But Housing Is A Human Right.
And there are laws to protect Tenants that landlords must follow.
And if the do not they will be punished. They will be punished if you the applicant or tenant TAKE ACTION.
Landlords are taking millions of dollars out the hands of hard working Tenants struggling to survive each month.
DO NOT BE AFRAID TO PROTECT YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS!
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Evicted Heron Gate residents file human rights complaint over landlord's 'hyper-gentrification'
Blair Crawford
Updated: April 2, 2019
Fourteen former tenants of Heron Gate Village have launched a human rights complaint about their eviction, claiming the landlord forced them out of their racialized and largely immigrant community in a “hyper-gentrification” of the area in order to build high-income housing for white residents.
The application was made Monday with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal and claims the landlord, Timbercreek, is discriminatory in its plan for the property and that the City of Ottawa, which is named as a respondent, has been complicit in that discrimination. The 42-page application claims Timbercreek’s plan for the redevelopment violates the Ontario Human Rights Code as well as international human rights law.
“The mass, forced displacement of an entire community of immigrants, people of colour, families, and people receiving public assistance amounts to systemic discrimination,” the application says.
“The Applicants ask the Tribunal to determine whether a landlord has the right to displace a large group of residents of a low-income, family-oriented, racialized and immigrant community in order to create a predominantly affluent, adult-oriented, white and non-immigrant community in its stead.”
Lawyer Daniel Tucker-Simmons, who filed the application on behalf of the Herongate Tenants Coalition, said the case could be one of the most significant to ever to argue that housing is a human right.
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“With a strong ruling from the tribunal we’d put an end to this predatory form of gentrification in Ontario,” Tucker Simmons said.
“This is a type of development that disproportionately affects racialized and immigrant communities. We can show that. And that’s prohibited by the Ontario Human Rights Code.”
Timbercreek acquired the Heron Gate rental development near the convergence of Heron and Walkley roads in 2012 and 2013 and spent $45 million to upgrade the property. It demolished 86 of the townhouses in 2016 and another 150 units this year, after having evicted or relocated the remaining tenants in 2018.
The 14 claimants in the human rights case were all forced out of their homes in the 2018 Phase 2 evictions.
The application alleges Timbercreek plans to replace the townhouses with housing geared to higher incomes to lure affluent residents from nearby Alta Vista.
“Timbercreek’s plan is thus to gentrify the Heron Gate neighbourhood on a mass scale and at an accelerated pace” it says, a process the claim calls “hyper-gentrification.”
Most of Heron Gate was built in the 1960s (Confusingly, in the city neighbourhood known as Herongate) and by the 1990s had begun to attract tenants from the influx of Somali immigrants displaced by civil war. The application describes the growth of the Herongate neighbourhood as affordable and “welcoming and familiar to new Canadians.” More than 90 per cent of the evicted Heron Gate residents were people of colour.
The applicants allege the evictions caused harm, mental illness and humiliation to those displaced.
“Aside from the purely economic costs, mass dislocation erodes the ethnic enclave and undermines its ability to form the social and cultural institutions and businesses that define it,” it says.
In an emailed statement sent Tuesday evening, Timbercreek senior managing director Ugo Bizzarri said the company is “aware of the application filing … to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) by 14 former tenants of Heron Gate. Due to the nature of the HRTO application and review process, we are not currently in a position to comment further at this point in time.”
At recent open houses on the new development, the company says it plans to offer “plenty of green space” and that 20 per cent of the new units will be for affordable housing.
“What do they mean by affordable?” That’s a critical question,” Tucker-Simmons said. “Remember, before this, 100 per cent of the units were affordable.
“We’re not saying developers can’t invest in their property and evict people. But if you’re going to go into a community, you have to do your best to preserve its social and racial composition up to the point of undue hardship, which is the test for the Ontario Human Rights Code.”
The claim accuses Timbercreek of deliberately neglecting the property and the city for failing to take corrective action.
It seeks $50,000 in damage for each of the claimants “for injury to dignity, feelings, and self-respect” and that Timbercreek build new rental units that it offer to the displaced tenants at the same cost.
It also asks that the city take measures to “prevent the destruction of ethnic enclaves” and that it ensures proper maintenance for “communities inhabited primarily by people of colour, people receiving public assistance and/or immigrants.”
The tribunal will now review the application before serving it on the two respondents. They will each have 35 days to file a response. An actual hearing could be a year or two away, Tucker-Simmons said. More former tenants are expected to join the application, he said.
The city said it would not have anything to say about the case.
“The City does not comment on matters of ongoing litigation,” deputy city solicitor David White said in an email.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-ne ... rification
TENANTS YOU SHOULD GET $50,000 IF YOU WERE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST!
FILE A HUMAN RIGHTS COMPLAINT...IT'S FREE!
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