Protestors march through downtown Toronto to call out corporate landlords
A group of Toronto advocates marched alongside a giant fake cockroach during a protest Saturday as they called on the city to provide more affordable housing and spoke out against corporate landlord practices.
Several people held large cockroach props with speech bubbles containing the names of some major corporate landlords in the city as they marched toward those companies' offices in the Financial District.
Corporate landlords "have been jacking up our rents, but also not maintaining our units," said Bruno Dobrusin, a member of the York South-Weston Tenant Union, one of the organizers of the protest.
"That's why we brought the cockroaches, because [it shows] what we have to live with."
The demonstration began at 214-230 Sherbourne St., a vacant lot at the intersection with Dundas St. E. that advocates have long called on the city to turn the lot into affordable housing.
In 2022, KingSett Capital, a private equity real estate investment firm, purchased the lot with the intention of building a 46-storey condo building there.
The city had worked on a bid to buy 214-230 Sherbourne Street at the time but was unsuccessful, said James Wattie, a spokesperson for CreateTO, a city-owned agency that looks to create opportunities based on the city's real estate portfolio.
In spring 2023, the city negotiated with the corporation about buying back the stretch of land, but the proposal did not meet KingSett's asking price, said Toronto Centre Coun. Chris Moise in a statement last July.
City council has since directed staff to continue discussions with KingSett "to find solutions that ensure an affordable housing component is included in the development," Wattie said in an email Saturday.
These solutions "could include acquiring the site, should funding become available and subject to council approval," he said.
KingSett Capital's Toronto office is one of the locations where protestors marched to Saturday, with others including Dream Unlimited and Canadian Apartment Properties REIT.
CBC Toronto has reached out to the companies for comment and will update this story if we receive a response.
Sherbourne and Dundas 'epicentre' of housing crisis
Poverty is "very visible" near Sherbourne and Dundas streets, said Gaetan Heroux, member of 230 Fightback, an advocacy group that's asking the city to buy back the lot and turn it into affordable housing.
"It's important for us to have social housing on the lot … We're in the epicentre of the housing crisis," he said.
Among those at the rally was Megan Kee, an organizer with the advocacy group No Demovictions.
The term demovictions, also known as demolition-driven eviction, refers to when a landlord evicts tenants from a building so that it can be demolished and redeveloped into new apartments or condos.
Kee said she lives near Yonge and Eglinton in an affordable housing building with 121 units that is being torn down to build condos.
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"A lot of people in my situation don't have the financial ability to go anywhere else," she said. "We're sort of stuck."
Kee said she believes corporate landlords are primarily driven by profit, not doing what's best for their tenants.
"When a business is in charge of fundamental human rights, profit is always going to be the number one priority," she said.
"It's not going to be human wellbeing, it's not going to be quality of life."
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