Little message for any Americans who come across my blog:

REJECT YOUR HOMEOWNER’S ASSOCIATION!!!!!!

GROW NATIVE PLANTS AND/OR CORN ON YOUR FRONT LAWN!!!!!!!!

Not saying you HAVE to! But HOAs are still a stupid idea anyway.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌽🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇮🇪🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲(okay that’s enough flags)

And if you can’t do that. Defy them in any way you can. No matter how small it may be.

FUCK HOAs!

HOAs can eat shit!

Feel free to reblog the shit out of this one if you wish!

Also please reblog my posts on sending aid to the Armenians and the Assyrian people too! They’re on my blog.

A piece on community land trusts as a response to gentrification. They take rental housing off the market, eschew the prioritization of profit, and keep tenants and their rent where they are while involving tenants in democratically running the neighborhood

Hey Ontario folks, since we're in the time of year when the temperature is dropping but a lot of landlords haven't bothered to turn the heat on yet, the Landlord Tenant Board requires that rental units in Ontario be heated to 20 degrees C from Sept 1 - June 15. Your local municipality might set the requirement higher - for example, in mine it's 21 degrees C throughout the year.

Please note that this only applies to units where your landlord provides heat - so, for example, in an apartment where the heat is controlled by the landlord, not in a house you rent where you can turn the heat up and down. (Also worth noting that if you live in the same unit as your landlord - for example, renting a room in your landlord's house - LTB regulations do not apply to you.)

But yeah if it's fucking cold in your apartment or rental unit and you don't control the heat, ask your landlord to turn it on - and if they're an asshole about it, and the LTB covers you, call them on it or file a complaint.

And if you're not sure about how cold/warm your place is, buy one of those cheap outdoor thermometers and keep it somewhere. I bought one last year just so I could call my landlord on keeping the place like 4 degrees below the requirement.

I can't speak for other places, but most will have similar heat requirements, so check your local tenancy laws!!

Hey people,

I will be officially homeless on March 31st.

I've been trying to keep up with everything and not quite making it for months. It's finally caught up to me.

I've learned a pretty huge lesson... or rather many lessons. But because I have this current eviction process on my record, prospects for housing are extremely bleak.

I have no idea where to go after that date. I may have to get a motel.

Any and all help is super appreciated. Both my Ppal and $app are TransManDragQueen.

Please also share this, I would truly appreciate it.

Thank you all I hope you smile today

Earlier this month, Toronto and East York Community Council unanimously approved a rental housing demolition application for 25 St. Mary St., which is just south of Bloor Street East between Bay and Yonge streets. The property’s owner, Tenblock, wants to construct two new towers that are 54 and 59 storeys in place of the current v-shaped structure on that site. City council is set to consider the matter at its May 10 meeting.

[...]

Under City of Toronto Act, renters who are displaced by a building’s demolition are entitled to return to their unit and pay similar rent once the building is redeveloped. They’re also entitled to be compensated for their moving expenses as well as the gap in rent for a comparable temporary unit, and notice before vacating.

Those rights could, however, be compromised by newly introduced provincial legislation, which if passed, would weaken municipal rental replacement bylaws and give the province greater authority.

Full article

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

Rent strikes aren’t always an option.

I live in an area that has some decent tenant’s rights laws, and it even protects things like when your landlord won’t fix major issues in your apartment, you can withhold rent until it is fixed.

But since I use government aid vouchers to pay my rent, I can’t participate in rent strikes/rent withholding.

My apartment has some pretty serious issues: broken windows, overhead lights out, a fairly large crack in the floor next to my toilet, the shower almost always only sprays scalding water, all my appliances break frequently, the electrical system is fucked, my door lock doesn’t function properly, and I could keep going. I can’t do anything but call my maintenance guy and hope they eventually get around to it. These problems have been going on for years.

My housing is nearly unlivable, at best it’s unsafe, and there’s no end in sight. I had to stop living at my apartment for several months because of a combination of factors (I’m also being stalked by two separate people) but nothing changed when I went back. There’s no other wheelchair accessible ADA apartments available, and I’m not a high priority for other apartments anyways because I’m not currently legally homeless.

I’ve been considering signing off of my lease and sleeping outside again because it would put me at the top of the wait lists for new housing opportunities, and I qualify for other services. I’ve spent over half of my life homeless so I know what it entails.

And what’s fucked up is that this is something a rent strike might not even fix. My apartment is in high demand (less than 1% of housing is ADA accessible, wait lists in my state are about 5 years long, I’m allowed to break my lease at any time because they have a long line of people who need apartments) so there’s basically nothing I can do.

We need systemic changes.

“The Kingston Community Legal Clinic is warning residents after a Landlord and Tenant Board adjudicator decided a landlord was wrongfully attempting to evict their tenant.

“The landlord seeks possession of the rental unit so his mother can live there,” adjudicator Laura Hartslief wrote in her June 28 decision on the fate of Jason Martin’s home in the basement unit of 151 Fraser St. “I am not satisfied that it is more likely than not that she genuinely intends to live there.”

Jordan Morelli, a physics professor at Queen’s University who owns the rental unit, said he is devastated by Hartslief’s decision.

“It’s a complete outrage that we’ve lost this thing because I’ve been trying to get my parents here for two years,” Morelli said. “I really want my parents to be living in there.”

John Done of the Kingston Community Legal Clinic represented Martin at the Landlord and Tenant Board hearing. He said his clinic has seen a significant increase in evictions for landlords to renovate units or to use for their own use — which is what Morelli applied for. In many of those cases, but not all, landlords evict a tenant who is paying a lower rent, renovate the unit, and rent it out again for sometimes double the cost.

Done said that, at first, Martin was resigned to moving out, but when Done saw Martin’s case, he urged him to push back against Morelli.

“These are situations we see all of the time in a Landlord’s Own Use application, and our view is (that) once we start putting these under the microscope, a lot of them don’t have merit,” Done said. “Once Mr. Martin said he would accept our help, then there were, indeed, some things that sort of leaped off the page. … There were the hallmarks of these (types of) landlords’ applications that I don’t think they could show good faith.”

Martin, who on Wednesday said he still couldn’t believe he was successful, said Done worked wonders. Martin said, the stress of the case, which was drawn out over two years due to a scheduling overflow caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has caused Martin to lose five jobs over the two years.

“When I got that decision, I actually had to leave work,” Martin, who has been working steadily at a local fishing tackle manufacturing company since the end of May, said excitedly. “I couldn’t believe it, and I was overwhelmed. I was shaking, I couldn’t talk, my brain went to mush. I’m very happy with the decision.”

Morelli owns a total of 10 units within five properties in Kingston. He said he wanted to use Martin’s apartment as a new home for his mother, Henriette Morelli, who currently lives in a two-bedroom condominium with her husband, Edwin Morelli, in Saskatoon.”

- Steph Crosier, “Tenant wins at board hearing,” Kingston Whig-Standard. Jul 11, 2022. This was a front page story in the print edition.

///

We are happy that this story is now out in the open for all to see. It won't be the last word on the matter, that's for sure. But it clearly demonstrates why Queen's University professor and faculty association president (as well as former president of the Kingston NDP riding association) Jordan Morelli's N12 eviction notice was thrown out at the LTB. In our opinion, what this stories reveals is that Morelli is willing to exploit the housing crisis for his own financial gain. 

Prior to this instance, there was two previous times where he claimed family members were moving in to units when they never did. He paid these tenants a meagre $3000, money which they quickly burned through with their rent prices hundreds of dollars a month higher. Meanwhile, he charged higher rents to the people moving in: one unit went from $409 to $1150 a month, while another went from $670 to $1200. He made that money back within months. 

Morelli wants to claim he is a victim in all this, and actually goes so far as saying that the landlord tenant laws works well for tenants. But the facts speak for themselves: The LTB rejected his case because they do not believe his story. Additionally, close to 90 percent of tenants at the LTB have no legal representation, and if it weren't for KUT and KCLC supporting Morelli's tenant, Morelli would most likely have someone living in Martin's unit's at double the rent. 

Tenants can win when they stand up and fight. Get to know your neighbours and organize with them! In Martin's case, former tenants stood with Martin to explain what had happened to them after moving out. This sort of solidarity led to Martin staying in his apartment at a rent price he can afford. KUT stands with tenants across the city and will do what we can to help.

- official statement of the Kingston / Katarokwi Union of Tenants, July 12, 2022 (Martin is a member)

/// The tenant union had helped several other tenants of Morelli, who had also been told they would have to move out of his own properties for the same reason of family need, and the communication between tenants allowed them to learn he was using the same line on several tenants - allowing the tenants to resist his efforts or negotiate for better accommodation to leave. Martin’s is the first official victory against this particular landlord, but likely won’t be the last. Of course, Morelli is a self-pitying landlord in all of this, being quoted in the article as saying: “Somehow I’m the bad guy in all of this; they’re trying to paint me as a villain.”  Morelli is hardly the worst landlord in Kingston, Ontario, and nowhere near as powerful as a rental company like Homestead. His tactics are typical of landlords everywhere. The reason why he acts the way he does, and can act the way he does, is at base a structural issue, in which housing is an investment and a means of accumulation rather than a basic right. But Kingston is a smallish town, with a proportionately smallish, vague, fragmented, and often dysfunctional ‘left’, so Morelli’s role has been controversial and increasingly divisive. Notably, it was discovered by the tenant union that his mother, who he has been claiming he was going to move into one of these vacated units, is a retired university professor who likely doesn’t want to live in a tiny basement apartment! 

As the press release from KUT notes, Morelli is a major player in the local political scene, as former riding president for the federal NDP, as secretary of the Kingston and District Labour Council (and had the temerity to send this article to other council members, even after the Council passed a pro-tenant motion!) and at Queen’s University, where he is a professor and head of the faculty association. In those roles, he is a bad faith opponent of tenant rights, student activism, grassroots unionism, and the left-wing of the NDP (as well as the small, overlapping and fractious autonomist, anarchist, communist and decolonial groups in the area). For instance, this was his response to the Ontario government, controlled by Conservatives, capping rent increases!

If there was any justice in the world or social democracy and labour unionism was not so pathetically degenerated, this kind of coverage should get him kicked out of the KDLC or NDP.

I finished reading Evicted, and it made me think a lot about the concept of landlords and work. The argument from landlords that their job is property maintenance, vs. the claim that maintaining a property you own isn't a job at all.

Both of the landlords that feature prominently in the book manage their own properties. The author describes one that traveled around on the first of the month to collect rents from tenants, how she kept accounts, how frequently she had to appear in eviction court. How her husband quit his job to manage properties for her and spent his time renovating units, finding people who would work for cheap, and getting them ready for move-in. This encompassed their whole lives, and probably would not have left time for wage labor, even if it was something either one of them were inclined to do.

And they did have bills, taxes and fees they had to pay the city. The author describes a bill for over $11K one time, for $20K another time that almost cleared out the landlord's account before the first of the month rolled around and gave her more money. If they let the rent slide, they would be in the red.

The author also described how this landlord shirked on maintenance, how she rented units that were definitely not up to code to desperate people, how she evicted a woman who asked to have a broken window fixed because the woman's mother called the inspector. By doing as little as possible to maintain units and charging as much as possible, this landlord and her husband were able to make a killing off of poor, desperate people. They had a second house in Florida and took vacations to Jamaica while their tenants lived in apartments full of bugs and without appliances and with sinks and tubs that wouldn't drain. A young woman living in one of these units had never seen Lake Michigan, despite living 30 minutes away by bus.

I think the landlord and her husband would claim that they put a lot of work into their properties, that it's a job, and honestly, I think they're right, and I don't think that matters. What matters is the kind of work they chose. Before the landlord became a landlord, she was a teacher. One of her tenants was a former student. She decided to leave this work and become a landlord instead, a lifestyle that allowed her to keep a nice home she never had to worry about losing, with a fridge full of take-out bags in a kitchen she and her husband were almost never home to actually cook in. It allowed her to pay for vacations and second homes and stay at the casino until 4am.

It required putting her boot on other people's necks. Because if she lifted it even a little, if she let someone breathe, those bills in the tens of thousands would come for her, and she wouldn't be able to pay. But she chose that, she put herself there. She made the choice of the property owner, the choice of the capitalist, who may spend long hours managing a workforce or a business, but ultimately lives better by taking from others.

The work landlords choose is the work of exploitation, which makes them the enemy of the working class and the renting class in the same manner as capitalists. I find that a better and more important distinction than how we should categorize the nature of their 'work'.

Tenants! Know your rights 💪

“With pressure mounting and the clock ticking, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Friday to dramatically expand protections for renters, heading off what advocates had feared could become a wave of evictions.

The vote comes just 11 days before the city’s long-standing COVID-19 anti-eviction rules were set to expire. The new policy is expected to go into effect before the Jan. 31 deadline.

Friday’s vote underscores the growing political might of the council’s progressive bloc, which successfully championed a more aggressive set of policies. The new legislation is also widely viewed as a victory for tenant rights advocates.

The COVID-19 emergency rules were passed amid unprecedented disruption at the start of the pandemic, along with similar measures at other levels of government. But Los Angeles’ anti-eviction protections remained in place even as other measures expired, with local leaders wary of exacerbating homelessness and overcrowding problems that had already reached crisis proportions.

The council’s action was preceded by more than two hours of public comment, with dozens of renters elucidating fears and making impassioned pleas to the council to pass a muscular policy before the emergency order sunsets.

“I’m in a wheelchair. I’m 67 years old. And as soon as you guys lift the protections, I’ll be out on the street. ... We are human beings and we deserve to live with dignity,” Maria Briones told the council, imploring members  to pass the legislation...

The new policy will establish a minimum threshold for eviction for tenants who fall behind on rent, and require landlords to pay relocation fees in some situations in which a large rent increase would result in the tenant’s displacement.

Landlords will no longer be allowed to evict tenants in any rental property, including single-family homes, unless there was unpaid rent, documented lease violations, owner move-ins or other specific reasons. That provision will go into effect after six months or when a lease expires, whichever comes first.

Some renters, including those in rent-stabilized units, already have “just cause” eviction protections, but making them universal expands the protections to about 400,000 additional units, according to the city’s Housing Department, [which in the densely packed city will likely protect well over 1 million people].

The new policy will also block evictions until February 2024 for tenants who have unauthorized pets or who added residents who aren’t listed on leases, and create a new timeline for paying rent owed from the emergency period. Tenants would have until Aug. 1 to pay back-rent accumulated between March 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, and until Feb. 1, 2024, to pay back-rent accumulated between Oct. 1, 2021, and Jan. 31, 2023...

Mayor Karen Bass plans to sign the ordinance in the coming days.

“I want to congratulate our City Council — especially the Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee Councilmember Nithya Raman — on passing these important protections, which are crucial to combatting a potential spike in homelessness in our city,” Bass said in a statement. “In order to confront this crisis, we must continue [to] get people housed but we also must stop people from becoming homeless in the first place.”” -via Los Angeles Times, 1/20/23

“The cockroach and bedbug infestations in Tammy Brown's Hamilton apartment have all but destroyed her life, she says.

Roaches have taken over her fridge and stove, contaminating her food and making it impossible to cook for her two adult daughters, one of whom lives with a disability, and her four-year-old grandson……Brown has called the city four times in under a year, begging for it to order the landlord at 221 Melvin Ave. to fix the pest problems.

She said neither public health nor bylaw has ever responded……There's a reason she hasn't heard back. The City of Hamilton isn't enforcing its own pest control rules — and hasn't for over four years, staff told CBC Hamilton……. according to public health manager, there's little evidence to suggest rats, cockroaches and bedbugs carry pathological diseases, and the idea that residents could experience negative mental health impacts is a "novel, developing notion"…”

Please read. I am one of the people in this horrible living condition, being harassed by these owners, & denied my mail. I’ve filed complaints with the post office, police, postmaster general, & US Postal Inspector. Help get the word out about this atrocity

#​natural bridge hotel #nbh #nbhcc #va

The Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan looks into the effects of the so-called "housing crisis" on urban renters in Canada. Through clear explanations, Tranjan uncovers the social, political, and economic factors affecting renters and highlights the historic and current inequality between renters and the different types of landlords. The book is easy to follow and explains complex ideas in simple terms, however, the section on possible solutions mainly lists tenant-rights organizations without giving direct advice on what can be done to solve the problems discussed.

Rated 4/5 stars, Tranjan starts an important conversation on the absurdity of the Canadian housing market. The Tenant Class is a helpful read for anyone interested in understanding the challenges faced by urban renters.

-Wayfarer ❤️

I just did it

I just fucking did it

Even if I died before the end, my efforts did this

Nothing you did ever stopped me

And even better I’m glad I wasn’t there

I’ve had weeks you would never have given me. Weeks I would’ve spent miserable with stress, calls, and emails, with you

It doesn’t matter I wasn’t there for the end, my death meant something

It matters that my efforts mattered. That I wasn’t just pushing to nothing, blowing smoke on mirrors

I thought I had failed, but instead I won the right to enjoy my victory

I did come out stronger after all

August 7, 1922 Home, Sweet Home by Harry J. Tuthill: "Celebrating for Something Worth While"

[ID: George Bungle gets home and hangs his hat on the wall. In the other room, Jo poses fashionably. /end] George: What did Old Egg, the landlord, say when you told him I wouldn't sign the new lease until I understood it? Jo: He said he'd wait ONE month. No more.

[ID: George holds a long contract in his hands and looks up, exasperated. /end] George: I showed it to Homer Tarpoon today. His uncle is a big lawyer. Homer didn't have his glasses with him, but he explained parts of it, anyhow. He said a tenant has got the same rights under this lease as a guy that likes pie has got in Russia. Jo: Well, there's a lot of good things in it, too.

[ID: Jo tries to explain things as George waves her off at the other end of the room. /end] Jo: And believe me, I'm not the only one in the neighborhood who's glad this new lease prohibits tenants from SINGING, that's fine. George: Phooie! That's the nuttiest part of it.

George: What has a poor goof that signs one of these '22 model leases GOT TO SING ABOUT? [ID: George holds the contract up with disdain while Jo glares at with thoughtful anger. /end]