At 90, Sylvia Berk doesn’t know where she’ll go if she’s forced to leave her small apartment in downtown Windsor, Ont.
Berk doesn’t have any family nearby and health issues have confined her to a wheelchair.
“I’m very happy because I have good friends here and they help me every day with what I can’t do for myself,” she said recently.
Berk, a lifelong musician who loves to write, has lived at the I.L. Peretz House, a 71-unit apartment building for low-income seniors in the city’s core, for a dozen years.
But in the last year, the monthly rent for her unit has jumped by more than 50 per cent, from $447 to $700. It’s still below market rate for a one-bedroom like hers, but she said her low fixed income isn’t enough to cover it.
Now, with the help of her neighbours, she’s fighting an eviction notice.
The building is run by the I.L. Peretz Senior Citizen Corporation, a non-profit affiliated with the Windsor Jewish Federation. Built in the 1980s, the apartment tower along Ouellette Avenue was meant to provide a landing place for seniors in the local Jewish community.
But as that community has shrunk over the years, so has the number of Jewish residents in the building. Now, it serves as an affordable home for seniors of all faiths.
Since last summer, though, Berk and other tenants say their rent has risen anywhere from 20 to 60 per cent. As a result, they’ve sought legal help and are now demanding investigations from elected officials.
“If there’s a failure of any of these officials to investigate, and/or an investigation finds no wrongdoing, then the Earth is flat,” said Howard Douglas, a resident who, along with his wife Sherri, is leading the push for inquiries.
But the landlord said the reason they’ve increased rental rates by those margins is because prices haven’t gone up in roughly a decade — while costs have.
“Before the increase, we had somebody paying $275 a month,” says Stephen Cheifetz, head of the Windsor Jewish Federation.
“We had a number at $500 a month,” he said, adding that market rates for the units are likely $1,300 to $1,500.
“It pains us to have to increase anybody’s rent. We’d rather not if we didn’t have to, but you can’t have a building without that,” said Cheifetz, a corporate lawyer by profession.
“Who pays for the increase in property taxes? Who pays for the increase in utilities? Who pays for the maintenance repairs? We’ve been doing it, and because of that we have significant losses,” he said.
He declined to disclose how much the losses were, but said “it’s in the five-figure range.” The building is now for sale.
The dispute between the tenants and landlord has unfolded against the backdrop of a nationwide affordable housing crisis, as well as inflationary pressures that have increased costs across a wide range of goods and services. It also comes as lawmakers at both the provincial and federal levels seek to speed up homebuilding to satisfy demand and bring down prices.
Cheifetz only recently became the president of the Jewish Federation. He said he’s unsure why the rent wasn’t raised previously. He also said he doesn’t know how many eviction notices have been issued since last year, but that “nobody’s getting evicted unless they’re in a situation where they’ve done something that is difficult for us running the building,” meaning they’ve been disruptive or caused damage.
“Our policy was if you’re not going to pay the increased rent, then we issue an eviction or we decided that we would make sure that there were consequences to it,” Cheifetz said.
Concern and job searches among elderly tenants
Still, the measures have caused panic within the building, according to Sherri Douglas, the elected tenant representative.
“Since we got the notice about the building going up for sale, I’ve had tenants calling me, crying,” she said last week. “Two tenants, their doctors were gonna hospitalize them because they were so upset.”
Douglas said the building is home to many elderly residents who can’t afford the new rental rates.
“Social housing has a waiting period of five to 10 years. I have seniors in their 80s and 90s,” she said. “Can you imagine being 85 or 95 years old and trying to find another apartment? You don’t know where you’re going to go. And that breaks my heart.”
Carolanne Harris, a retired personal support worker, has lived in the building for nearly two years.
“It used to be wonderful,” she said. “Now it’s questionable. You don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next.”
The price of her one-bedroom apartment has gone from $758 per month to $1,100, and is being increased again to $1,325, she said.
“It’s very difficult because I’m on a pension,” she said. “When they keep raising the rent like this, you’re gonna cost us out of the building, like we won’t be able to afford it.”
Now, at 78, she’s looking for ways to supplement her income.
“I’ve actually applied for a couple of jobs where I’d be sitting with someone if they had something that was wrong with them and they needed somebody to sit with them quietly,” she said. “I put my name in for that.”
Building classification at heart of dispute
Much of the fight between the tenants and the landlord revolves around whether the building is considered a social housing project that receives public funding. If not, the rules governing the building generally limit yearly rental price increases to 2.1 per cent.
But if it is a social housing project, then a different framework applies — one that relies on maximum rent ceilings established by the city, according to a legal opinion from the tenants’ law firm.
The tenants argue that the building was up until this summer treated as a regular rental property, then reclassified with the city as social housing to justify the price increases, which would make the property more appealing to potential buyers.
The tenants’ paralegal did not respond to an interview request, but in the opinion from late July, said they had recently received an amending agreement between I.L. Peretz and the City of Windsor “unequivocally” identifying the building as a social housing project.
Lisa Gretzky, NDP MPP for Windsor West, called the move “a loophole” that has, in her opinion, been exploited to try to evict the seniors at the building.
She said seniors across the province on fixed income, such as disability benefits, are increasingly facing rent increases they can’t afford. She called on the province to enact stricter rent controls and said she may raise the issues at I.L. Peretz during question period when the Ontario Legislature returns next month.
“But there’s other opportunities for me to work with those tenants and raise it directly with the minister of municipal affairs and housing and with the premier,” she said.
The minister’s office did not respond to an interview request.
Cheifetz maintains that the building is a social housing project and has been for years, though, and that the recent rental price increases were based on the city’s own limits.
“Now, certain people were so low that we felt we couldn’t take it up there, that we would do it in stages,” he said. “We felt we were being nice by doing that, but obviously they don’t.”
He said the July agreement with the city was the result of a previous mix-up with the address for the Jewish Community Centre, which is attached to the I.L. Peretz apartment building.
“What happened was [the tenants] made the ridiculous argument that because one of the old social housing agreements referred to 1641 Ouellette instead of 1653 Ouellette, that 1641 Ouellette is the Jewish Centre and so it had no apartment building, so it couldn’t be a social contract,” he said.
“It was a typo. So I had to go to the City of Windsor and get them to amend the agreement to replace the typo.”
The city declined an interview request.
In any case, now that the city has made clear the building’s classification, the tenants say they will search for answers about their rent increases through the review process allowed under the social housing rules.
The tenants have been critical of both city staff and Renaldo Agostino, their city councillor, for what they view as a lack of clear communication around the building’s designation and future.
Agostino said it’s been hard for him to weigh in because of the tricky legal issues.
“If there’s something we could do, we’re there to do it, but I’m just not sure that there’s anything we can do in this particular situation.”
Cheifetz said that when it comes to Berk, they are “not doing anything with respect to that eviction.” Even if the Landlord and Tenant Board issues an eviction order, the property owner still has to seek enforcement of the eviction, he said.
He also said their executive director previously met with residents like Berk to explain the different government programs that can provide supplemental income.
“We gave them the information about the programs. We tried to help them, but we can’t do it for them. They have to do it and they have to sign. It’s their information.”
Berk said she’s been making calls to access a government program but hasn’t been successful yet, in part because of a long waiting list.
“For $253 more a month I can stay where I am,” she said. “That’s all it would take.”
Sherri Douglas, the tenant representative, said they feel like they don’t have a voice because they’re seniors.
“We’ve been contributing members to society, we’ve raised families here, we’ve had jobs, we’ve contributed to the economy,” she said. “And now we feel like we’ve been kicked to the curb.”
