Toronto Renters Forum

We the Admins of the Toronto Renter's Forum just wanted make a couple of supportive comments regarding this post, and in particular these words:

Sitting behind our computers and complaining about our rent rates is not going to change anything in the real world for either ourselves OR our neighbours.

We receive lots of questions from renters, and we hear lots of horror stories, and these things are part of the reason that we created this Forum.  And while we believe that this Forum is a (small) part of the solution (we endeavour to be a safe place for renters to compare notes, learn from one another's experiences, and maybe even organise themselves into a renter’s union or something, etc.), we also know that this Forum has a negative effect upon renters’ activism too.  What we’re talking about is the fact that many renters use this Forum to vent their frustrations upon our sympathetic ears, and then they feel better, and then they leave without taking action to actually improve their own situation.

We unfortunately live in an era of social-media induced inaction.  Occupying your landlord’s office for a couple of hours does far more to further your cause than spending those hours making hundreds of angry posts online, because online noise doesn’t have the same impact when the actions that you are complaining about are unfair, rather than illegal.

No politician is going to see your hundreds of posts and send in city inspectors or the police, because by and large the abusive things that your landlord is doing to you are LEGAL.

Take, for example, Above Guideline Rent Increases - they are profoundly unfair (no other business gets to temporarily modify the legal contract you have with them in order to push their maintenance and upkeep costs onto you the customer, no indeed!, regular businesses have to depreciate the value of their equipment and set aside funds to repair and replace things as necessary).  But the fact is that Above Guideline Rent Increases are legal, codified in the Residential Tenancies Act.

Wise homeowners save money in a Rainy Day Fund, and there are laws requiring condo boards to maintain appropriately sized Reserve Funds held in trust to cover large expensive capital projects.  The problem of how to pay for large repairs isn’t a difficult one to solve.  Yet somehow the landlords have used their money and influence to lobby the government to create laws to their advantage.  This is what must change.  And it won’t change because people make a few angry posts online.  Real change to remove unfair laws requires real action in the real world.  And that is why we like CNDraycott’s post, because it is the correct first step towards making these changes.