What are rent strikes — and do they work?

In Toronto, about 200 residents of a highrise are on strike — they're refusing to pay rent. It's their form of protest against the owners of the building, where longtime tenants have experienced six above-guideline rent increases in the past decade.

In another part of the city, more than 100 tenants in an apartment complex have stopped paying rent to protest proposed above-guideline increases of almost 10 per cent over the last two years, according to a tenant advocacy group.

The strikers are saying enough is enough. And it's not the first time tenants in Canada have staged a rent strike.

More than 300 tenants in 12 buildings in the Toronto neighbourhood of Parkdale went on strike for three months in 2017 — and successfully fought a substantial rent increase. It happened again in Hamilton, Ont., the following year, though with a different outcome.

Rent strikes in Canada are on the increase — and with good reason, says Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Ottawa.

"It's a bold movement," Tranjan, author of The Tenant Class, said in an interview with CBC News. "I think it speaks to how much they have been pushed to the limit by the overall housing situation and by a specific landlord that they would take such bold movement to withhold rent."

But such strikes are not without risks. Here's what a rent strike entails, and what one could mean for tenants.

A rent strike can be as simple as it sounds — a group of tenants refusing to pay their rent until their conditions are met. 

Oftentimes, they involve tenants of a building banding together to take action on their own. Other times, tenants officially form a union and collaborate with housing advocates or other activists. Their efforts can be financially supported through donations or membership dues.

In the case of one of the groups of tenants currently on strike in Toronto, the York South-Weston Tenant Union is an umbrella group of smaller tenant associations. It invites people to become members for free but also encourages optional contributions.

The tenants on strike are asking their landlord to drop an application for another above-guideline rent increase, along with compensation for services they have lost during construction.

Maintenance is also a common issue for tenants who wage rent strikes. 

Rent strikes have a long history in Canada and other countries. In the 1860s, tenant farmers on Prince Edward Island formed a union and waged a rent strike against absentee farmers; the Island's government eventually took over the land. 

Tenants have staged strikes throughout the world, and throughout history, including strikes in Glasgow's tenement buildings in the 1880s, in Barcelona in 1931 and in Harlem, N.Y., in 1963-4. And in the United Kingdom, university students launched a string of rent strikes between 2015 and 2018.