If nothing else is understood, I want everyone to know that I am not your “media partner”.
I hear this term all the time from governments, agencies, the police and corporations, and I hate it. A free press is not the “partner” of these organizations by any definition of the word I’m aware of, and while we do pass on information that might be of community interest like a new scam or the start of enrolment for spring recreation programs, that doesn’t make us “partners”.
The media/government relationship is supposed to be antagonistic; they’re selling a policy and we’re questioning its efficacy. That doesn’t mean it can’t be friendly or respectful, but as we’ve discussed in this space before, too often in the eyes of city council and staff criticism is seen as an attack and it’s more important to put on the veneer that we’re 140,000 some odd shiny happy people holding hands than have an open, honest and messy conversation about community need.
Another relationship that should be antagonistic is the one between city hall and real estate developers. While individual developers should be thinking about the needs of their own individual projects and the overall profitability of their businesses, it’s the responsibility of councillors and the administration to think about the needs of the city overall. It’s why we have zoning, an official plan, and population targets.
And yet, time and again at council, there’s been a mood to wheel and deal with powerful interests in local real estate. From the contortions done to give select developers exactly what they wanted in reaffirming the city-approved Official Plan to last December’s vote to prioritize business leaders as part of any process to find housing solutions over people with lived experience, council has continually sent a message that they trust these people to solve a problem they have no incentive to solve.
But that’s only one side of the problem. The other side has been playing out over the last several months as so-called renovictions, or demovictions, have been moving to the front burner.
Last week, GuelphToday had reporting about a six-unit rent controlled building near Edinburgh and Wellington where all the residents had received N13s advising them to vacate by the end of April. Presently, the people in the building are paying between $800 and $1,168 in rent, but now they’re being forced out into the harsh Guelph rental market where the average rent is between $2,084 and $2,452 for a one- and two-bedroom apartment according to rentals.ca.
When my colleague Taylor Pace reached out to the representative of the building’s new owner (as of last November), they were totally cool and reasonable in responding to this outlet’s concerns about their tenants...
“I would appreciate if you could please cease from contacting me, unless your inquiry pertains to a legal matter, and not trivial media concerns,” said Rana Muasher who was the paralegal that signed the N13 given to building’s residents.
This latest move follows similar incidents at a complex on Victoria Road, where people were also enjoying some measure of rental control, and perhaps most famously, three apartment buildings on Brant Avenue bought by the so-called 'King of Renovictions', Michael Klein.
Of course, all of this is on top of the less discussed “patient zero” of local renovictions, 90 Carden St., which forced dozens of people who would absolutely never find accommodation anywhere else onto the cold streets of zero-tolerant Guelph.
Adding insult to injury though, these moves are often being done in the name of trying to relieve Guelph from the pressures of the housing crisis; they want to tear down these presently affordable units to build more units which they will probably rent for twice as much, essentially tripling their profits in the process.
If this is about creating housing, then why force out the people you’re already housing? Could it be that it’s not about housing at all, but about profit?
Of course it is, and understandably so. I’m not endorsing this, but the point of business is to make profit and it’s relatively easy to make a profit on real estate in Guelph given the conditions.
I don’t blame business people for being focused on making money, but I do blame our government for not exercising its role as a regulator. I often wonder if there’s ever any ambivalence at city hall when it comes to accepting the money of a mortgage broker to cover the cost of free transit trips to Guelph Storm games or on New Year’s Eve. Do they ever wonder where that money comes from and who’s really paying for it on the other end?
But leaving that aside, we need to talk about the urgency, or lack thereof, when it comes to acting on renovictions. I’m sure some people will say that the onus is on the Government of Ontario, and it absolutely is, but last fall council had spun up a sense of urgency to take action on the issue using whatever local tools are available, but in the nearly six months since then there’s been crickets.
Why? The City of Guelph doesn’t want to upset anyone, especially their valued partners in the development community, who we must continually walk on eggshells around. We must go out of our way to accommodate them, which ignores the fact that they’re pretty well accommodated already. For every hour of public engagement on an Official Plan Amendment, city staff are doing hours of one-on-one engagement with the effected developers, but in the public forum of council they still get priority.
But most concerning to me is that the demovictions of the units on Victoria Road were essentially approved at committee of adjustment, where there are fewer eyes and even less awareness about than a typical planning meeting of city council. There’s a hole in the system that needs to be plugged, and city hall is dragging its feet to plug it. I thought we were in a crisis, so where’s the urgency?
The entire focus of the response to the housing crisis has been supply, and while supply is definitely an issue – and has been in Guelph for nearly 30 years – there’s been almost no focus on saving what affordable housing we do have right now. The City’s development partners are robbing Peter to pay Paul so perhaps the time has come to stop getting along and start getting in the way.
We need a renoviction bylaw now to protect the people that city hall should think about first and foremost: It’s constituents!