“We need to build tenant power. Building-by-building, and block-by-block.”

In a downstairs room of McNabb Community Centre in June of this year, a group of tenants and other community members met for Ottawa’s first People’s Assembly on Housing. The People’s Assembly event involved a group discussion introduced by three speakers, each of whom is involved in local tenant or community struggles.

One speaker, a local tenant organizer who was active in the Herongate Tenants Coalition and in supporting Osgoode Chambers tenants in their struggles against renoviction, stressed the need for tenants to get organized to build our collective power, and to be willing to confront landlords. Drawing on his experience, the speaker argued that tenant power starts with talking to neighbours and building up tenant solidarity one step at a time.

Another speaker, an organizer with the Katarokwi Union of Tenants and researcher who has done extensive work on Ottawa’s housing conditions, went into the history of how the government at all levels has acted in favour of big landlords and fueled the housing crisis. Despite the fact that politicians and media figures keep arguing that there is a “housing shortage” and that all we need is to build more supply, the speaker argued, a look at history shows this to be false. Even as housing prices have continued to rise, thousands of units sit vacant. Where new housing is built, it is bought up by rich landlords to use as a speculative investment.

Furthermore, the speaker argued, it is often more profitable for landlords to hoard housing and let it appreciate in value than to rent it out. Governments and landlords have been pushing market solutions for decades, and they have achieved nothing other than making money for the rich.

The third speaker, from the Anti-Imperialist Alliance in Ottawa, a group dedicated to organizing against global wars of aggression and the unequal international system, emphasized that the problems we are facing are part of a bigger system. The wealthy investors making fortunes by exploiting tenants are the same ones who profit from violence and human rights abuses across the world. We can’t rely on a system like this to reform itself, the speaker argued. Instead, we need to build something new.

The conclusion, emphasized by each speaker and by attendees in smaller group discussions, is that tenants and working-class people need to get organized if we want to stand any chance of improving our housing conditions.

In other words, tenants need power. And if we want power, no one else is going to give it to us. We will have to build it and fight for it ourselves.

The People’s Assembly event was hosted at a time when tenants in Ottawa and across the country are facing crisis conditions. Every year, we face higher rents and we see homeownership fall farther and farther out of our reach. At the same time, our elected politicians have offered nothing but lip service. Even after the Trudeau government’s declaration that “Housing is a Human Right” in 2019, little has fundamentally changed.

Ordinary working people are stuck paying the costs of a system designed to help the rich get richer. When we see higher rents and higher housing prices, they see increased profit. Whether it’s by flipping houses, buying rental properties to squeeze money out of tenants, or investing in Real Estate Investment Trusts, they make fortunes while we find it harder and harder to get by.

Even though the for-profit housing system controls so much of our lives, we have almost no say over it. Elected politicians refuse to take a stand. If they try, their efforts run up against powerful developer, landlord, and investor interests who will fight tooth-and-nail to maintain their control over government policies.

We are therefore trapped in a housing system that is designed to exploit us, seeing our incomes drained away into the pockets of landlords, while our supposed representatives in the government are unable or unwilling to take real action. Contrary to the claims of many of our political leaders, the system isn’t broken. In fact, it is working exactly as it’s meant to. It’s just not meant to work for us.

The good news is: we don’t have to accept it.

Working people have not been taking this crisis lying down. There are new examples every day of tenants going on rent strikes, picketing landlords offices, and blocking evictions. Working-class tenants across Canada are showing that we will not allow ourselves to be treated as an exploitable resource.

A People’s Assembly on Housing can allow tenants to support one another, carrying our efforts to greater heights by involving the entire community or neighbourhood in organizing against exploitative landlords.

When we get organized, we can stand up to landlords, to investors, to the politicians in their pockets. We are living in an age when housing is becoming even more exploitative, when the established political system is stagnating, and when the ruling class shows itself unable to provide any real solutions. We need to take a new road.

With that first People’s Assembly event, a relatively small group of tenants, workers, and community members announced our intention to do just that. Hopefully, this event can be a modest first step towards something much bigger.

Since June, we have been working to follow up on that event, to talk to our neighbours and take some steps to get organized. So far, we have had many excellent conversations with other tenants and folks in the community. Over the coming months, we will continue working to support fellow tenants in getting organized and building our collective power in the face of the exploitative housing system.

If you would like to join us in getting together to build tenant power, please reach out to us at the contact information below:

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