These are the Conditions People are Forced to Live in

Yesterday, March 20, 2014, two of my neighbours were killed in a rooming house fire in the neighbourhood of Kensington Market. Twelve people had to be rescued from the burning semi-detached home, 18 people reportedly lived there including 2 children. This is a huge tragedy and sadly tragedies like this continue all across the city.

(rooming house on St. Andrews (Kensington Market)

(side of building)

(side of building and where my neighbour I said hi to the most lived. )

In 2007 a fire broke out in a rooming house at the corner of Spadina and Baldwin, people were stuck on the roof of the building and needed to be rescued from their rooms, no one died in that fire but many of its residents ended up homeless unable to secure affordable accommodation.   The building was continuously used as a squat until the most recent fire, it has had two subsequent fires since the initial fire posing as a hazard for the rest of the block, one that I fear as I live next door. But it is also land that could be used to build a new building with adequate affordable housing that people living in poverty could once again reside in. These abandoned properties sit empty and derelict all across Toronto.

(rooming house on the corner of Spadina and Baldwin that was destroyed by fires.)

Councillor Adam Vaughan, the councillor for the ward, took to the media yesterday demanding further licensing for rooming houses and never once in his statements to the media did he say anything about the need for adequate affordable housing. We are in the midst of a housing crisis. Everywhere you look in this city you see one condo development after another for people who can “afford” to buy their home. These new developments are often being built on and or existing where more affordable housing once stood or could. And many of these units are sitting empty  and/or  bought up by property companies and rented at high rental rates.

Many people in Toronto are priced out of the housing market in a city with no rent control, a less than 1% vacancy rate, and 90,000 households on the waiting list for social housing. A wait list that will take decades to clear. The building of social housing ground to a halt in the 90’s by all levels of government and “revitalization” projects are decreasing the social housing stock. Our emergency shelters are overflowing and turning people away nightly. They are full because of the very lack of affordable housing.

Many of us renters are renting places that are not adequately repaired or maintained. Desperate for accommodations people are renting places that are not suitable for living in, cockroach infested, bed bug infested, broken appliances, lack of exits or windows, apartments and rooms divided in to small spaces that do not equate to the amount of rent they are charging. Competition for rental units leaves many people scrambling for places to live and taking what they can even if it’s not suitable to live in. (like the rooming house on St. Andrews) It’s a landlord and property owners paradise out there. They have to do minimal work to maintain your home, can rent out "illegal" units or units not up to code if they want and can charge basically whatever they want because the demand is high and so are our rents. Landlord rights give them a right to also increase your rent yearly. You obtain a rental unit at one price and your rent can keep increasing every year. It doesn’t matter if your income isn’t increasing or that your unit hasn’t been maintained or that you live in a dump.

If you know the system and how to navigate it, you know that you can contact the city to have an inspector come to your home to deal with complaints of maintenance and repairs but you also know that these inspectors have very little power in terms of fining or forcing your landlord/property manager to actually repair or maintain your unit. And it can be a risk to start having inspectors in as this can sometimes escalate abuse from a landlord/property manager to harass and work on ways to force you out. There is very little protection from this. If you are living in Toronto Community Housing, you are often waiting months, even years for repairs and maintenance on your unit and/ building. This is unacceptable. Legal clinics that offer services to people on low income to help fight landlord tenant issues are facing proposed cuts by the province and reduced ability to meet the ever increasing demand for services. The local legal clinic helped my neighbours and I fight our landlord when faced with an illegal eviction. They continued to help us for a few more years to deal with our landlord who not only neglected our units, was constantly finding ways to disrupt the enjoyment of our homes but was also verbally abusive to us. We know the system and how to navigate it, (I had a familiarity with it through work) but many people do not and there are many many barriers that exist to them accessing it. 

The people who lived next door to me, on St. Andrews in what is being called an “illegal” rooming house were reportedly paying $400-$500 a month for a small room with access to a shared kitchen and shared washroom. Apparently there were 10 small rooms on two levels with a narrow dark stair case. One entrance and a roof exit with limited access. 18 people living in this space. People are forced to live in these conditions because people cannot afford the rents that exist today. They cannot find reasonable affordable accommodations and many people are living in poverty without enough income to pay the exorbitant amount of rent required to live in a “better place”.

The issue with the building on St. Andrews was not just about licensing, or the harmful neglect, greed and exploitation by the property owners. It is a continued war on people who cannot afford to live in this city. It's a continued war on poor people, on working people. On people who cannot afford the rent due to low incomes, low wages and low social assistance rates. And it is the neglect of all levels of government, on all political parties, in making housing (and income) a priority and actually doing something about it. This has gone on for decades. It has created the conditions in which landlords and property owners can get away with renting inadequate and unsafe housing. The type of housing that can lead to someone's death. Even Councillor Vaughan had the opportunity to make housing a political issue, make the links and he didn’t. This is a disservice to those who lost their lives and their homes yesterday in the 3 alarm fire.  

And while we continue to live in this capitalist system with  property and land ownership, of landlords and property owners, we as tenants, as residents, as neighbours need to be organizing and making demands that the city, and the government improve the conditions of all current housing rental stock, give back tenants rights, rights lost during the Harris government and never returned by the Liberals, to bring back rent control and implement licensing for all landlords and property owners and to build some affordable, safe, accessible and adequate housing.  I would go further and suggest that there needs to be a moratorium on the development of condos, an increase in rental property and revitalization projects should only exist to improve the housing conditions of the people already residing there. And the same energy that has gone in to fighting big box stores in Kensington Market with multiple  community meetings, petitions, fundraising, organizing efforts should be the same energy used to fight for better housing in our neighbourhood. Kensington Market isn't just about the "businesses" it's also and more importantly about the people who live here.

These tragedies will continue. Everyone should have a home. One that is safe, adequate and affordable.

May the two men whose lives were lost, rest in peace.

People should be angry. We should be uniting and fighting for better, adequate and affordale living conditions for everyone. Enough is enough.

In Sol,

Zoë Dodd