Advocates for affordable housing gathered at the Human Rights Monument on Friday to urge city council to adopt a new bylaw to strengthen protection against eviction notices.
“I felt like the rug was swept out from beneath me when I got my notice,” said Brian Doyle, who shared his story with demonstrators who gathered in the whipping wind and rain.
The Ottawa gathering was among 11 rallies across the country, organized by ACORN Canada, that took place to mark National Housing Day.
Members of the advocacy group to protect tenants against landlords and corporations came together to urge the city to make a “renoviction” bylaw a more serious priority.
In Ontario, when tenants move out, landlords can increase rents at their discretion, which has incentivized them to evict tenants on the grounds that the property requires renovations.
“Ottawa tenants need the city to protect them so we aren’t priced out of our neighbourhoods,” said ACORN spokesperson Debbie Staples.
For over a decade, Pierre Girard had lived in an apartment “I call home, it’s where I built a life.” He received an eviction notice last summer which cited the need for building repairs. “I face a reality of being forced to leave home because the landlord decided their profit matters more,” Girard said to the crowd.
“I’m now paying almost triple what I was before,” said Tara Mills, another recently evicted renter.
In the summer of 2024, more than 330 tenants from 11 buildings across Ottawa faced renovictions, ACORN says. With rent prices rapidly rising, many have nowhere to go.
An ACORN report released this year found that Ottawa had a 545 per cent increase in renoviction cases – or N13 eviction notices – filed between 2017 and 2022. Out of the five largest cities in Ontario, Ottawa is the only one without municipal protections in place against these types of evictions.
The city, meanwhile, has proposed a reduction in housing spending in the 2025 draft budget, from $30 million to $22 million.
Members of the rally chanted “shame” in response to the budget news. If protections are not in place, “the cycle of displacement, gentrification, and homelessness will only continue to worsen,” said Girard.
Critics, including Coun. Stephanie Plante, have said that preventing homelessness before it occurs is part of combatting the housing crisis.
New bylaws to protect tenants who find themselves displaced have been passed in other cities across the province. Hamilton passed Ontario’s first renoviction bylaw last January and Toronto is to follow by the summer of 2025.
ACORN members said they hope Ottawa will be the next city to adopt protective measures.
“I’m overwhelmed, I’m stressed, I lose sleep, it’s scary and it’s serious I just wish [the city] would take it more seriously,” said Staples.
