Press Hits

Extreme heat is endangering students, workers, renters and some of Ontario’s most vulnerable residents, a network of civil society groups said Monday as they urged the province to better prepare for sweltering temperatures. Tenant protections figured prominently into Monday’s calls to action. The network called on the province to pass maximum temperature regulations to ensure landlords keep temperatures below 26 C in rental units. The proposals have sparked concerns about whether landlords would use air conditioning upgrades as a pretext for evictions or steep rent increases. Monday’s call to action says to ensure tenants are protected, the province should expand retrofit funding and tie it to anti-eviction conditions. “We don’t have time to wait anymore. We are in a heat crisis,” said Marcia Stone with the tenant rights group ACORN.

Tantramar residents say the wildfires and extreme heat this week only heightened their concerns about how a natural gas plant N.B. Power wants to build in the area would affect their health. Peter Jongeneelen, co-chair of ACORN, a tenant advocacy group for people with low to moderate incomes, worries the gas plant will worsen air quality. “Well the carbon emissions — the CO2 emissions — if I can barely breathe in extreme heat and wildfire smoke … what is this adding to it?” he said. Sylvain Comeau, a climate activist, said he’s concerned about the plant, especially if forest fires are burning in New Brunswick, which is the case now. “Especially with the forest fires happening all over New Brunswick, I wanted to come here and advocate for greener alternatives,” Comeau said.

Nearly 30 per cent of tenants in Peel Region surveyed by the low- and moderate-income renters advocacy group ACORN have dealt with cockroaches in their units, while more than 30 per cent said their units were too hot in the summer. The group is calling on city councils in Brampton and Mississauga to do more to protect renters, though spokespersons for both municipalities say work is already underway.

A third of Peel Region tenants reported living with cockroaches or other bug infestations. That is according to a new report released Aug. 13 by tenant advocacy group ACORN, which called the findings part of what it describes as a broader pattern of neglect, disrepair and unaffordable rents in Brampton and Mississauga. The report, “Paying More, Getting Less,” is based on survey responses from 257 tenants across Peel Region, the majority of whom rent from private landlords.

Oscar Carrillo has spent the past eight years living in an affordable housing unit at Kwantlen Park Manor in the Surrey neighbourhood of Whalley. But pressure is building for Carrillo to vacate his apartment. A developer, RBI Group of Companies, is eager to start redeveloping the site… Protesters were joined by representatives of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now or ACORN, a tenancy rights advocacy group. Residents were only emailed a few Craigslist rental listings occasionally, according to ACORN. ACORN representatives shared with Postmedia an email sent to the remaining residents on Aug. 7 by Leslie Brock, vice-president of property management at Pacific Quorum. In it, she wrote: “Our notices about shutting off the power/water to the property are simply as a courtesy to the 2 last remaining tenants in the building.”