Hamilton residents trek to Ottawa to protest rent increase

Residents of a property in Hamilton embroiled in a disagreement with their landlord trekked to Ottawa to protest outside the rental company's main office and purported home of the company's president.

Between 80 and 100 tenants of Stoney Creek Towers have been withholding rent since May.

The Hamilton Tenant Solidarity Network claims that InterRent REIT and the local property management company CLV Group have not been properly maintaining their units.

They also say the company has applied for a rent increase above provincial guidelines which — when added to the maximum rent increase allowed each year — would equate to nearly 10 per cent over two years for many tenants.

So on Saturday afternoon, three dozen people marched to what was believed to be the Manotick home of Mike McGahan, CEO of InterRent REIT and president of the CLV Group.

"When you start adding $75 to $80 to their rent every month, that's a lot of money at the end of the year. That's, like, over $900. That's money that could go toward their family," said Linda Habibi, 53, who has lived in one of the four apartment buildings for a little more than a year.

"Forget about trying to save anything. [Families are] just trying to stay afloat."

Habibi said the rent increase won't affect her this year, but she suspects she could be in 2019, which could reduce her ability to save for retirement.

"For me, it's going to be over $900 a year ...that I can't put away," she said. "That's a significant amount of money. And that's only the first year. What if they do it again the following year? And then it goes up and up and up."

It is very hard to find out another place according to our needs.- Jolly Augusthy, tenant

Jolly Augusthy said her rent is set to go up $75 a month in September, which would be above her family's budget.

Augusthy said she's lived in a two-bedroom unit for the past four years with her husband and two young children. Her family is withholding rent, she said, because they feel the company isn't hearing their concerns about problems with the building.

One tenant, Augusthy said, spent last winter without a window. She added that it's not as simple as just finding a new place, since rental rates are increasing in Hamilton.

"It is very hard to find out another place according to our needs. So, even though we are looking, it's hard to find."

Tenants who don't pay their rent and harass private citizens and their families are both violating the law and violating the obligations of their lease.- Roseanne MacDonald-Holtman, CLV Group spokesperson

Before Saturday's march, the group had also spent hours outside the company's head office on Bank Street on Friday.

No one came out of the Manotick home, which had orange construction fencing across the driveway.

"We are proud to be investing millions improving rental housing in Ontario," said Roseanne MacDonald-Holtman, CLV Group's community relations manager, in a statement to CBC News.

"Tenants who don't pay their rent and harass private citizens and their families are both violating the law and violating the obligations of their lease," she wrote.

MacDonald-Holtman also said the protesters were providing factual errors, but refused to elaborate on what they were.

Heron Gate Tenant Coalition joins demonstration

In a statement late last year to the Hamilton Specator, MacDonald-Holtman said the buildings were in disrepair when CLV bought them, and the property "required a very substantial amount of maintenance, repair and capital investment."

Residents of Ottawa's Heron Gate neighbourhood have been embroiled in a dispute with rental corporation Timbercreek, and two members of the Heron Gate Tenant Coalition marched with the Hamilton residents in a show of solidarity.

"It's people coming together in their neighbourhoods to defend their neighbourhoods and fight off these displacements, protect their homes that they've lived in for years, decades, with their families, their children, their parents, their grandparents," said coalition spokesperson Josh Hawley.

Hawley said that while the situations are different, the end result is the same: whether it's high rents or planned evictions, people are being driven out of their homes.

"These are like tight, tight communities that are being torn apart," Hawley said.