Wednesday November 8th, 2023

5:00pm,

Royal York Hotel

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230 Fightback is struggling to prevent KingSett Capital from building a luxury condo tower at Dundas and Sherbourne, in the heart of the Downtown East. This is a hard pressed poor working class community that desperately needs real housing solutions. The condo would drive up rents, displace tenants and lead to the removal of vital services that people in the area rely on.

On November 8, Jon Love, founder and CEO of KingSett Capital, will be receiving the Ivey Business Leader Award at an ‘in-person gala,’ being held at the lavish Royal York Hotel (partly owned by KingSett).

The Ivey Business School, which is bestowing the award, gushes about Love’s success in generating profits as a developer. It tells us that “KingSett has raised $15 billion of equity for its Growth, Income, Urban and Mortgage strategies and currently owns interests in a $20 billion portfolio of real estate assets and investments in Canada.”

Love, however, has carefully cultivated an image as a caring and responsible capitalist. We are told that “Jon Love is a shining example of great Canadian business and philanthropic leadership. He leads with action and compassion, both in the boardroom, and in his community.”

There will be very little compassion to be seen if Love and his company succeed in erecting their condo tower at Dundas and Sherbourne and we are determined to stop them. The people who live in the surrounding community must not be pushed out and urgently needed social housing must be built in place of the KingSett project.

We are challenging this developer but we are also demanding that City Hall, with Olivia Chow as the new Mayor, take action. We want Chow, who campaigned on a progressive housing agenda, to act to stop the condo. The City must negotiate and, if necessary, expropriate the property to ensure the needs of the community are met.

We are aware that the vital struggle at Dundas and Sherbourne is only one part of a bigger fight to block the power of developers and their profit driven agenda. We are building a movement to ensure that housing is treated as a social need and a human right, instead of a commodity.

Please come out to the Royal York Hotel on November 8 and support our action. To the ‘business community,’ Jon Love may be a hero and a role model, but to poor communities under attack, he represents everything that is bringing hardship and misery into their lives. As the Ivey Business School honours one of their own, we will be there to offer a very different assessment of his deeds and to confront the destructive greed that drives the housing crisis in Toronto.