Rally strives to make stronger rent controls provincial election issue

ACORN London held a rally to make rent control an Ontario election issue.

On Tuesday, members of London ACORN held a rally for stronger rent control and other protections in Ontario ahead of this week’s provincial election.

But not everyone who was invited decided to attend.

According to the tenant advocacy group, candidates from all political parties were invited to speak and answer questions—but only the NDP’s Terence Kernaghan and Liberal Tariq Khan joined the rally on Dufferin Avenue.

Both Khan and Kernaghan expressed their clear support for strengthening rent control.

“I brought forward legislation to bring back vacancy control, to bring back rent control, to make it so that you would pay with the last tenant paid - it was something that the Ford government voted against,” Kernaghan explained.

“We need to [make] rent control effective,” said Khan. “We need to decide the disputes between the landlords and the renters within two months - max.”

ACORN members are calling on the next provincial government to introduce rent control that:

• Applies to all buildings (not just those built prior to 2018)
• Includes vacancy control to stop rent hikes on vacant units
• Ban AGIs that circumvent existing rent control measures

In a news release, ACORN warns, “Without full rent control, landlords are incentivized to push out long term tenants who pay below-market rents via bad faith evictions, repairs or maintenance, or otherwise making life miserable for long term tenants - all this in order for the landlord to get new tenants in who pay market rate rent.”