Ontario started 2024 with hundreds of tenants on rent strike in the province’s biggest city.
The most recent spate of rent strikes began in Toronto last May and, in the months since, grew to encompass hundreds of tenants in at least seven buildings across the city. Attempted rent hikes are a central issue in all the strikes. While tenants are seeking to negotiate this and other issues collectively with their respective landlords, the landlords have all maintained that tenant cases must be approached individually. The result, so far, has been a stalemate, as groups of tenants continue to withhold rent, running the risk of eviction, while their landlords continue to push for individual evictions through the Landlord and Tenant Board.
What’s in a rent strike?
“In a way, rent strikes are very similar to labour strikes,” says Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the author of 2023’s The Tenant Class.
Basically, Tranjan says, individual tenants have very little power to negotiate with their landlords on issues like rent increases and maintenance — just as individual workers have little power to negotiate their wages. Landlords own the homes in which tenants reside, much like employers own a business, and have access to financial assets that tenants generally do not.
“The difference is that tenants do not have collective bargaining rights,” he says. Tenants do have the right to form associations, but those associations aren’t recognized as formal representatives of the tenants in legal proceedings. A landlord doesn’t have to sit down with a tenant union or association and bargain collectively. Rent strikes are a way of trying to gain the landlord’s attention and force that outcome, Tranjan says. (They’re also nothing new.)
Agenda segment, June 30, 2023: Does Canada need a tenant uprising?
Contacted by TVO Today, the Landlord and Tenant Board declined to comment on matters before it. “Nor can it comment upon whether any specific alleged conduct is contrary to the [Residential Tenancies Act],” a spokesperson wrote in an email.
Representatives for rent-striking tenants tell TVO Today that they had hoped their landlords would sit down and negotiate a solution with them rather than bringing in the provincial adjudicator.
“It’s one more problem for us that the landlord has agreed to drag us to the LTB,” says Sameer Beyan, a tenant in one of three side-by-side East York buildings owned by Starlight Investments. Beyan and about 100 of his fellow Thorncliffe Park tenants, he says, began withholding rent last May to protest above-guideline rent-increase applications for 2022 and 2023 that would cumulatively increase their rents by nearly 10 per cent. The strike is also intended to raise other building issues, including those related to maintenance. There are 944 rental units in the three properties.
PR firm Crestview Strategy sent TVO Today a written statement, attributable to Starlight Investments VP of Residential Operations Penny Colomvakos. “Residents are frequently provided updates and property managers are available to meet one-on-one with residents to confidentially discuss their residency,” it reads.
The LTB began hearing 87 applications to evict in the three buildings — all related to the rent strike — as a group in early December. By that point, representatives for the landlord told the board, the strikers had collectively withheld more than $800,000 in rent from Starlight.
As of January 12, the LTB tells TVO Today, there are a total of 127 L1 and L2 applications for the Thorncliffe Park buildings before the tribunal. (L1 and L2 applications are a way for landlords to start the eviction process for rent non-payment through the LTB.)
The tenants’ association tells TVO Today that it doesn’t know about the situations of all 40 L1 and L2 applications not part of the LTB hearing process that began in December but that it knows of “several additional L1 files that are related to the rent strike. Tenants who more recently joined the strike may also not have received their notices yet from the LTB.”
Jasmine Lagundzija of Crestview Strategy tells TVO Today by email that some applications would be “residents who have defaulted on their rent payments for other personal financial reasons, not related to the strike.”
An email statement attributable to “an unnamed Starlight Investment[s] spokesperson” and sent by Crestview Strategy says of the units currently withholding rent as part of the strike: “Should they not make payment as the Landlord [and] Tenant Board has deemed, leases may be terminated.”
Agenda segment, June 19, 2023: Do rent strikes work?
In early January, the rent-striking tenants of Thorncliffe Park received their first interim notice from the LTB, Beyan says. It stated that theymust pay November’s, December’s, and January’s rent to an account held by the board itself — which they are in the process of doing. Moving forward, they’ll pay rent into the same account. (They’re paying the old rate, as neither of the above guideline increases has been okayed yet.)
“We were kind of busy over the weekend trying to figure out how to process this and how to do it properly,” he told TVO Today a week later. The tenants anticipate future interim decisions from the LTB ahead of a hearing, he says, and they intend to respect the board’s decisions, including the final one.
Ongoing impact
Tenants of four Toronto buildings with two landlords are also taking part in a rent strike — and are also in conflict with the property owners. “It’s about rent increases in every case, but it’s also about conditions in the buildings, loss of service, and loss of amenities,” says Chiara Padovani of the York-South Weston Tenant Union, which represents some tenants of 33 King Street and 22 John Street, as well as of 1440 and 1442 Lawrence Avenue West.
The rent strikes at 33 King and 22 John began in mid-2023. Dream Unlimited, a real-estate company that is the landlord of both buildings, started eviction proceedings with the Landlord and Tenant Board against individual tenants in one of these buildings last year. Those cases, which Padovani says will be heard as a group, are still awaiting their preliminary hearing.
According to information provided by Dream, as of last September, 64 units on the two properties were participating in the rent strike — 37 in 33 King, a building with 472 units, and 18 in 22 John, a building with 369 units (22 John, because it was completed in 2019, is not subject to rent-control legislation).
Numbers from the LTB state there are currently 76 active L1 applications for 33 King St alone. Dream maintains that only 37 of them represent rent strikers — the tenants’ union says that 200 units are participating in the rent strike but that many have not been served with a notice of eviction, or N4, which marks the start of an eviction process.
At 22 John, the LTB reports 64 active L1 applications. The tenants’ union tells TVO Today that 100 units are participating in the rent strike. Dream says that 18 units at 22 John are part of the rent strike. TVO Today requested information on the number of N4s served at both buildings from Dream but did not receive a response by publication time.
TVO Today Explainer: What is affordable housing?
“There’s a tribunal that deals with these issues. There’s no such thing as a rent strike,” says Michael Cooper, CEO of Dream. “There’s no union … a union is something that the Ontario government certifies when workers vote in favour of collective bargaining.”
Padovani says that “the only reason why this is at the LTB is because the landlord refused, even at the mayor’s request, to sit down and talk with tenants.” It’s “choosing to try and evict them instead.”
The tenants’ association also represents some residents at the Lawrence West buildings, which are owned by Barney River, a real-estate investment and management company that manages 2,000 rental suites, mostly in Toronto, its website states. According to numbers from the LTB, it currently has 47 L1 and L2 applications before it in these two buildings. The tenants’ union says about 100 units in the two buildings are withholding rent. Barney River did not respond to TVO Today’s requests for comment.
“These have been long rent strikes so the numbers fluctuate a little bit from month to month,” Padovani told TVO Today by email. “According to our records, they’re looking steady.”
What’s next?
In High Park, tenants at another collection of buildings are on the path to a similar conflict with their landlord, GWL Realty Advisors. TVO Today first wrote about the Livmore High Park Tenants’ Association back in June 2023, the same month that tenants at 33 King started withholding rent. The situation has worsened significantly since last June, Ben Scott of the tenants’ association tells TVO Today. After an October meeting at which they discussed rent hikes and maintenance issues, the tenants’ association voted to consider a rent strike when a specific threshold of tenants signed on to the idea.
“I want to make it clear that a rent strike is not inevitable,” Scott says. “The landlord at any time can come to us and say, ‘We're willing to stop these rent increases. We're willing to work with you.’”
For now, though, the tenants see no alternative to pushing for a strike. GWLRA hasn’t met with the tenants’ association, many of whose members (including Scott) live in two buildings built after 2018, since April 2023. Like 22 John, they aren’t protected by rent-control law. They say that GWLRA increased rent in these buildings by between 7 per cent and 12 per cent for each unit in 2023 and that further increases of 8.8 per cent to 12 per cent are being imposed in 2024.
Agenda segment, January 17, 2023: Should government build rental housing?
Scott says the organization won’t disclose the strike threshold until it’s met: “It’s a work in progress, with lots of door-knocking ahead.”
Dahlia de Rushe, senior director of communications at GWLRA, told TVO Today in an email statement that, ”while we empathize with residents about the challenges associated with adjusting to rising costs, we will not self-impose rent control at Livmore High Park and are acting within provincial guidelines.”
Right now, there’s no telling what will happen to these tenants or how their landlords will be affected. But the situation has disrupted tenants’ lives and real-estate companies’ bottom lines.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that GWL Realty Advisors had not met with the Livmore High Park Tenants' Association. In fact, GWLRA met with the association in April 2023. TVO Today regrets the error.
Donate