte-Saint-Luc home. But shortly after the group arrived, they said they were met with police and forced to leave the premises.
“They don’t want to talk or negotiate with us and that’s why we’re here. We’re trying to talk,” said Mahmoud Abdellatif, a tenant who made the trip to Montreal. “But (the owner) refused to communicate. She didn’t respond at all, she didn’t even say ‘Hi, sorry, not interested.’”
MetCap Living and a person believed to be the building’s new owner did not immediately respond to the Star’s questions.
The issue began when the building’s former owner, Kin Pong Chung, applied for an AGI in 2025, citing the cost of renovating the building’s lobby and other changes. Tenants tried for months to negotiate the rent hike before launching a rent strike in March.
The maximum allowable increase for rent-controlled buildings in Ontario was 2.5 per cent in 2025. But landlords can apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for AGIs to fund renovations and building improvements. The AGI is capped at three per cent annually; MetCap applied for a 2.9 per cent hike.
“It’s going to be very tough, especially right now when every dollar, every penny could affect our livelihoods,” said tenant Sonam Tsering, who drove to Montreal. Tsering pays around $1,300 in rent; the hike will cost him more than $800 a year.
Despite the ongoing rent strike, the building changed hands on May 4, selling for $15.5 million to a numbered company. The director of this company was listed as Rebecca Elkeslassy, a woman based in Côte-Saint-Luc.
Elkeslassy was reportedly “adamant” that the rent hike introduced by the previous owner goes through, the tenants learned during an August 12 meeting with MetCap president and CEO Brent Merrill. “He offered to waive 0.5 per cent of the increase,” Abdellatif said.
When the group declined Merrill’s offer, Abdellatif said he began using “intimidation techniques,” including threatening to evict strikers. Abdellatif, Tsering and many other tenants already received eviction notices early into the strike.
That meeting with MetCap prompted the tenants to visit Elkeslassy in person, after previous attempts to communicate with her fell short. On Saturday morning, a group showed up at the apartment listed as Elkeslassy’s home address.
There was no response after knocking on her door. After around eight minutes waiting outside her home, the group was met with two uniformed police officers responding to a 911 call, according to Bryan Doherty, a member of Parkdale Organize.
“I was informed that this could potentially escalate into a criminal matter. I said that all we requested was a brief conversation; there was nothing antagonistic going on,” said Doherty, who doesn’t personally live at 75 Spencer. “They said, nonetheless, I can’t approach Rebecca Elkeslassy again.”
The group proceeded to hand out flyers and protested outside Elkeslassy’s apartment building for three hours before driving back to Toronto later that afternoon.
Parkdale is no stranger to rent disputes. MetCap has sold off most of its Parkdale properties after more than 300 tenants successfully won concessions on above-guideline rent increases in 2017.
Now, tenants at 75 Spencer are hoping for a repeat of history.
“We are humiliated,” Abdellatif said. “Why don’t you want to talk to the people when you spent $15-plus million buying their house? It shows you that those people don’t care — about you, about your life, about your neighbours.”
With files from The Canadian Press
