Hamilton tenants are organizing in the face of a perfect storm of steeply rising rents, significant eviction pressures and the likelihood that city council is going to continue to impose tax rates that are far higher than those paid by homeowners. An all-day conference early next month will also address long standing issues of inadequate social housing, pest infestations and the rights of tenants in relations with landlords.
The Hamilton Tenant Solidarity Network has recruited more than a dozen presenters for “a skills and information sharing conference by and for tenants” at the Perkins Centre (1429 Main East at Kenilworth) on Saturday, April 2 from 10 am to 6 pm. Speakers include a contractor, architect, teacher, social planner, city staffer, tenant and poverty organizers, plus several community legal workers and experienced citizen activists.
Topics include: the challenges facing older apartment towers; the use of rent strikes to obtain needed repairs; tenant political and legal rights and tactics; tenant organizing; getting accurate information on corporations that own apartment buildings; several on government responsibilities for problems facing renters; and one titled “Landlords, Bed Bugs and other Parasites.”
Tenants occupy a third of households in Hamilton including many with the lowest incomes and often paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Homelessness is widespread and increasing, and more than 5000 people are on the waiting lists for affordable housing, while city-owned facilities are mired in crises caused by inadequate funding.
In Hamilton, multi-residential buildings pay 2.74 times the tax rate charged to houses and townhouses despite a provincial policy adopted nearly 20 years ago that called on municipalities to equalize these rates. While these are paid by building owners rather than directly by tenants, city officials readily acknowledge the tax hit on the latter equates to about 20 percent of their annual rent payments.
Pressure to lower this tax burden on renters led the city to agree to distribute tax information directly to tenants in 2009 but that was discontinued after councillors rejected proposals to move toward tax rates more similar to homeowners. Tax rates for 2016 will be recommended by staff and decided next month, but it is very unlikely there will be any change to the current differences because any reduction in the apartment rates would require an increase in the taxes on houses and townhouses.
A 2009 staff report calculated that equalizing the rates would require finding about $40 million somewhere else and consequently result in an 8 percent hike in taxes on homeowners. The report argued that provincial property assessment officials undervalue apartment buildings so higher tax rates are justified. Staff also predicted that lower tax rates would not mean reduced rents although provincial law requires that such reductions must be passed onto tenants.
The higher rates don’t apply to all apartments. In an effort to boost economic development, council has made the tax rates for new apartment buildings the same as those on homeowners, but only a handful of buildings in Hamilton qualify for the reduction. The policy is focused on increasing the value of building permits – a major objective of city council – and appears to have little to do with improving the condition of tenants.
Higher taxation on rental properties imposes additional burdens on some of Hamilton’s poorest residents, but it may also help the house construction sector by encouraging more people to try to become homeowners. Last year the vast majority of new construction was residential, but almost none of that were apartments.
Most new towers are condos where the lower homeowner tax rates apply. There’s been a dramatic drop in the apartment vacancy rate, and a 22 percent hike in average rents over the past eight years. One contributing factor has been the conversion of nearly 2000 apartments to condos as well as landlord attempts to ‘upscale’ their buildings.
The April 2 conference will hear from an OCAP (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty) organizer who contends that “governments at the municipal, provincial and federal levels are all complicit in this crisis, and each level has different tools at their disposal that they could use to address it, if they saw fit.” It will conclude with a panel discussion on gentrification and its implications.