Working class renters in Ottawa are no strangers to displacement. How many of us have received an email or a notice from our landlord saying the landlord wants us to move? We’re trained to be complacent, to avoid confrontation, to accept the rights of people with power, money, and property. We might not think of these notices as evictions, but that’s exactly what they are.

Once landlords tick all the right boxes, they are bestowed the right by the legal system to push us from our homes. Just because they have the legal right, it doesn’t they mean should get away with is. Some of the worst parts of our society are the ones that are legal, but we know are wrong. When a landlord tells somebody he wants them out, he’s really saying that person is an obstacle for him to make even more money.

Renovations and demolition are common strategies landlords use to remove current tenants – many of whom are likely paying far below market rent – from their homes, increase the value of their property, and collect more rent. All of these are perfectly legal. In a colonial system like ours, built around the accumulation of private property, displacement is the driving force for wealth.

Working class people make cities around the world work. We keep everything running, keep things clean, keep roads repaired, facilities and stores open. On an official level, however, cities have been shaped by bosses and landowners, and Ottawa is no exception. Take Centretown as an example. Gladstone Avenue is named after the prominent British politician who first fought the abolition of slavery, then made millions (in current money) in reparations when his father eventually had to free the enslaved people he was exploiting. Booth Street is named after the big lumber boss who was responsible for the 1900 Ottawa–Hull fire which killed several people and made 15,000 homeless. If this wasn’t bad enough, J.R. Booth blamed the fire on working class people for having wooden homes – not on the fact that he stored 100 million feet of lumber close to densely populated neighbourhoods. Booth refused to store the lumber further away because it would cost him money.

Today’s living conditions for working class people in Ottawa have not changed all that much. The good news is that displacement and evictions can be beaten. When tenants get organized in their buildings and neighbourhoods, they’re infinitely better equipped to get landlords to back off and drop their eviction plans. While it may be disheartening for many working class people to learn that the legal system, in this case the Landlord and Tenant Board, cannot be relied upon to make decisions in favour of what we see as just and “the right thing to do,” we can recognize that taking a collective approach with our neighbours outside the legal system will give us the wins we so desperately need.