Radical Housing Journal, September 2019 Vol 1(2): 81-101 Section: Retrospectives Rent-striking the REIT: reflections on tenant organizing against financialized rental housing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Emily Power Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Bjarke Skærlund Risager Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network and Department of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Abstract Emily Power is a member In 2018, a group of tenants from four high-rise apartment buildings in of the Hamilton Tenants East Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, launched a seven-month rent strike Solidarity Network (HTSN). against their landlord, a real estate investment trust (REIT). The Bjarke Skærlund Risager is a tenants protested a proposed steep rent increase and demanded long- Postdoctoral Fellow in the standing repairs to their apartments. While some repairs were done, Department of Geography & and the strike involved other successful moments, the rent increase was Planning, University of Toronto, not fought off. Written from the perspective of the Hamilton Tenants and is doing participatory action research with HTSN. Solidarity Network (HTSN), the group that helped organizing the rent Contact: strike, this article has two aims. First, we analyse the strategy and tactics
[email protected] and of the REIT in the context of deindustrialization and financialization in
[email protected] Hamilton. We break up this financialized landlord’s ‘repositioning’ strategy into five predatory tactics: cutting, squeezing, greening, rent increasing, and bullying and bribing. Second, we reflect on the experiences, successes, and failures of HTSN. Our successes include organizing tenants and training tenants as organizers; having well- executed legal, fundraising, and media strategies; making social events and political actions integral to the strike; and relying on and forging further ties with comrades and supporters.