The “Housing for People – Not Profit” Campaign is demanding the immediate mass construction of social housing and rent roll-backs across the Province, but this is only the beginning! We need comprehensive provincial housing policies that put people before profit. This would include:
- Recognize housing as a human right and introduce a Tenant Bill of Rights and provincial housing program to ensure adequate housing based on need is provided to all.
- Build 200,000 units of rent-geared-to-income social housing units immediately, 550,000 units of affordable housing, 15,000 units of transitional housing (to support people leaving situations of domestic violence, incarceration, homelessness or shelters) and maintain levels of affordable housing based on need.
- Upgrade and maintain existing units so that they are safe, secure, affordable, accessible and environmentally sound.
- Implement democratic and sustainable planning to tackle issues of urban sprawl and environmental degradation.
- Enact rent control legislation to cover all rental units, including vacant units, and legislate rent roll-backs across Ontario.
- Deliver proper building inspections for rental housing, and enforce penalties for landlords who do not meet standards; make bed bugs a public health issue; introduce maximum temperatures into the property standards law and require landlords provide adequate cooling systems.
- Ban evictions or utility cut-off due to involuntary unemployment including layoff, health issues, strike or lockout.
- Eliminate the Landlord and Tenant Board and replace it with a tenant-led agency that is responsible for administration of housing rights.
- Develop and implement rehousing mechanisms that ensure the immediate provision of rehousing in the event of displacement (including eviction and removal as a result of domestic violence or unsafe conditions).
- Develop expropriation policies, particularly aimed at large private landlords who own significant numbers of units, as one tool among others to confront the housing crisis and build up Ontario’s public housing stock; private buildings that fail to maintain their properties according to laws and by-laws and buildings that are left vacant for more than six months should be targeted for expropriation and conversion to publicly owned, democratically operated rent-geared-to-income housing.
- Provide equitable standards and funding for Indigenous people living on and off reserves ensuring that all initiatives are Indigenous-led.