Rent has skyrocketed in Toronto with the city now boasting the 18th-highest rent in the world. After years of politicians of all stripes being unable to solve the rental crisis, renters are now taking matters into their own hands. For the first time, a city-wide tenant union has been formed.
Over 300 tenants attended the founding convention last April. The union describes itself as “a membership-led democratic, city-wide tenant union organized to build working-class tenant power in Toronto, led by rank-and-file members… rooted in the multi-racial working-class that keeps Toronto running.”
This union comes after years of struggles by different local tenant unions in the city. The York South-Weston (YSW) Tenant Union was founded in 2017 and made waves after organizing some of the longest and largest rent strikes in Toronto’s history. Apartment complexes in Parkdale and Thorncliffe Park defeated attempts by landlords to impose above-guideline rent increases by banding together and withholding rent. Tenants of 71, 75, and 79 Thorncliffe Park Dr. thwarted attempts by Starlight Investments to mass evict them and won the strike after holding out for two years. The success of these actions generated broad enthusiasm from renters across the city. Now, the movement has grown beyond YSW. YSW organizers, in collaboration with Climate Justice Toronto, are leading the charge to reproduce these successes across the city.
Co-chair of the Toronto Tenant Union and founder of the YSW tenant union, Sharlene Henry, speaks frankly: “If we don’t organize as tenants in this city, we’re going to get crushed. These corporate landlords have a lot of power, and have politicians in their pocket. They’re not there for the people.” Indeed, corporate landlords with big financial institutions behind them are consolidating ownership of the city’s housing and just about every other form of real estate. Without organization, the working class are just raw material for exploitation, and the same goes for renters. “Building working-class power”, as one organizer put it, is the only way to defend against such a highly consolidated class of parasites.
The Toronto Tenant Union aims to arm renters with the organization and knowledge they need to demand their rights and fight back, whether that means helping them to navigate the Landlord Tenant Board bureaucracy or to carry out rent strikes. Their initiative expresses the need to take scattered individual struggles and generalize them, strengthen them with organization and fighting methods. Henry, also formerly of Unifor, correctly noted, “Labour unions teach us how to organize, how to participate in collective actions, how to join a picket line, and do a rally.” Linking up the struggle for affordable (and livable) housing directly with the labour movement is the next logical step to deepen tenants’ collective strength.
The Toronto Tenant Union has its sights on a political program as well, looking to endorse candidates in the municipal arena who will fight for more social housing. But politicians of all stripes have a habit of talking a good game about social housing but then failing to take the struggle to the landlords, the real estate investment trusts (REITs), and the capitalist class and their institutions once they get into power.
Tenant organizing must be combined with the struggle for a socialist program. We cannot constantly be fighting an uphill battle against these parasites who care only about profit, and in the process, steal our very ability to live out from underneath us.
The root of the problem facing renters is a housing market monopolized by ruthless profiteers. The socialist solution is to nationalize the REITs, the big banks and the big developers and enact a socialist plan for housing. Only in this way can we not only stop rent from surpassing guidelines, but drastically reduce housing costs by taking profit out of the equation. That is the socialist solution to the housing crisis that the RCP is fighting for.
