MPP for Kitchener Centre calling on province to put an end to mass renovictions

MPP for Kitchener Centre Aislinn Clancy wants the provincial government to remove barriers to make way for the construction of more affordable housing units.

Clancy was at Queen’s Park this week calling on the province to end mass renovictions.

“When folks face this they don’t have alternatives because we haven’t been building that affordable supply for a very long time,” said Clancy. “Both landlords and tenants realize that the Landlord Tenant Board is broken, the wait times are over a year.”

Clancy said Kitchener has a zero per cent vacancy rate for affordable units.

She told 570 NewsRadio that more and more people are calling her office after being impacted by Kitchener renovictions.

“93 per cent were built before the mid-nineties, so a lot of that older stock is where people pay affordable rent and some bad actors are taking that opportunity to push people out, do a quick makeover and then jack the rents up in order to make a profit,” said Clancy.

The problem of mass renovictions isn’t just in Kitchener but around the province.

“It pains me. I’ve met seniors, I’ve met folks with disabilities who have found themselves homeless, living in a car, living on a couch. This isn’t how we treat people, especially when they’re law-abiding, rent-paying folks who have been illegally renovicted and illegally treated by bad-acting landlords.”