![]() ![]() It had no government backing this time, raising $2.6 million from investors to get a 36-month loan from Vancity Community Investment Bank. The trust bought its first residential building in 2019 with funds from a city pilot project. Their trust has more than 800 members, he added, who elect a board of directors to act on their behalf. “We bring property from private ownership into community ownership, and we can make decisions about how it’s used and who can access it,” Barndt said. A trust in Kensington Market made its first purchase this spring, and Barndt says interest has been piqued in Little Jamaica and Jane and Finch. “In the absence of government programs that support this type of work, it’s common sense … we’ve secured the building.”Ĭommunity ownership of affordable real estate is a model that other Toronto areas, anxious about gentrification, have started to eye. “Our rental housing stock is under attack, by predatory landlords who are purchasing the rental buildings in our community, upscaling them, and often displacing residents into homelessness,” said Joshua Barndt, executive director of the Parkdale group. ![]() The new owners are the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust - part of a growing movement of community-based groups who are taking affordable housing acquisition and preservation into their own hands. Instead, when the building sold this spring, LaLiberté was elated. With rent costs that still fall below $800, hers is the kind of building that housing affordability advocates normally fear being sold - lest it be scooped up and renovated to turn higher profits, chipping away at Toronto’s limited affordable housing supply. Her rent has stayed low, with only modest annual increases. The 36-unit apartment has been home ever since. The sound of chimes floated in from time to time, from a Buddhist temple just down the street. ![]() But it was clean, with terracotta floors and a backyard to share. The unit was just 268 square feet in all. It was the break she’d been waiting for, after spending months scouring the rental market for something she could afford with a fixed income of disability payments. READ MORE: Parkdale tenants organize rent strike to protest rent increases at MetCap buildingsĪIMCo, which is a major investor in MetCap Living and in turn owns three of the buildings, has issued eviction notices against those tenants who are refusing to pay rent, a move Cole Webber, spokesperson for the tenants and Parkdale Community Legal Services, believes is unreasonable.Seven years ago, Anne Marie LaLiberté was living in a Toronto women’s shelter when she came across a rare opportunity: a bachelor apartment in Parkdale with rent of just $650 a month. Residents say the buildings’ management company, MetCap Living, is increasing the rent by nine per cent over three years in addition to the provincially instituted guideline of 1.5 per cent this year. Two hundred tenants of six Parkdale apartments are participating in the strike, which demands the withdrawal of applications for above-guideline rent increases (AGIs) at the buildings and for necessary repairs to be done in their units. Tenants of Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood who began a rent strike earlier this month say The Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) has started to initiate eviction notices.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |