Latest offer in Bank Street 'demoviction' saga fails to win over tenants
Smart Living Properties now offering tenants right to come back to new units at controlled rents
UPDATE: In its meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 11, Ottawa city council approved the zoning and heritage applications that Smart Living Properties needed to move forward with the development, including the memorandum of understanding committing the company to its offer. Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster and three other councillors dissented in whole or in part.
Tenants are balking at the latest offer from a developer looking to tear down a historic block of buildings in downtown Ottawa.
Smart Living Properties confirmed that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the city agreeing to give 11 tenants living in four buildings on Bank and Nepean streets the right to return to new units at the rents they pay now.
The package comes with a lump sum of $20,000 each plus $500 for moving expenses, and a guarantee of no above-guideline rent increases in the new units for 10 years. Tenants who opt not to return would get $30,000 instead.
Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster's office negotiated the agreement, though she said she still won't vote in favour of the project when it comes to council on Wednesday. She called the case "a classic example" of displacement and gentrification.
"The political pressure that these tenants put on the developer and also the other members of the planning and housing committee really pushed this developer to do better, and I think that is an incredible victory for tenant organizing," she said. "But I also understand it is still a tremendous loss."
Tenants fight back
Tenants have been fighting to save the buildings, which they describe as a vibrant artists' hub, and preserve the affordable units inside in perpetuity. The new offer doesn't appear to have weakened their resolve.
John Bergeron, who pays $500 for a bachelor apartment in the Nepean Street building, said the memories of his unit, which his father helped him get in 1981, are more important to him than the offer on the table.
"They're trying to derail the community support and the fight that the tenants are putting up against being pushed out," he said.
You are losing a space that has helped build a thriving community.- Larysa Voss, art educator
Tenant Julie Ivaoff fears it will take years to build the new units, if it happens at all. She doubts $20,000 will last long enough to save the tenants from homelessness in the meantime. In her view, the memorandum undercuts the organizing work the tenants are doing, including a hearing with the Landlord and Tenant Board scheduled for March.
"Moving out in February, two months from now, is not helpful to anyone," she said.
Troster said she pushed the developer to lengthen the deadline, at least until after the hearing.
"This is the only thing they would agree to," she said.
Heritage more than a facade, say allies
Smart Living Properties is seeking zoning changes to allow it to build a nine-storey building with 263 units on the site. The buildings are also heritage-protected, but the company has agreed to preserve the facades. City heritage staff endorsed the plan at a built heritage committee meeting on Tuesday.
They explained that there is nothing in the Ontario Heritage Act that would allow the committee to ensure the building remains an artists' hub.
The tenants and their allies called it absurd that the committee is only able to focus on saving the exterior of the building, while neglecting the cultural expression that happens inside.
"Heritage is about what happens inside a building, not just its facade," said Larysa Voss, an art educator who has given classes in the buildings.
She said a long list of accomplished artists have lived and worked there, including several with works in the National Gallery of Canada and the Ottawa Art Gallery.
"You are losing a space that has helped build a thriving community," she said. "This is something that, once it's taken away, can never be replaced."
Setting a precedent
Troster called the buildings a "crucial cultural hub" that previously hosted neighbourhood institutions like Wallacks Art Supplies, Gallery 101 and Invisible Cinema.
The built heritage committee followed the same approach as planning committee last week. It didn't vote for Smart Living's application, nor against it, but simply referred the matter to council's Wednesday meeting.
Troster said chances are "very high" that the company's applications will pass at council. She noted that the city has limited powers given provincial law, and called the memorandum of understanding the only tool at its disposal to protect tenants,
"It is very, very rare for committee and council to reject an application like this if there is no legal reason within the bounds of zoning laws to do so, but if for some reason we did, and it went to the land tribunal and we lost, the tenants would get nothing," said Troster, referring to the provincial body that hears zoning appeals.
Whatever happens, she hopes Smart Living's offer will set a precedent and serve as a minimum standard for tenant protection in Ottawa.
"We also have a responsibility as a city to set standards for how we expect tenants to be treated, and so I keep saying this is now going to be the new floor," Troster said.
"Any developer that's coming in and is demolishing in a building, and if there's existing tenants, we're going to say, you have to do at least as well as this developer did."
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