Residents crash open house to reveal ‘truth’
Issue warning about living conditions at four highrises
An open house to attract new tenants to an east-end apartment complex was thwarted on Saturday by current rent-striking residents, looking to share the “truth” about what it’s like to live there.
“We’re sure you’d probably make a great neighbour, and don’t want to see you screwed over,” reads the brochure that tenants were handing out to potential renters.
The number of tenants withholding their rent has now doubled as the strike enters its second month. Tenants in about 140 units are now refusing to pay at Stoney Creek Towers, highrise buildings just east of Centennial Parkway and south of Barton Street East that include 50 Violet Dr., 77 Delawana Dr., 11 Grandville Ave. and 40 Grandville Ave.
They are protesting their landlord’s push for higher rates, a nearly 10 per cent rent increase over two years. They argue the increase is unjust because they live in squalor.
Both CLV Group, the property manager, and InterRent, the real estate income trust that owns the four buildings, did not respond to several attempts for comment over the weekend.
Phalahnada Roy stood at the open house with a sign and chanted the slogan: “Roaches, bedbugs and mold, oh my.”
Roy just moved into the building at 11 Grandville with his father, 84, who’s been living there for 15 years. He’s been complaining about an infestation of cockroaches, leaky windows and broken doors for longer than his son can remember.
He is trying to convince his dad to join the rent strike, but for now they are paid up to date.
“He’s afraid of these people,” Roy said. “But we can’t afford to pay it (the hike), especially those of us living on fixed income, like my dad.”
The increase being sought by CLV Group and InterRent is above the annual guideline set by the Ontario government, which is 1.8 per cent this year. To go beyond the provincial cap, CLV needs permission for an “aboveguideline increase” (AGI).
Landlords must show they’ve made significant renovations to address structural problems, health and safety issues, and plumbing, heating or electrical systems — not simply cosmetic changes or maintenance.
But the striking residents argue CLV is asking them to pay for just that.
Tenants say their landlord’s AGI asks them to eat the cost for cosmetic upgrades in common areas, including grass, planters and lobby fireplaces, while they endure infestations, broken elevators and appliances, old and drafty windows, and busted doors and floor tiles.
The upgrades carried out by the company, tenants say, are meant to beautify the building in order to attract new, higherpaying tenants.
“We want to warn potential new tenants not to believe the glossy advertisements,” said Emily Power, an organizer with Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network who took part in the tenants’ open house protest. “And we want to make sure CLV knows we aren’t backing down.”
In an email to The Spectator last month, CLV community relations manager Roseanne MacDonald-Holtman wrote, “Repair requests are promptly addressed and we always do our best to provide our residents with a safe and secure living environment and take great pride in the service we provide to them.”
Like other older buildings in Ontario, the Stoney Creek Towers “require substantial ongoing investment and rehabilitation, “she added.
Superintendents are no longer on-site at the four buildings, and tenants say tour guides for the open house had reportedly left when the residents congregated outside 40 Grandville.
A microphone was passed around at the protest, and some residents became emotional over their living conditions. They insisted that the version of the buildings that new tenants see is much different from the reality of living there.
One said she has only one working element on her stove and has been eating soup for months on end. Several reported unpredictable elevators that sometimes don’t work altogether.
“There’s not enough being fixed,” said Sharon MacKenzie, who moved into the penthouse on the 15th floor last November. The winter was hard, she said, with frost and snow building on the old windows.
“When you move out is when they want to do the fixing.”
MacKenzie said she paid the rent in May despite the strike because she was worried about the consequences. She has a money order ready to pay June’s rent but plans to hold onto it until changes are made.
Linda Habibi, who lives at 77 Delawana, said she has had enough. She said she’s used three vacation days to be home when, according to the landlord, someone was supposed to come to do repairs, but no one showed up.
Plaster on the walls below her old windows has crumbled due to frost and moisture, and when she unplugged her hair dryer, the socket faceplate came right off. Habibi said she wished a tenant had told her what to really expect from the building.
“There is a real injustice here,” Power, the tenants’ organizer, said. “They (tenants) are saying, ‘We’re not going to be some extra cash in your bank account for your investors.’”