April 8, 2020 • 39 mins
Robert interviews Alykhan Pabani about organizing a rent strike.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart Radio.
Well Together, Everything So down? Don Um. Can we get
(00:21):
you to introduce yourself first? Yeah, UM, my name is
Ali khan Um. I live in Toronto in a neighborhood
called Parkdale. UM. I'm a community organizer or I do
a lot of work with tenants and eviction prevention. Um.
(00:44):
I'm also a musician, played the piano and the drums
and the guitar and playing a couple of musical groups
which are currently on hold unfortunately. I kind of wonder
if you'll just sort of walk us through the story
of how you your your your fellow uh le c's.
(01:04):
I don't Yeah, I don't know what term to use,
but how how y'all kind of got together and and
and set this thing up? Like right right now we're
seeing all these kind of distributed rent strikes and I
guess i'd like h y'all story for that. Yeah. No,
I appreciate the opportunity to talk about UM. Uh So,
just I guess off the top, I should probably press
(01:26):
preface that I'm certainly no expert on on this. I mean,
I have some experience, but I don't purport to know
like the best practices that everyone should follow. I mean,
I'm learning as I go, just like anyone else. UM.
And these are very unprecedented times, so a lot of
that are used to this work have also had to
(01:49):
do a lot of relearning and adjusting our our protocols
and stuff to really meet the needs. UM. So yeah,
I guess I could start from yeah, realizing the situation
we were in. UM, things kind of clicked for me.
UM as this was getting to I guess are part
(02:14):
are part of the world, And as more people were
getting infected here um and across Turtle Island, UM, it
started really dawning on me the amount of people, UM
that would not be able to pay their rent because
of all the businesses that were closing and the orders
that we're coming from above UM closing all non essential
(02:36):
services UM. And uh yeah, people just not wanting to
leave their homes and conduct regular activities. So I just figured,
you know, this was going to lead to a massive
crisis down the road of people having defaulted on their
rent during this time and then facing eviction in large numbers. UM.
(02:57):
And so my community specifically and Hearkdale is it has
a large volume of of newcomers and low low income folks.
It's very diverse community, UM, and a lot of people
here have high needs. UM. It's a very working class neighborhood. UM.
A lot of racialized people from different communities. We have
(03:18):
a very large Tibetan community. In fact, I think it's
the largest in North America. UM. But yeah, so we're particular,
particularly vulnerable to this issue. So I'm sorry if I'm
rambling on or whatever, but I just kind of that's
kind of where I was starting at. UM. I was
trying to think, you know, how can we mitigate this
(03:39):
thing that's coming down the line inevitably. So I decided
that I had to talk to my neighbors UM in
my building. But I had to figure out a safe
way to do it, obviously, because we can't do flyering
like we we usually do, or we flyer the buildings
and organized lobby meetings and and have like these interactive
(04:02):
look like processes to get people engaged. UM. So right,
because you're worried about actually spreading the virus, so you
can't yeah yeah, yeah, So there's some there's some information
out there that the virus can live on paper for
a certain amount of time, and so to play it safe.
(04:22):
Like myself and many of the organizers that around our community,
we've kind of decided to avoid flying when it all possible.
I mean, like we still are doing a lot of postering,
which is a very integral part of this to make
it work, but none of this kind of uh these
smaller flyers that are meant to be distributed and kind
of go from hand to hand kind of thing. So
(04:45):
um so yeah, I um realized that that was the barrier.
So I got ahold of some protective or some ppe
like face mask and like gloves and stuff like this,
and uh, I went onto my lobby area, which I mean,
it's different, It's going to be different for everybody I
think that's interested in doing something similar. But my lobby
(05:09):
is fairly sizeable, so like there was enough room for
me to both catch people on the way in and
out of the building, but also keep my distance so
that no one is no one is compromised. Um. Other
people might have different layouts for their common spaces, so
they could use maybe like the area outside the building
(05:29):
near the front door to catch people on the way
in and out where there's more room to keep your
safe distance and stuff like that. But um, Yeah, that's
very key obviously, and I was very conscious of of that.
Um And so yeah, just camp being out in the
lobby for for like hours a day, just trying to
(05:50):
get some contact with my neighbors. Um. And so as
people are coming and going, what I what I was
doing is I would introduce myself right away as some
was one of their number neighbors that lives in the
same building, I'd give my unit number. I mean, a
lot of my neighbors already recognize me from previous things
that we've done in our building and and uh and that,
(06:13):
and we've kept ties and stuff. But I also have
a lot of new neighbors that I haven't met yet
until this this spout of organizing. So it's important to
kind of break that barrier right away, UM, so that
they're not suspicious that you're kind of trying to to
something nefarious or whatever. Um. And so once you've broken
(06:35):
that barrier, I just kind of made that pitch. Do
you think a lot of people suspect? Like did you
did you feel that sort of suspicion from folks when
you started approaching people in a lot of cases, See,
I'm like, I'm I'm also involved in UM a few
different mutual aid efforts in the community that are aside
from this and kind of overlap with this as well. UM.
(06:58):
And so over the phone, I feel like what I've
been hearing is a lot of people have been receiving
questionable phone calls from UM, like scam artists. There's a
lot of weird things going around right now. UM. So
even when you're calling to offer help and support and stuff,
it takes a little while to kind of really develop
that trust. UM too. You have to be very clear
(07:22):
about who you are, who you work for, UM, what
you're offering, the fact that it's free, you know, UM,
that kind of thing. UM. But in terms of organizing
my building, I think the hesitation is just it's it's
not like a common thing where there's someone sitting in
your lobby trying to catch you on the way and
now trying to organize the rent strike, so that I
(07:44):
think they're just kind of taken aback by someone stopping
them as there about their daily activities type of thing. UM.
But like I said, like I mean, I've kept close
contact with with many of my neighbors, so UM, a
lot of them did recognize me and the ones that
didn't recognize me right way. UM, I kind of put
their mind at ease by saying, like, listen, you know, UM,
(08:04):
I'm your neighbor. I live on Explorer and ex Unit,
and I'm just trying to organize our building to to
fight back against it. So ining situation, um that our
landlords putting us in. So yeah, um yeah, so you
(08:27):
give your pitch you ask. I was asking my neighbors
how they feel about the situation, UM, what their experiences
are like, are they having trouble are they going to
have trouble paying April's rent? Um? If so, like what
what what have they thought of? Two that? What were
you getting from people in terms of like their actual
(08:48):
level of fear over April and their ability to kind
of make ship mate you know? Yeah, so a lot
of it. I mean I had some pretty good conversations. Um.
The The issue is is uh that I was finding
um is the conversations that were more kind of UM,
(09:09):
I don't want to say fulsome but like, uh, I
guess more lengthy and engaged. UM we're coming from and
I'm generalizing here, uh, tenants that UM, we're kind of
looking at this as kind of a possibility to to
take a principle stand and while they may be struggling financially, um,
(09:33):
to some extent, they would be able to kind of
weather this storm at least for for the the short term. UM.
And I found that a lot of the tenants I
spoke to where the conversations weren't as long and weren't
um uh like, we're kind of more um from tenants
(09:55):
that may have had language barriers UM and are speaking
English as a second language. UM. So it was more
kind of me trying to really simplify what I was
trying to say and make them understand, um, what we're
trying to organize here, so that I'm sure that we're
on the same page. And the responses I got from them, UM,
(10:19):
we're essentially like a confirmation that yes, people are in
fact suffering. Many of the people that weren't UM able
to express themselves as fluently made it still made it
very clear that they were in a position, a very
vulnerable position where they weren't going to be able to
pay rent next month. So UM. It's it's tricky when
(10:41):
you're because the point I'm essentially trying to make is
oftentimes the most vulnerable people are less able, the least
able to engage with the process of organizing because they've
got so you know, it's tough to find that balance
between trying to get them to engage and keeping them
in the loop and uh and getting consent from them
(11:04):
to do things, um, but also respecting their space and
understanding that they have, um, they have other pressing matters
in a completely different situation than you do. Right, So
I don't know, UM, I don't know if that kind
of answers yea question a little bit. Essentially, what I'm
saying is like a lot of people are struggled. I
think everyone is struggling. UM, but my my building particularly
(11:28):
just because of the speed at which our area is
being gentrified, my building particularly and a lot of other
buildings in heart Tale are very stratified. So you have
people that have just come in recently that are paying
three times the amount of rent as someone that's been
here for you know, ten fifteen years, um, and they
have identical units. So you you get a number of
(11:51):
your your fellow uh, your neighbors to agree that, like,
this is not an acceptable situation. We we we want
to change this, and uh, like what are those what
are those first meetings like for for y'all as you like,
especially since you can't like be sort of all together
in the same space, like how are you how are
(12:13):
you kind of bridging that gap? Um, because there's like
a lot of it's kind of a risky thing to do,
because if you wind up, you know, on your own
without actually having the support of your neighbors, you could
just wind up getting kicked out of your place. Like
I feel like there's a level of risk here, um,
And it's it's got to be kind of a difficult
thing to to get everyone on the same page when
(12:35):
you can't physically be in the same space. Yeah, of course, Um,
I agree, there's a lot of risks here and they
need to be considered responsibly. Um. So, like I said,
there's there there are people coming from very different places
in my building specifically, and so part of making sure
(12:56):
everyone's protected is to bring them all into this same
calm versation. Um. So, what I was trying to make
clear in these initial conversations in the lobby is that
we're organizing we're organizing this rent direct not only out
of necessity, but also out of solidarity with those who
who will not be able to pay rent. UM. So
(13:18):
whether you cannot pay rent or whether you can pay rent. UM,
If you can pay rent, it's still important to withhold
your rent voluntarily UM in support of those that don't
have that choice. UM. So kind of once everyone's on
the same page of like you know, somewhere in between
(13:38):
those two things, like they're there thinking, Okay, well, maybe
I shouldn't be paying my rent because I need to
keep an emergency reserve just in case something comes up
or whatever. UM, and people that just literally don't have
the money to pay rent. UM, as everyone's on the
same page that regardless of your situation, we need to
all together make this principle decision. So once you've made
(14:01):
that pitch in the lobby and you kind of got
them thinking on it, thinking about it, you make it
clear that they don't need to make a decision, that
you're just trying to include them in a conversation UM,
and that UM, what you're trying to do is collect
people's contact information so that the building can carry on
this conversation safely online and over the phone. UM. So
(14:22):
that was essentially the goal of these lobby lobby contacts
or first discussions is to get get a database of contacts.
For me, I was just updating my my list that
I had from from previous organizing. UM. But yeah, I
got a lot of a lot of new contacts and
then you bring it online. So we started like an
(14:45):
email discussion group. UM. And UM what what I did
after getting getting everyone's contact together on a spreadsheet is UH,
my partner and I we drafted up a letter to
the landlord based on the conversations we had on the
(15:05):
lobby and where people were at UM. And UH we
sent it out to the group that we had compiled. UM.
So it's like just like a draft UM. And then
we encouraged feedback and he changes things that people might
feel uncomfortable with. If people are uncomfortable with the tone,
or the demands or or anything about the letter, then
(15:28):
they give feedback over a period of time. UM. So
this first email you you you attached the draft of
the letter. There's also some other things you can do
UM to kind of get people on board, which is
to assure them that you know, um that the legal
rights of tenants as they pertained to this situation. UM.
(15:51):
You can go over some of the things UM that
they can expect from the landlord, UM, such as well,
I live in Ontario, So what we do here are
what landlords do here when a tendant doesn't pay rent
is they issue something called an end for notice, which
is a notice of non payment. So in your email
(16:13):
to your group of tenants, you can develop trust with
them by showing that you've done your homework and say, hey,
this is what to expect from the landlord going forward.
These are your legal rights, These are the connections we
have to legal representation. Like in Parkdale we have the
Parkdale Community Community Legal Services that has done a great
job informing tenants in our community about our legal rights
(16:35):
and even defending us at the landlord tenport. I think
that's that's a very important thing to have, UM. And
so yeah, so you send an email out, UM, try
and be as encouraging as and positive as possible, while
at the same time being very clear about the risks.
So in our case, we're demanding that all rent be
(16:57):
waived for the period of social distancing our landlord. However, UM,
we need we may not succeed in in achieving that demand,
so we it's important that we're very clear from the
start that if you withhold your rent during this time.
We're not guaranteeing that you'll never have to repaid in
the future. The point of us doing this action is
(17:19):
to make sure that that doesn't happen, and to do
everything we can to make sure that people don't owe
this rent um in arrears over a long period of time,
because that's essentially like death sentence, yeah, sending people Yeah yeah.
Folks who are living on the margins can't afford having
rent a crew without actually making money exactly. People aren't
(17:40):
going to be getting back paid for this period in
their employment, and they're all these like I mean, a
lot of people are saying that those who have been
receiving social assistance before this crisis shouldn't even be considering
any tenant actions because they've already have they already have
all their things paid for, so they're any employment wouldn't
(18:02):
be affected or whatever. But that's simply not the case.
There's I have a few neighbors that have made the
decision to stop payment um and and reasonably so, because
there's a lot of expenses that come up um for
for all all types of people in all different situations,
like when you close the schools, you have certain childcare
(18:23):
and food expenses that were covered by certain programs that
you may have to pay out a pocket now, like
all these all these hidden expenses, right, So just supplementing
the income that people would have been making during this
time is often not enough for people because they're spending
more than they would have even if they were working. Um.
(18:44):
So yeah, um, so you go, you go over the
risks and you say, yeah, you know, Um, these are
the risks. However, Um, we're building, We're building a critical
mass in our buildings so that we can all look
out for each other and we can all protect each other.
And did you find a lot of people, Uh did
you have difficulty convincing people to sort of live with
(19:07):
those risks? You know, where their folks who are like,
well then if I might get screwed over, I don't
want to I don't want to get involved with this.
Like was it hard to kind of get people to
take a little bit of a gamble on their neighbors? Um?
Well yeah, some people, I mean some of my neighbors
were um actually straight up like a bit antagonistic at first.
(19:33):
Um uh And and didn't really kind of because I
guess different stokes for different folks, right, Like you you
you you present a rent strike and right away it's like, oh,
this is a lawbreaker that's trying to pull me in
and just agitate and this kind of thing or whatever.
But then you know they come back after doing their
(19:55):
days activities and they see you still sitting there, you know,
four or five hours later, and you know, sometimes they'll
they'll realize, Okay, well you know this guy is whatever,
like he just wants to have a conversation. And then
you started that the person might start up a conversation
with you. So it's like you kind of there are
different things you can do or whatever, but persist. Like,
(20:17):
if you're persistent, I think your neighbors eventually see that
you're not trying to trick them into doing anything. You're
not trying to put them in a in a precarious position. Um.
You know, as long as you're acting in good faith,
I think that your neighbors eventually see that. It's it's
so important to keep the lines of communication open. I'm
not used to bombarding people with emails and stuff, right
(20:38):
like my my organizing, I'm used to talking to people
face to face and developing a rapport with them. Um,
so yeah, it is tricky to send out a mass
email saying, you know, like hello neighbors, blah blah blah
blah blah. But yeah, UM, I think over time, more
and more people start responding to you and you if
(20:59):
you collect did people's phone numbers as well, you can
do rounds of phone calls to those who don't respond
to you, UM, because oftentimes people don't feel comfortable UM
typing out the response. What we were doing is but
the phone calls, we'd ask them if if they're comfortable
with us c seeing them or they prefer to remain
(21:19):
BC seed UM and trying to encourage people to kind
of open up their email address so that when they respond,
their responding to a group, and as that group gets bigger,
it becomes more of a democratic process as opposed to
kind of me just saying last this is the update, folks,
you know what I mean? Yeah, So, I think that's
(21:44):
kind of the key thing is UM trying to trying
to involve people as much as possible, even though because
people are isolated in their homes and stuff, and they're
feeling closed off and whatnot, and even if it's just
a quick phone call to chat about something unrelated, like
I think it goes a long way during it kind
(22:05):
of builds a sense of solidarity. Um, do you want
to tell us about the reaction you all got when
you presented your demands? What happened was, Um, so we
had been kind of organizing a little bit, and then
there have been murmurs about rent strikes and stuff like this,
and a lot of landlords they preemptively sent communications to
(22:26):
their tenants, um because they saw this kind of coming.
And so before we even delivered the letter to our landlord,
we got we got a letter from them kind of
detailing what they what they're proposed help was and like
quote unquote help and so and what was what was
(22:48):
it what they had done um is uh, they used
the word so they said, they said that they were
freezing the rent um and then in that same point,
in that same sentence, they explained that what they meant
by freezing was that the rent would stay at the
(23:09):
amount that was that the tenant paid in March. Um.
So April's renting could stay at the amount that Okay, yeah,
so you know, yeah, so they're trying to be cute. Yeah,
and and but I mean, obviously, like I don't think
they really thought it through. UM. But yeah, they were
trying to make it seem like they were offering more
(23:31):
help than uh than what they were actually what they
were actually doing is committing to not increase the rent
for for the time being. UM. And in Ontario. I
don't know what the laws are elsewhere, but you can
only increase the rent in rent controlled units once a year,
and even then you can only increase it by the
(23:52):
guideline amount, which is like the rate of inflation, and
that hovers around like two every year. And if you
want to increase it higher than whatever the guideline is
for that year, you have to apply for what's called
an above guideline increase. So what they were essentially offering
is for those people whose anniversary it was on April
one or whatever, that we're due to get a rent increase. UM,
(24:14):
they would not get there whatever two point I think
it's two point two increase this year, but only for
those people. So it's like they're all offering this all
three amount and only for this select group of tenants
that happened to fall in this period, and they're passing
it off as a rent freeze, and they're using that language. UM.
So needless to say, tenants from not only my building
(24:36):
but other buildings under the same um landlord approached me
over the next few days or week or whatever, thinking
that they didn't owe rent for April. And if I
approached people saying that, you know, we're trying to organize
a rent strike, what do you think. There's a lot
of people and unfortunately a lot of people who um
(24:59):
may speak English second language or have language barriers. They
were the ones that were coming to me and saying,
what do you mean a rents direct? They're not charging
rent for April, so UM, it was tricky to both
explain to them that know, the rent is still due,
but we're also organizing to withhold rent. Do you think
that your landlord kind of going that route trying to
(25:21):
sneakily use the term rent freeze like helped in the end,
Like because did it get people like already expecting, Okay,
I don't have to pay rent and then when they
realized they did, they were kind of already on board
with with striking because that's what they'd gotten. Or did
you Yeah, I'm wondering if you noticed that. Okay, So
my landlord, they they own a lot of buildings across
(25:45):
the country and in Toronto and even in Parkdale. So
I think they owned almost twenty buildings or something like
that in Parkdale or run them or both. Right, Um,
they're a massive company. So like there's a there is
Like from my perspect or, if I were, you know,
just spitball spitballing or whatever, I would say that there's
(26:05):
a good chunk or a good percentage of their tenants
that obviously I wasn't able to reach out to that
just didn't pay their rent because they didn't think that
it was old because of the weird language of the
letter that Metcap sent out or the landlord. Um. But
those that I did reach um when I explained to
them what was actually being offered, and this wasn't the
(26:28):
only thing that was being offered. There was another point
underneath it that was like, oh, well, if you choose
to pay online, we're going to waive the fee, the
seven dollar filing fee that we usually charge for online
payments of rent. And that was their next line of
help type of thing. So it's kind of like, okay,
thanks for not charging me to pay you rent. Um um.
(26:51):
So that was another thing. So once I broke that
down for the people that did approach me and the
people that seemed confused and stuff, they realized how much
of an insult was So to answer your question, yes,
these the people that really understood after I explained it
to him, and I sent out like a group email
to my building as well, going over the letter piece
(27:11):
by piece saying, you know, you may have all received
this letter. I'd like to just break this down unpacked
with what metcaps are actually offering here and blah blah blah.
Once they realized how much of an insult it is,
um and how out of touched UM the letter was
or the offer was, then yes, they are a lot
of people were more prone, and I imagine that was
that was the difference maker for a lot of people
(27:31):
that were on the fence about whether or not to
go on strike. Um, just realizing that the landlord actually
wasn't operating in good faith and uh, how many folks
did you eventually get on board with this? Like what
what did this sort of top out at? And where
are you now? Yeah? Well, okay, so like about my
or about our specific numbers, I'd rather not get into
(27:54):
that right now because there it's still early and we're
still kind of growing. And like once the once we
start getting responses from the landlords and and like end
for if actually notices and stuff like that, I'll have
a better grasp on more specific, more specific things. Like
(28:15):
but what I could say is um, for for your
your listeners, um that like you need to like if
there's a lot of talk about you know, what is
a what is a critical mass in a building? What
is enough people? Um? And I take that very seriously.
(28:37):
I don't think that it's it's responsible to just kind of,
you know, do this slightly without really covering all your bases.
So maybe I could talk a little bit about what
I think a critical mass should be and what it
should look like. Yeah, so, because it depends on a
few different things, right. Like one thing off the bat though,
is that I would say that you definitely don't need
(29:00):
your building to have a successful rents strike. Um. We
didn't have that in uh when we did this last
time in twenty we we spread a rent strike to
several buildings around around the neighborhood against this particular landlord
because of like I was saying earlier above, guideline increases
that we felt were unfair. They were legal but unfair
(29:21):
and coupled with neglect in the units, the repairs that
were required in the units, and just people living in
squaldor and not getting what they were owed. UM. And
we didn't have we didn't have pcent of each building. UM.
But we did have a critical mass. And what I
mean by that is we had enough people for the
(29:42):
accumulated amount of withheld rent. We had enough people for
that to sting to actually make a dent in UM
in the landlord's finances enough to cause to evoke a
response from the landlord. And then the second thing is
that UM, and I would say even more important is
if we had we had enough people involved so that
(30:03):
everyone was protected because we could trust that we had
a base of people to defend one another when it
came down to it. UM. So like different factors, and
in building a critical mass, UM, it depends on a
few different things. So like the size of your building. UM.
A lot of people, they'll they live in smaller buildings
(30:24):
where there's like you know, maybe four or five units,
and in that case it might be more important to
get a larger percentage of people just because there's so
few people living in the building. UM. Whereas in larger buildings,
you know, you can get a smaller percentage of people,
but since the building is so large, the the accumulated
(30:45):
amount of rent withheld is a huge chunk of money,
right Um. And then another factor is the amount of
rent even charged. You know, like different cities will have
different amounts of rent and different different situations between the
landlords and the ten in sin and uh and that
kind of thing. So that's another thing thing to consider.
And then the third thing I think would be also
(31:06):
the type of landlords. So people that have like that
are renting a basement apartment for instance, um, and their
lives landlord lives upstairs and that kind of thing, they
would have a different situation than myself who's living in
a large building that has this big corporate landlord that
manages several properties and stuff. Right, well, yeah, this is
(31:28):
this has been really great. Is there anything else you
wanted to get to before we roll out here? Anything
else you wanted to talk about? Just that this is
an ongoing thing, um, even after tenants withhold the rent
and stuff. It's so important to keep communication to make
sure that you know, any mutual aid keeps happening. It's
(31:52):
important to encourage tenants that chose to pay rent um
to reach out to you if they need help, and
that there's no there's division amongst neighbors regardless of whether
or not they're part of the organizing. They need to
be included UM and not feel left out UM. And
that also we're we're organizing for me. We don't see
(32:13):
this crisis ending in two weeks, like some people are saying, UM,
We're trying to get more people on board from me, because,
like I said before, this isn't a decision for a
lot of people. The decision to rent strike um is
reserved for those who have the luxury of that decision
many people, you know what I mean. So it's like
(32:36):
it's not a it's not a question of I think, yeah,
it from at least from my perspective, I feel it's
more of an obligation UM, because yeah, our neighbors needs
our our neighbors need us, and if we're not there
for them, I don't know. I don't think I mentioned
this earlier, and I'm sorry this kind of adds to
(32:56):
the context of the whole thing, But there was an
eviction freeze in Ontario and in a lot of different cities, UM,
both in Canada in the US, and so that was
kind of passed off, is what they're doing to help renters, Like, oh,
we froze evictions, so you know they're covered, renters are
(33:17):
covered type of thing. But once the eviction frieste gets lifted, yeah, UM,
it's not gonna it's not gonna look good. So I'm
prepared to like stand behind my neighbors UM, and and
I think that, yeah, if we can organize to make
this bigger for me first, which is underway, then that's
what we should be doing right now. And while making
(33:39):
sure that we're all we're all protecting each other and
redistributing our resources effectively. Yeah, I think that's really important,
and I thank you for UM for sharing that with us.
I think UM, in general, I I hope more people
start thinking this way, UM, the way you've been thinking
(34:00):
in terms of like I have to organize my neighbors
and and myself to sort of not just like, uh,
it's not just about UM getting everyone out of rent.
It's about like protecting people from falling into a hole, right, Like,
That's that's what we're talking about here, is UM giving
(34:23):
people a chance at a future like a lot of
folks living on the edge having an extra two three
grand that they have to pay or whatever in rent fees.
Like that's if we let that happen, it's just going
to suck those people down into a fucking abyss, like
there's no way out. Yeah, this is this is another
thing actually I forgot. I kind of forgot to mention
(34:45):
was like just in preparing your neighbors for what to
expect from the landlord. Um, something that's really important to
mention to your neighbors is that the a tactic that
every landlord uses during collective actions like this is to
try and approach tenants individually to create repayment schemes UM.
(35:09):
And so that's something that is very important to mention.
UM that like if these repayment schemes become you know,
a widespread and stuff like this. If what happens is
when these when this eviction freeze gets lifted, all these
repayments schemes are are legally binding, and the way that
the process has been changed recently in Ontario, it's become
(35:30):
more of a streamlined process, so that if any of
these repayment schemes are broken between landlords and tenants, they
can just be evicted automatically without having to go back
to the landlord tenant board. So for me, the long
game seems to be that the landlords are expecting to
get away with this massive displacement of working class people
(35:50):
gradually instead of all at once, in order to avoid
the media storm. And the way they're gonna do this
is by signing our by pressuring tenants to individually sign
these repayment plans, so that when they default, you know, two,
three or four months after this is all over, in
a in a kind of staggered kind of way, it
would be it would be more difficult for their neighbors
(36:11):
and their community to rise up and defend them because
they're not all being evicted at once. That's a really
good point and there, and remember that the people that
people that are saying that, oh, you know, you're you're
doom and gloom. Landlords aren't gonna just massively displace thousands
of people. And whether they do it all at once
or over a long period of time, they don't want
(36:32):
to displace. In this this kind of thing, people need
to remember that there are billions of dollars at stake here.
Like I said, before. The people that they're displacing are
paying extremely low rents, like I'm talking a third of
the amount of what landlords will charge once they're out
of their units. So landlords are looking at tripling their
money and in some case quadrupling their money. And all
(36:55):
they need to do is get rid of these people,
uh and a victim from their homes. So they're they're
doing everything they possibly can for their shareholders in the end,
and it's their fiduciary responsibility. So they're scheming right now,
and so are we. Um. Yeah, you know that's a
good point too, that they have a fiduciary responsibility to
(37:17):
to a group of people who are not the folks
actually living in the property. Um. And you have a responsibility,
a moral one to your neighbors. UM. And I guess
we're going to see which of those wins out in
the end. And landlords don't follow the laws, especially you know,
like a lot of times people anytime we have a
(37:38):
fight against the landlord, the media and the politicians and
everybody brings up this this Cinderella story of the you know,
the grandmother who rents out her basement apartment just trying
to get by and this kind of thing. It's like, no,
no, no no, that's an extremely extremely small percentage of the market.
Most of the market is being taken up by these
massive corporate landlords that all sorts of illegal, shady tactics
(38:00):
and pick on people who aren't able to defend themselves
like those in my community, right yum. And so it's
it's not even like they're following the rules. So when
people say, oh, look at these outlaw outlaws withholding their rent,
this is literally like the last straw, because I've witnessed
a lot of really violent situations that are frankly extremely
illegal and immoral um conducted by landlords of all different kinds,
(38:23):
big and small, um. And it's not pretty. And they
get away with it because the laws on their side. Um.
And even when the law is not on their side,
it's not enforced. So I think that's a great note
to roll out on. Thank you so much for talking
with me today. It's a huge pleasure. I really appreciate
the opportunity for sure. I Worst Year Ever is a
(38:53):
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or ever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart Radio.
Well Together, Everything So down? Don Um. Can we get
(00:21):
you to introduce yourself first? Yeah, UM, my name is
Ali khan Um. I live in Toronto in a neighborhood
called Parkdale. UM. I'm a community organizer or I do
a lot of work with tenants and eviction prevention. Um.
(00:44):
I'm also a musician, played the piano and the drums
and the guitar and playing a couple of musical groups
which are currently on hold unfortunately. I kind of wonder
if you'll just sort of walk us through the story
of how you your your your fellow uh le c's.
(01:04):
I don't Yeah, I don't know what term to use,
but how how y'all kind of got together and and
and set this thing up? Like right right now we're
seeing all these kind of distributed rent strikes and I
guess i'd like h y'all story for that. Yeah. No,
I appreciate the opportunity to talk about UM. Uh So,
just I guess off the top, I should probably press
(01:26):
preface that I'm certainly no expert on on this. I mean,
I have some experience, but I don't purport to know
like the best practices that everyone should follow. I mean,
I'm learning as I go, just like anyone else. UM.
And these are very unprecedented times, so a lot of
that are used to this work have also had to
(01:49):
do a lot of relearning and adjusting our our protocols
and stuff to really meet the needs. UM. So yeah,
I guess I could start from yeah, realizing the situation
we were in. UM, things kind of clicked for me.
UM as this was getting to I guess are part
(02:14):
are part of the world, And as more people were
getting infected here um and across Turtle Island, UM, it
started really dawning on me the amount of people, UM
that would not be able to pay their rent because
of all the businesses that were closing and the orders
that we're coming from above UM closing all non essential
(02:36):
services UM. And uh yeah, people just not wanting to
leave their homes and conduct regular activities. So I just figured,
you know, this was going to lead to a massive
crisis down the road of people having defaulted on their
rent during this time and then facing eviction in large numbers. UM.
(02:57):
And so my community specifically and Hearkdale is it has
a large volume of of newcomers and low low income folks.
It's very diverse community, UM, and a lot of people
here have high needs. UM. It's a very working class neighborhood. UM.
A lot of racialized people from different communities. We have
(03:18):
a very large Tibetan community. In fact, I think it's
the largest in North America. UM. But yeah, so we're particular,
particularly vulnerable to this issue. So I'm sorry if I'm
rambling on or whatever, but I just kind of that's
kind of where I was starting at. UM. I was
trying to think, you know, how can we mitigate this
(03:39):
thing that's coming down the line inevitably. So I decided
that I had to talk to my neighbors UM in
my building. But I had to figure out a safe
way to do it, obviously, because we can't do flyering
like we we usually do, or we flyer the buildings
and organized lobby meetings and and have like these interactive
(04:02):
look like processes to get people engaged. UM. So right,
because you're worried about actually spreading the virus, so you
can't yeah yeah, yeah, So there's some there's some information
out there that the virus can live on paper for
a certain amount of time, and so to play it safe.
(04:22):
Like myself and many of the organizers that around our community,
we've kind of decided to avoid flying when it all possible.
I mean, like we still are doing a lot of postering,
which is a very integral part of this to make
it work, but none of this kind of uh these
smaller flyers that are meant to be distributed and kind
of go from hand to hand kind of thing. So
(04:45):
um so yeah, I um realized that that was the barrier.
So I got ahold of some protective or some ppe
like face mask and like gloves and stuff like this,
and uh, I went onto my lobby area, which I mean,
it's different, It's going to be different for everybody I
think that's interested in doing something similar. But my lobby
(05:09):
is fairly sizeable, so like there was enough room for
me to both catch people on the way in and
out of the building, but also keep my distance so
that no one is no one is compromised. Um. Other
people might have different layouts for their common spaces, so
they could use maybe like the area outside the building
(05:29):
near the front door to catch people on the way
in and out where there's more room to keep your
safe distance and stuff like that. But um, Yeah, that's
very key obviously, and I was very conscious of of that.
Um And so yeah, just camp being out in the
lobby for for like hours a day, just trying to
(05:50):
get some contact with my neighbors. Um. And so as
people are coming and going, what I what I was
doing is I would introduce myself right away as some
was one of their number neighbors that lives in the
same building, I'd give my unit number. I mean, a
lot of my neighbors already recognize me from previous things
that we've done in our building and and uh and that,
(06:13):
and we've kept ties and stuff. But I also have
a lot of new neighbors that I haven't met yet
until this this spout of organizing. So it's important to
kind of break that barrier right away, UM, so that
they're not suspicious that you're kind of trying to to
something nefarious or whatever. Um. And so once you've broken
(06:35):
that barrier, I just kind of made that pitch. Do
you think a lot of people suspect? Like did you
did you feel that sort of suspicion from folks when
you started approaching people in a lot of cases, See,
I'm like, I'm I'm also involved in UM a few
different mutual aid efforts in the community that are aside
from this and kind of overlap with this as well. UM.
(06:58):
And so over the phone, I feel like what I've
been hearing is a lot of people have been receiving
questionable phone calls from UM, like scam artists. There's a
lot of weird things going around right now. UM. So
even when you're calling to offer help and support and stuff,
it takes a little while to kind of really develop
that trust. UM too. You have to be very clear
(07:22):
about who you are, who you work for, UM, what
you're offering, the fact that it's free, you know, UM,
that kind of thing. UM. But in terms of organizing
my building, I think the hesitation is just it's it's
not like a common thing where there's someone sitting in
your lobby trying to catch you on the way and
now trying to organize the rent strike, so that I
(07:44):
think they're just kind of taken aback by someone stopping
them as there about their daily activities type of thing. UM.
But like I said, like I mean, I've kept close
contact with with many of my neighbors, so UM, a
lot of them did recognize me and the ones that
didn't recognize me right way. UM, I kind of put
their mind at ease by saying, like, listen, you know, UM,
(08:04):
I'm your neighbor. I live on Explorer and ex Unit,
and I'm just trying to organize our building to to
fight back against it. So ining situation, um that our
landlords putting us in. So yeah, um yeah, so you
(08:27):
give your pitch you ask. I was asking my neighbors
how they feel about the situation, UM, what their experiences
are like, are they having trouble are they going to
have trouble paying April's rent? Um? If so, like what
what what have they thought of? Two that? What were
you getting from people in terms of like their actual
(08:48):
level of fear over April and their ability to kind
of make ship mate you know? Yeah, so a lot
of it. I mean I had some pretty good conversations. Um.
The The issue is is uh that I was finding
um is the conversations that were more kind of UM,
(09:09):
I don't want to say fulsome but like, uh, I
guess more lengthy and engaged. UM we're coming from and
I'm generalizing here, uh, tenants that UM, we're kind of
looking at this as kind of a possibility to to
take a principle stand and while they may be struggling financially, um,
(09:33):
to some extent, they would be able to kind of
weather this storm at least for for the the short term. UM.
And I found that a lot of the tenants I
spoke to where the conversations weren't as long and weren't
um uh like, we're kind of more um from tenants
(09:55):
that may have had language barriers UM and are speaking
English as a second language. UM. So it was more
kind of me trying to really simplify what I was
trying to say and make them understand, um, what we're
trying to organize here, so that I'm sure that we're
on the same page. And the responses I got from them, UM,
(10:19):
we're essentially like a confirmation that yes, people are in
fact suffering. Many of the people that weren't UM able
to express themselves as fluently made it still made it
very clear that they were in a position, a very
vulnerable position where they weren't going to be able to
pay rent next month. So UM. It's it's tricky when
(10:41):
you're because the point I'm essentially trying to make is
oftentimes the most vulnerable people are less able, the least
able to engage with the process of organizing because they've
got so you know, it's tough to find that balance
between trying to get them to engage and keeping them
in the loop and uh and getting consent from them
(11:04):
to do things, um, but also respecting their space and
understanding that they have, um, they have other pressing matters
in a completely different situation than you do. Right, So
I don't know, UM, I don't know if that kind
of answers yea question a little bit. Essentially, what I'm
saying is like a lot of people are struggled. I
think everyone is struggling. UM, but my my building particularly
(11:28):
just because of the speed at which our area is
being gentrified, my building particularly and a lot of other
buildings in heart Tale are very stratified. So you have
people that have just come in recently that are paying
three times the amount of rent as someone that's been
here for you know, ten fifteen years, um, and they
have identical units. So you you get a number of
(11:51):
your your fellow uh, your neighbors to agree that, like,
this is not an acceptable situation. We we we want
to change this, and uh, like what are those what
are those first meetings like for for y'all as you like,
especially since you can't like be sort of all together
in the same space, like how are you how are
(12:13):
you kind of bridging that gap? Um, because there's like
a lot of it's kind of a risky thing to do,
because if you wind up, you know, on your own
without actually having the support of your neighbors, you could
just wind up getting kicked out of your place. Like
I feel like there's a level of risk here, um,
And it's it's got to be kind of a difficult
thing to to get everyone on the same page when
(12:35):
you can't physically be in the same space. Yeah, of course, Um,
I agree, there's a lot of risks here and they
need to be considered responsibly. Um. So, like I said,
there's there there are people coming from very different places
in my building specifically, and so part of making sure
(12:56):
everyone's protected is to bring them all into this same
calm versation. Um. So, what I was trying to make
clear in these initial conversations in the lobby is that
we're organizing we're organizing this rent direct not only out
of necessity, but also out of solidarity with those who
who will not be able to pay rent. UM. So
(13:18):
whether you cannot pay rent or whether you can pay rent. UM,
If you can pay rent, it's still important to withhold
your rent voluntarily UM in support of those that don't
have that choice. UM. So kind of once everyone's on
the same page of like you know, somewhere in between
(13:38):
those two things, like they're there thinking, Okay, well, maybe
I shouldn't be paying my rent because I need to
keep an emergency reserve just in case something comes up
or whatever. UM, and people that just literally don't have
the money to pay rent. UM, as everyone's on the
same page that regardless of your situation, we need to
all together make this principle decision. So once you've made
(14:01):
that pitch in the lobby and you kind of got
them thinking on it, thinking about it, you make it
clear that they don't need to make a decision, that
you're just trying to include them in a conversation UM,
and that UM, what you're trying to do is collect
people's contact information so that the building can carry on
this conversation safely online and over the phone. UM. So
(14:22):
that was essentially the goal of these lobby lobby contacts
or first discussions is to get get a database of contacts.
For me, I was just updating my my list that
I had from from previous organizing. UM. But yeah, I
got a lot of a lot of new contacts and
then you bring it online. So we started like an
(14:45):
email discussion group. UM. And UM what what I did
after getting getting everyone's contact together on a spreadsheet is UH,
my partner and I we drafted up a letter to
the landlord based on the conversations we had on the
(15:05):
lobby and where people were at UM. And UH we
sent it out to the group that we had compiled. UM.
So it's like just like a draft UM. And then
we encouraged feedback and he changes things that people might
feel uncomfortable with. If people are uncomfortable with the tone,
or the demands or or anything about the letter, then
(15:28):
they give feedback over a period of time. UM. So
this first email you you you attached the draft of
the letter. There's also some other things you can do
UM to kind of get people on board, which is
to assure them that you know, um that the legal
rights of tenants as they pertained to this situation. UM.
(15:51):
You can go over some of the things UM that
they can expect from the landlord, UM, such as well,
I live in Ontario, So what we do here are
what landlords do here when a tendant doesn't pay rent
is they issue something called an end for notice, which
is a notice of non payment. So in your email
(16:13):
to your group of tenants, you can develop trust with
them by showing that you've done your homework and say, hey,
this is what to expect from the landlord going forward.
These are your legal rights, These are the connections we
have to legal representation. Like in Parkdale we have the
Parkdale Community Community Legal Services that has done a great
job informing tenants in our community about our legal rights
(16:35):
and even defending us at the landlord tenport. I think
that's that's a very important thing to have, UM. And
so yeah, so you send an email out, UM, try
and be as encouraging as and positive as possible, while
at the same time being very clear about the risks.
So in our case, we're demanding that all rent be
(16:57):
waived for the period of social distancing our landlord. However, UM,
we need we may not succeed in in achieving that demand,
so we it's important that we're very clear from the
start that if you withhold your rent during this time.
We're not guaranteeing that you'll never have to repaid in
the future. The point of us doing this action is
(17:19):
to make sure that that doesn't happen, and to do
everything we can to make sure that people don't owe
this rent um in arrears over a long period of time,
because that's essentially like death sentence, yeah, sending people Yeah yeah.
Folks who are living on the margins can't afford having
rent a crew without actually making money exactly. People aren't
(17:40):
going to be getting back paid for this period in
their employment, and they're all these like I mean, a
lot of people are saying that those who have been
receiving social assistance before this crisis shouldn't even be considering
any tenant actions because they've already have they already have
all their things paid for, so they're any employment wouldn't
(18:02):
be affected or whatever. But that's simply not the case.
There's I have a few neighbors that have made the
decision to stop payment um and and reasonably so, because
there's a lot of expenses that come up um for
for all all types of people in all different situations,
like when you close the schools, you have certain childcare
(18:23):
and food expenses that were covered by certain programs that
you may have to pay out a pocket now, like
all these all these hidden expenses, right, So just supplementing
the income that people would have been making during this
time is often not enough for people because they're spending
more than they would have even if they were working. Um.
(18:44):
So yeah, um, so you go, you go over the
risks and you say, yeah, you know, Um, these are
the risks. However, Um, we're building, We're building a critical
mass in our buildings so that we can all look
out for each other and we can all protect each other.
And did you find a lot of people, Uh did
you have difficulty convincing people to sort of live with
(19:07):
those risks? You know, where their folks who are like,
well then if I might get screwed over, I don't
want to I don't want to get involved with this.
Like was it hard to kind of get people to
take a little bit of a gamble on their neighbors? Um?
Well yeah, some people, I mean some of my neighbors
were um actually straight up like a bit antagonistic at first.
(19:33):
Um uh And and didn't really kind of because I
guess different stokes for different folks, right, Like you you
you you present a rent strike and right away it's like, oh,
this is a lawbreaker that's trying to pull me in
and just agitate and this kind of thing or whatever.
But then you know they come back after doing their
(19:55):
days activities and they see you still sitting there, you know,
four or five hours later, and you know, sometimes they'll
they'll realize, Okay, well you know this guy is whatever,
like he just wants to have a conversation. And then
you started that the person might start up a conversation
with you. So it's like you kind of there are
different things you can do or whatever, but persist. Like,
(20:17):
if you're persistent, I think your neighbors eventually see that
you're not trying to trick them into doing anything. You're
not trying to put them in a in a precarious position. Um.
You know, as long as you're acting in good faith,
I think that your neighbors eventually see that. It's it's
so important to keep the lines of communication open. I'm
not used to bombarding people with emails and stuff, right
(20:38):
like my my organizing, I'm used to talking to people
face to face and developing a rapport with them. Um,
so yeah, it is tricky to send out a mass
email saying, you know, like hello neighbors, blah blah blah
blah blah. But yeah, UM, I think over time, more
and more people start responding to you and you if
(20:59):
you collect did people's phone numbers as well, you can
do rounds of phone calls to those who don't respond
to you, UM, because oftentimes people don't feel comfortable UM
typing out the response. What we were doing is but
the phone calls, we'd ask them if if they're comfortable
with us c seeing them or they prefer to remain
(21:19):
BC seed UM and trying to encourage people to kind
of open up their email address so that when they respond,
their responding to a group, and as that group gets bigger,
it becomes more of a democratic process as opposed to
kind of me just saying last this is the update, folks,
you know what I mean? Yeah, So, I think that's
(21:44):
kind of the key thing is UM trying to trying
to involve people as much as possible, even though because
people are isolated in their homes and stuff, and they're
feeling closed off and whatnot, and even if it's just
a quick phone call to chat about something unrelated, like
I think it goes a long way during it kind
(22:05):
of builds a sense of solidarity. Um, do you want
to tell us about the reaction you all got when
you presented your demands? What happened was, Um, so we
had been kind of organizing a little bit, and then
there have been murmurs about rent strikes and stuff like this,
and a lot of landlords they preemptively sent communications to
(22:26):
their tenants, um because they saw this kind of coming.
And so before we even delivered the letter to our landlord,
we got we got a letter from them kind of
detailing what they what they're proposed help was and like
quote unquote help and so and what was what was
(22:48):
it what they had done um is uh, they used
the word so they said, they said that they were
freezing the rent um and then in that same point,
in that same sentence, they explained that what they meant
by freezing was that the rent would stay at the
(23:09):
amount that was that the tenant paid in March. Um.
So April's renting could stay at the amount that Okay, yeah,
so you know, yeah, so they're trying to be cute. Yeah,
and and but I mean, obviously, like I don't think
they really thought it through. UM. But yeah, they were
trying to make it seem like they were offering more
(23:31):
help than uh than what they were actually what they
were actually doing is committing to not increase the rent
for for the time being. UM. And in Ontario. I
don't know what the laws are elsewhere, but you can
only increase the rent in rent controlled units once a year,
and even then you can only increase it by the
(23:52):
guideline amount, which is like the rate of inflation, and
that hovers around like two every year. And if you
want to increase it higher than whatever the guideline is
for that year, you have to apply for what's called
an above guideline increase. So what they were essentially offering
is for those people whose anniversary it was on April
one or whatever, that we're due to get a rent increase. UM,
(24:14):
they would not get there whatever two point I think
it's two point two increase this year, but only for
those people. So it's like they're all offering this all
three amount and only for this select group of tenants
that happened to fall in this period, and they're passing
it off as a rent freeze, and they're using that language. UM.
So needless to say, tenants from not only my building
(24:36):
but other buildings under the same um landlord approached me
over the next few days or week or whatever, thinking
that they didn't owe rent for April. And if I
approached people saying that, you know, we're trying to organize
a rent strike, what do you think. There's a lot
of people and unfortunately a lot of people who um
(24:59):
may speak English second language or have language barriers. They
were the ones that were coming to me and saying,
what do you mean a rents direct? They're not charging
rent for April, so UM, it was tricky to both
explain to them that know, the rent is still due,
but we're also organizing to withhold rent. Do you think
that your landlord kind of going that route trying to
(25:21):
sneakily use the term rent freeze like helped in the end,
Like because did it get people like already expecting, Okay,
I don't have to pay rent and then when they
realized they did, they were kind of already on board
with with striking because that's what they'd gotten. Or did
you Yeah, I'm wondering if you noticed that. Okay, So
my landlord, they they own a lot of buildings across
(25:45):
the country and in Toronto and even in Parkdale. So
I think they owned almost twenty buildings or something like
that in Parkdale or run them or both. Right, Um,
they're a massive company. So like there's a there is
Like from my perspect or, if I were, you know,
just spitball spitballing or whatever, I would say that there's
(26:05):
a good chunk or a good percentage of their tenants
that obviously I wasn't able to reach out to that
just didn't pay their rent because they didn't think that
it was old because of the weird language of the
letter that Metcap sent out or the landlord. Um. But
those that I did reach um when I explained to
them what was actually being offered, and this wasn't the
(26:28):
only thing that was being offered. There was another point
underneath it that was like, oh, well, if you choose
to pay online, we're going to waive the fee, the
seven dollar filing fee that we usually charge for online
payments of rent. And that was their next line of
help type of thing. So it's kind of like, okay,
thanks for not charging me to pay you rent. Um um.
(26:51):
So that was another thing. So once I broke that
down for the people that did approach me and the
people that seemed confused and stuff, they realized how much
of an insult was So to answer your question, yes,
these the people that really understood after I explained it
to him, and I sent out like a group email
to my building as well, going over the letter piece
(27:11):
by piece saying, you know, you may have all received
this letter. I'd like to just break this down unpacked
with what metcaps are actually offering here and blah blah blah.
Once they realized how much of an insult it is,
um and how out of touched UM the letter was
or the offer was, then yes, they are a lot
of people were more prone, and I imagine that was
that was the difference maker for a lot of people
(27:31):
that were on the fence about whether or not to
go on strike. Um, just realizing that the landlord actually
wasn't operating in good faith and uh, how many folks
did you eventually get on board with this? Like what
what did this sort of top out at? And where
are you now? Yeah? Well, okay, so like about my
or about our specific numbers, I'd rather not get into
(27:54):
that right now because there it's still early and we're
still kind of growing. And like once the once we
start getting responses from the landlords and and like end
for if actually notices and stuff like that, I'll have
a better grasp on more specific, more specific things. Like
(28:15):
but what I could say is um, for for your
your listeners, um that like you need to like if
there's a lot of talk about you know, what is
a what is a critical mass in a building? What
is enough people? Um? And I take that very seriously.
(28:37):
I don't think that it's it's responsible to just kind of,
you know, do this slightly without really covering all your bases.
So maybe I could talk a little bit about what
I think a critical mass should be and what it
should look like. Yeah, so, because it depends on a
few different things, right. Like one thing off the bat though,
is that I would say that you definitely don't need
(29:00):
your building to have a successful rents strike. Um. We
didn't have that in uh when we did this last
time in twenty we we spread a rent strike to
several buildings around around the neighborhood against this particular landlord
because of like I was saying earlier above, guideline increases
that we felt were unfair. They were legal but unfair
(29:21):
and coupled with neglect in the units, the repairs that
were required in the units, and just people living in
squaldor and not getting what they were owed. UM. And
we didn't have we didn't have pcent of each building. UM.
But we did have a critical mass. And what I
mean by that is we had enough people for the
(29:42):
accumulated amount of withheld rent. We had enough people for
that to sting to actually make a dent in UM
in the landlord's finances enough to cause to evoke a
response from the landlord. And then the second thing is
that UM, and I would say even more important is
if we had we had enough people involved so that
(30:03):
everyone was protected because we could trust that we had
a base of people to defend one another when it
came down to it. UM. So like different factors, and
in building a critical mass, UM, it depends on a
few different things. So like the size of your building. UM.
A lot of people, they'll they live in smaller buildings
(30:24):
where there's like you know, maybe four or five units,
and in that case it might be more important to
get a larger percentage of people just because there's so
few people living in the building. UM. Whereas in larger buildings,
you know, you can get a smaller percentage of people,
but since the building is so large, the the accumulated
(30:45):
amount of rent withheld is a huge chunk of money,
right Um. And then another factor is the amount of
rent even charged. You know, like different cities will have
different amounts of rent and different different situations between the
landlords and the ten in sin and uh and that
kind of thing. So that's another thing thing to consider.
And then the third thing I think would be also
(31:06):
the type of landlords. So people that have like that
are renting a basement apartment for instance, um, and their
lives landlord lives upstairs and that kind of thing, they
would have a different situation than myself who's living in
a large building that has this big corporate landlord that
manages several properties and stuff. Right, well, yeah, this is
(31:28):
this has been really great. Is there anything else you
wanted to get to before we roll out here? Anything
else you wanted to talk about? Just that this is
an ongoing thing, um, even after tenants withhold the rent
and stuff. It's so important to keep communication to make
sure that you know, any mutual aid keeps happening. It's
(31:52):
important to encourage tenants that chose to pay rent um
to reach out to you if they need help, and
that there's no there's division amongst neighbors regardless of whether
or not they're part of the organizing. They need to
be included UM and not feel left out UM. And
that also we're we're organizing for me. We don't see
(32:13):
this crisis ending in two weeks, like some people are saying, UM,
We're trying to get more people on board from me, because,
like I said before, this isn't a decision for a
lot of people. The decision to rent strike um is
reserved for those who have the luxury of that decision
many people, you know what I mean. So it's like
(32:36):
it's not a it's not a question of I think, yeah,
it from at least from my perspective, I feel it's
more of an obligation UM, because yeah, our neighbors needs
our our neighbors need us, and if we're not there
for them, I don't know. I don't think I mentioned
this earlier, and I'm sorry this kind of adds to
(32:56):
the context of the whole thing, But there was an
eviction freeze in Ontario and in a lot of different cities, UM,
both in Canada in the US, and so that was
kind of passed off, is what they're doing to help renters, Like, oh,
we froze evictions, so you know they're covered, renters are
(33:17):
covered type of thing. But once the eviction frieste gets lifted, yeah, UM,
it's not gonna it's not gonna look good. So I'm
prepared to like stand behind my neighbors UM, and and
I think that, yeah, if we can organize to make
this bigger for me first, which is underway, then that's
what we should be doing right now. And while making
(33:39):
sure that we're all we're all protecting each other and
redistributing our resources effectively. Yeah, I think that's really important,
and I thank you for UM for sharing that with us.
I think UM, in general, I I hope more people
start thinking this way, UM, the way you've been thinking
(34:00):
in terms of like I have to organize my neighbors
and and myself to sort of not just like, uh,
it's not just about UM getting everyone out of rent.
It's about like protecting people from falling into a hole, right, Like,
That's that's what we're talking about here, is UM giving
(34:23):
people a chance at a future like a lot of
folks living on the edge having an extra two three
grand that they have to pay or whatever in rent fees.
Like that's if we let that happen, it's just going
to suck those people down into a fucking abyss, like
there's no way out. Yeah, this is this is another
thing actually I forgot. I kind of forgot to mention
(34:45):
was like just in preparing your neighbors for what to
expect from the landlord. Um, something that's really important to
mention to your neighbors is that the a tactic that
every landlord uses during collective actions like this is to
try and approach tenants individually to create repayment schemes UM.
(35:09):
And so that's something that is very important to mention.
UM that like if these repayment schemes become you know,
a widespread and stuff like this. If what happens is
when these when this eviction freeze gets lifted, all these
repayments schemes are are legally binding, and the way that
the process has been changed recently in Ontario, it's become
(35:30):
more of a streamlined process, so that if any of
these repayment schemes are broken between landlords and tenants, they
can just be evicted automatically without having to go back
to the landlord tenant board. So for me, the long
game seems to be that the landlords are expecting to
get away with this massive displacement of working class people
(35:50):
gradually instead of all at once, in order to avoid
the media storm. And the way they're gonna do this
is by signing our by pressuring tenants to individually sign
these repayment plans, so that when they default, you know, two,
three or four months after this is all over, in
a in a kind of staggered kind of way, it
would be it would be more difficult for their neighbors
(36:11):
and their community to rise up and defend them because
they're not all being evicted at once. That's a really
good point and there, and remember that the people that
people that are saying that, oh, you know, you're you're
doom and gloom. Landlords aren't gonna just massively displace thousands
of people. And whether they do it all at once
or over a long period of time, they don't want
(36:32):
to displace. In this this kind of thing, people need
to remember that there are billions of dollars at stake here.
Like I said, before. The people that they're displacing are
paying extremely low rents, like I'm talking a third of
the amount of what landlords will charge once they're out
of their units. So landlords are looking at tripling their
money and in some case quadrupling their money. And all
(36:55):
they need to do is get rid of these people,
uh and a victim from their homes. So they're they're
doing everything they possibly can for their shareholders in the end,
and it's their fiduciary responsibility. So they're scheming right now,
and so are we. Um. Yeah, you know that's a
good point too, that they have a fiduciary responsibility to
(37:17):
to a group of people who are not the folks
actually living in the property. Um. And you have a responsibility,
a moral one to your neighbors. UM. And I guess
we're going to see which of those wins out in
the end. And landlords don't follow the laws, especially you know,
like a lot of times people anytime we have a
(37:38):
fight against the landlord, the media and the politicians and
everybody brings up this this Cinderella story of the you know,
the grandmother who rents out her basement apartment just trying
to get by and this kind of thing. It's like, no,
no, no no, that's an extremely extremely small percentage of the market.
Most of the market is being taken up by these
massive corporate landlords that all sorts of illegal, shady tactics
(38:00):
and pick on people who aren't able to defend themselves
like those in my community, right yum. And so it's
it's not even like they're following the rules. So when
people say, oh, look at these outlaw outlaws withholding their rent,
this is literally like the last straw, because I've witnessed
a lot of really violent situations that are frankly extremely
illegal and immoral um conducted by landlords of all different kinds,
(38:23):
big and small, um. And it's not pretty. And they
get away with it because the laws on their side. Um.
And even when the law is not on their side,
it's not enforced. So I think that's a great note
to roll out on. Thank you so much for talking
with me today. It's a huge pleasure. I really appreciate
the opportunity for sure. I Worst Year Ever is a
(38:53):
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my
heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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