'People are so desperate to keep their rent affordable': What you need to know about rent strikes in Toronto
CTV
As rent prices have risen in Toronto, instances of tenants withholding rent in protest have become more common.
As rent prices have risen in Toronto, instances of tenants withholding rent in protest have become more common.
It’s called a “rent strike” and it is a practice that has gained widespread attention in the city in recent years, as the cost of a one-bedroom apartment surged to nearly $2.500.
In some cases, tenants use rent strikes to bring attention to poor conditions in their buildings. But for most, it’s a tool used to protest larger rent increases.
Sometimes rent strikes drag on for weeks or months but in other cases they can go for more than a year, in part due to a backlog of cases before the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB)
“It comes with the risk of eviction and landlords often try to criminalize it,” lawyer Samuel Mason, who has worked as a tenant rights lawyer for six years, both with Parkdale Community Legal Services and the Tenant Lawyer Professional Corporation, told CP24.com. “Landlords try to persecute tenants engaged in this type of organizing. … The social cost of what they’re doing, they do not want it to be known.”
Mason said that tenants, most often working-class ones, choose to stage a rent strike with the intention of making a strong statement and it usually has to do with them disagreeing with a landlord’s application to increase the rent significantly above what is permitted annually by the province.
