It all began with the roach rally
They laugh about the roach rally now, but it didn’t seem funny at the time. Every morning, the residents of a neglected apartment complex in Scarborough would wake up to find cockroaches darting across the floor. They’d scour, spray, complain to the landlord and curse. Marva Burnett, one of the feistier tenants, would catch as many as she could, put them in zip- lock bags and plunk them on the property manager’s desk, demanding that something be done. Nothing ever was.
Then, last summer, ACORN got involved. It is a community self- help network that organizes low- income Canadians apartment by apartment, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city. It now has seven chapters with 700 members in Toronto. The Scarborough-Danforth chapter decided to hold a rally to get rid of the roaches. It urged as many of its members as possible to gather outside the infested building on July 7. Together, they’d march in and confront the landlord.
Fifty people showed up with homemade placards (“ Evict the roaches, not the tenants”). The property manager told them he couldn’t let them all in because they’d scare the tenants. They ignored him. They entered en masse and presented their demands. Two days later, the exterminators arrived.
It would be an exaggeration to say 1340 Danforth Rd. is a desirable place to live. But it is relatively clean and the bugs are gone.
“Before ACORN came along, we didn’t think we could get anything accomplished. Now landlords know we’re all going to be in their faces until they fix things,” Burnett said.
That is the way ACORN ( Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) works. Organizers show people how to mobilize, but they don’t set the priorities or pick the battles. That is up to the members. The concept was developed in the United States 35 years ago. There are now branches in 75 American cities. ACORN arrived in Canada a year and a half ago, in the person of Judy Duncan, a dynamic young Winnipegger who had seen it in operation in Seattle as a student. She decided to start a chapter in Toronto.
It was lonely work at first. She’d go into rundown apartment buildings and knock on doors, asking tenants if they had problems and offering to help. Sharon Shrieve, who lives in Weston, remembers when Duncan turned up at her door. “ At first I thought she was a crazy lady who thought she could change the world. But every time there was a major issue in our building, Judy was there. People started listening. Before you knew it, we had a group of 80.” With ACORN’s help, the tenants took their landlord to the Ontario Rent Tribunal over the decrepit state of their apartments and won. They set up teams of floor monitors so people wouldn’t be afraid to venture outside their doors. They started talking about programs for their kids and regular, rigorous building inspections.
“ People who’d never said a word and didn’t know their neighbours were suddenly opening up, pouring their hearts out,” Shrieve said. Duncan no longer works on her own. She has two full- time colleagues, an office in the city’s east end and a small army of volunteer door- knockers.
It costs $10 a month to belong to ACORN. But if people can’t afford to pay, they can still join as non- voting members and get all the benefits.
Although landlord- tenant issues are ACORN’s biggest concern, they are not its only focus. It has launched a campaign to get Ottawa and Queen’s Park to crack down on payday loan shops that charge exorbitant interest rates. It has organized community cleanups. It has taken a delegation to Mayor David Miller’s office to ensure that the concerns of underserviced neighbourhoods are reflected in the new City of Toronto Act.
Burnett’s dream is that, through ACORN, she and her neighbours can show Torontonians that Scarborough is a place where good people are doing good things. “ If you focus on what’s positive, you can show that there’s an alternative to crime and violence,” she said.
Shrieve has a city- wide vision. She’d like to see red, yellow or green inspection notices (like restaurants have) posted in every apartment building. She’d like the option of paying her rent into a special account, run by the city, if her landlord doesn’t keep the building in decent shape. She’d like community programs for kids in high- rises. Something is stirring in Toronto’s troubled inner suburbs.
It sounds like hope. Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.