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Canada Toronto – Tenants flooded into the food bank on the second floor of the concrete apartment building at 103 West Lodge Avenue in Parkdale. Isaac Capella Guerrero, a construction worker with an annual income of $100,000, is among them.
The 41-year-old father of two children said he was leaving this neighborhood in the west end of Toronto. His two-bedroom apartment was too small for his family, and he said he was tired of waiting for weeks to complete the repairs.
The area he moved to is more difficult to walk than Parkdale, and his children will have to transfer schools. But the last time he went to the bank for a mortgage loan made him frustrated with the bleak choice.
“This country will at some point become a country that cannot have a family,” Capella Guerrero told Al Jazeera. “You will have to live with your friends, and everyone can deposit $1,000 so you can rent an apartment. This is what it will be. Because currently, there is only one income, like mine The situation is the same, how the hell [can] Do you have a house? “
On July 13, 2021, an affordable apartment building that was only recently used as a temporary emergency shelter was demolished to make way for luxury apartments in downtown Toronto [Chris Helgren/Reuters]Election issues
In recent months, this anger has spread to the streets of cities across Canada, as the coronavirus pandemic has exposed what experts call the severity of the growing housing crisis.
On the one hand, out-of-control prices show no signs of abating, which makes the middle class more remote to own houses or burdens them with debt. On the other hand, the degree of poverty and marginalization has been exposed, because tent cities have appeared in urban parks, and municipalities have sent police to evacuate people, which in some cases is violent. As people are organizing to try to prevent evictions and defend camps, the unsustainable conditions have also rekindled a sense of collective resistance around Canadian housing.
National housing affordability experienced its worst deterioration in 27 years in the second quarter of 2021. analyze From the National Bank of Canada. The report found that mortgage loans now account for 45% of ordinary household income, and in places such as Toronto and Vancouver, the proportion is even higher.
In this context, a Recent polls Put housing at the top priority of voters in the Greater Toronto Area. The Greater Toronto Area is the most populous metropolitan area in Canada with a population of 6 million. As the federal election campaign enters its final stage, the housing issue has become the focus of political parties for the first time in many years.
These parties promised a series of measures and incentives before voting on September 20, from rent-and-buy plans to tax incentives and restrictions on foreign buyers.
Insufficient housing supply is a major factor in the current crisis-experts believe Talked about Urgent action by the government is needed.In response, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party has promise “Build, protect or repair” 1.4 million houses in the next four years; the left-leaning New Democratic Party Talked about They will build at least 500,000 affordable housing units within 10 years, and the Conservative Party Said They will build a million houses in three years.
Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party pledged to “build, protect or restore” 1.4 million homes in the next four years [File: Nick Iwanyshyn/Reuters]Changed the housing system
But Leilani Farha, the former UN Special Rapporteur on housing rights, said that people overemphasize home ownership and need to pay more attention to the low-income groups in Canadian society, which are growing and are being driven more. . To the edge.
“The COVID really brought it home because COVID has exposed the importance of the home — and the difficulty of maintaining it. Within a month of the pandemic — within a month — 25% of renters expressed concern that they would not The rent will be paid in the next or several months,” Farha said.
“That’s Canada, the tenth largest economy in the world.”
Canada used to have multiple barrier-free housing options. The rent is cheap enough to save a savings, so that Canadians can buy a house, establish equity, and use it as a mortgage to continue to spend money. Farha is now the global director of The Shift, an organization that advocates housing as a human right, not a commodity. He said that this housing ownership-oriented housing system is for economic development, not necessarily for people. Go to the roof.
Farha said, but the system no longer works in the same way, and the convergence of various factors has dramatically changed the dynamics. She pointed out that pension funds or private equity companies annexed affordable housing constructions, performed beauty repairs, and then raised rents. This trend drives people out. She said this is why the promise of building more housing must be accompanied by clear rules to ensure that housing is affordable and remains affordable.
“I don’t think any party has determined this. I don’t think they have fully grasped the size of the problem, the severity of the problem, or the urgency of the problem. This worries me,” Farha told Al Jazeera. “I think that because housing is a human right, we should go all out to solve the problem of homelessness as soon as possible.”
On June 22, at Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto, Ontario, police detained a person during an operation to evict a homeless camp [File: Kyaw Soe Oo/Reuters]Local organization
Back at West Lodge, there were vacant units in two dilapidated apartment buildings. The building was purchased by Hazelview Properties, a real estate investment trust company, in 2018, and the company said it has been working hard to resolve years of neglect left by its previous owners.
Back at West Lodge, as the construction of the revitalization project led by Hazelview Properties continued, the units in the two apartment buildings were vacant and the project purchased these buildings at the end of 2018.
But during the renovation process, tenants reported that their apartments had to wait several weeks to complete repairs, and the refurbished vacant units were being rented out at higher prices.
Paterson Hodgson, an illustrator who lives in West Lodge and a member of the Parkdale Organize, said: “Vacant units mean people are leaving, being driven out, and being scared away. This organization helps the working class organize for battle. For social issues.
Colleen Krempulec, vice president of brand marketing and corporate social responsibility at Hazelview, said that the company has spent nearly $20 million to restore the West Lodge building, which has been “neglected for years or even decades”.
She said Hazelview installed a new boiler, completed electrical and plumbing works, performed other renovations, added a mail room and refurbished laundry room, and completed maintenance and repair orders for more than 3,000 units of West Lodge . “We believe that the residents of West Lodge will benefit from these large-scale revitalization projects; this is by no means an effort to drive people out,” Kremplake said.
In December 2020, a person passed a graffiti on an apartment development announcement in the Parkdale neighborhood of Toronto [Chris Helgren/Reuters]She admitted that there are “a lot” of vacant units in the building, even though the company has been actively renting them out for about a year. It does so at market rents, which may be more than what existing rent-controlled tenants pay. “This job did not apply for higher than the guideline rent increases,” she emphasized.
But Hodgson said tenants still feel pressure to leave. Organizations that started with repairs and arrears in rent also revealed how many people are struggling with food. This is what led to the tenant-operated food bank, which operates outside a unit of the building every other Sunday and regularly attracts about 50 people.
“It’s really bad. Some people choose to pay rent instead of buying food. It’s not just because of COVID. This has happened before,” Hodgson said.
Parkdale resident and local teacher Ashleigh Doherty said that the collective organization created during the pandemic was to promote better conditions and demand change, rather than waiting for top-down solutions from politicians.
“From our perspective, we know that the only power we have is through this type of organization,” Doherty told Al Jazeera outside West Lodge. “This will allow us to face the landlord directly instead of waiting for the politician to do something for us-we know this will not happen.”
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