On March 21, 230 Fightback and some key allies came to Toronto City Hall for another round in the fight to win social housing in the Downtown East, in the face of the profit driven process of redevelopment and gentrification that is underway. We had held a community meeting the day before in All Saint’s Church at Dundas and Sherbourne to build for the action and ensure maximum participation by local people.

On entering the building, we made our way to the Mayor’s Office, where speakers from 230 Fightback, the Shelter and Justice Housing Network, the Regent Park community, the Friends of Chinatown, Sanctuary and No Demovictions addressed the crowd.

The importance of ensuring that housing is created that meets the needs of the Downtown East community was driven home. The plans of KingSett Capital to build a destructive luxury condo tower at 214-230 Sherbourne are now on hold and the developer has offered to sell the property back to the City. However, it is demanding a high price, in an attempt to be compensated for its speculative investment not having been as profitable as it hoped.

We stressed that City Hall, with the avowed progressive Olivia Chow, as its Major, can’t let KingSett get away with this. The City has extensive dealings with this developer and often ensures that public money is funnelled to it for the various ventures it engages in. KingSett must be told in no uncertain terms that there will be no business as usual when it sits on a vacant property that could provide housing for a hard pressed community.

With the help of our allies, we made clear that the fight at Dundas and Sherbourne is part of a bigger struggle in this city to ensure that housing is created to meet the needs of communities and not in order to enrich developers and speculators. Housing must be treated as a human right and not a commodity that is provided only to the extent that it is profitable.

After we delivered our message, we had intended to go up to the City Council meeting that was underway. However, the elevators to the Council Chambers were taken out of service to block our way. Even when Rob Ford and John Tory were in charge at City Hall were we never denied access to the Chambers and it is sad to see this happen with Olivia Chow in office. To make sure the politicians and bureaucrats got our message anyway, we marched around the floor that the Mayor’s office is located on, making plenty of noise in the process.

We discovered that security had temporarily banned those who participated in the action that they could identify from City Hall. Such edicts won’t stop us or prevent us from holding Chow and the rest of the Council accountable. If it was left to them, the developers would go unchallenged but the struggle for the right to housing that 230 Fightback is part of is going to press its demands in ways that can’t be ignored.