Image credit: Julie Ivanoff

The following article is a response to “A community space in this Ottawa neighbourhood is our goal” in the Ottawa Citizen, 14 Mar 2024.

We are the tenants living in 227 Bank Street and 178 Nepean Street being targeted with Mass Eviction by Smart Living Properties (SLP) who purchased the block in 2021 to demolish it. The households targeted on this block are low-income. Some of us have been here for over 40 years.

While SLP COO Rakan Abushaar states the proposed redevelopment goal “is to turn the area into a true community space”, he fails to mention that Mass Eviction of long-standing members of the community is pivotal to the project. The goal of this redevelopment is actually to squeeze more money out of the property. The planned demolition on this block would achieve this in two ways: 1) intensification, which, according to the plan for this block would result from construction of a taller structure, packed with comparatively small units; 2) displacement of us in favour of a more affluent clientele paying market rate with no rent control. If this development were to proceed as planned, rents would be raised 3-5x their current rates.

Rakan indicated in his article that SLP is committed to a supportive relocation process for affected tenants. In reality, the destruction of our block would eliminate some of the last market-rate housing in the city that is accessible for a low-income household. He knows what we can and can’t afford. He knows there is nowhere to relocate us to. If we managed to find landlords willing to rent to us after income/credit checks, SLP’s “generous” eviction compensation would cover us for 4-8 months before we would find ourselves severely over-budget. Only 1 household on the block accepted SLP’s offer.

SLP’s planned Mass Eviction has been a difficult experience for all of us to say the least. Still, we need to highlight the way in which SLP has specifically targeted the most elderly tenants on our block. On the morning of 8-March 2024, SLP issued N4 eviction forms to 4 tenants, all seniors. These N4s were drawn up in haste as a response to our demand letter, which we delivered the day before. Each form indicated the period of non-payment as March 2024. Some of the forms were bogus, while others were based on suddenly discovered “clerical errors” from 2023. You can imagine the additional stress induced by this maneuver - which was exactly SLP’s intention. Only because we are organizing collectively were we able to counter the isolating experience that SLP intended to create for those 4 seniors.

In our neighbourhood, the accelerated destruction of rent-controlled housing over the past 2 decades has already sent countless tenants into situations of homelessness. On this block there are people sheltering in our doorways year round. Rakan, we must speak directly to you now. Your preferred tenant following our Mass Eviction already has plenty of rental options in our neighbourhood - it’s easy-come / easy-go when you’re paying market rent. So please be honest with us and tell us this: Is your plan special at all? Special enough to justify the chaos and suffering that would ensue in our community from a Mass Eviction of low-income households at 227 Bank Street and 178 Nepean Street?