Gentrification is the process of change in the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and investment. There is no agreed-upon definition of gentrification. In public discourse, it has been used to describe a wide array of phenomena, usually in a pejorative connotation.
Regent Park is a neighbourhood located in downtown Toronto, Ontario built in the late 1940s as a public housing project managed by Toronto Community Housing. It sits on what used to be a significant part of the Cabbagetown neighbourhood and is bounded by Gerrard Street East to the north, River Street to the east, Shuter Street to the south and Parliament Street to the west. Regent Park's residential dwellings, prior to the ongoing redevelopment, were entirely social housing and covered all of the 69 acres (280,000 m2) which comprise the community. The original neighbourhood was razed in the process of creating Regent Park. The nickname Cabbagetown is now applied to the remaining historical, area north and west of the housing project, which has experienced considerable gentrification since the 1960s and 1970s.
Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. In some jurisdictions it may also involve the removal of persons from premises that were foreclosed by a mortgagee.
Lawrence Heights is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located north-west of central Toronto, in the district of North York. The neighbourhood is roughly bounded by Lawrence Avenue to the south, Yorkdale Road to the north, Varna Drive to the east and Dufferin Street to the west. It is part of the greater Yorkdale-Glen Park official Toronto neighbourhood.
Single-room occupancy (SRO) is a type of low-cost housing typically aimed at residents with low or minimal incomes, or single adults who like a minimalist lifestyle, who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed, chair, and sometimes a small desk. SRO units are rented out as permanent residence and/or primary residence to individuals, within a multi-tenant building where tenants share a kitchen, toilets or bathrooms. SRO units range from 7 to 13 square metres. In some instances, contemporary units may have a small refrigerator, microwave, or sink.
The International Hotel, often referred to locally as the I-Hotel, was a low-income single-room-occupancy residential hotel in San Francisco, California's Manilatown. It was home to many Asian Americans, specifically a large Filipino American population. Around 1954, the I-Hotel also famously housed in its basement Enrico Banduccci's original "hungry i" nightclub. During the late 60s, real estate corporations proposed plans to demolish the hotel, which would necessitate displacing all of the I-Hotel's elderly tenants.
Rent control in Ontario refers to a system of rent regulation in Ontario, Canada which limits the amount by which the rent paid by tenants for rental accommodation can increase. It applies to any unit that was first occupied for residential purposes before November 15, 2018.
The municipal government of Toronto is the local government responsible for administering the city of Toronto in the Canadian province of Ontario. Its structure and powers are set out in the City of Toronto Act.
Alexandra Park is a neighbourhood located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Alexandra Park is bounded by Dundas Street West on the north, Spadina Avenue on the east, Queen Street West on the south, and Bathurst Street on the west. Alexandra Park consists of private and public housing, with at grade retail along Queen Street West and Spadina Avenue, some institutional, and several commercial buildings scattered through the neighborhood. The neighborhood takes its name from Alexandra Park, a municipal park at the south-east corner of Dundas Street West and Bathurst Street. The park is named for Queen Alexandra, whose husband, King Edward VII, was the first future monarch to visit Toronto.
Barclay is a neighborhood in the center of Baltimore City. Its boundaries, as defined by the City Planning Office, are marked by North Avenue, Greenmount Avenue, Saint Paul and 25th Streets. The neighborhood lies north of Greenmount West, south of Charles Village, west of East Baltimore Midway, and east of Charles North and Old Goucher. The boundary between the Northern and Eastern police districts runs through the community, cutting it roughly in half.
The Coalition for Economic Survival (CES) is a grassroots, non-profit community organization. CES works in the greater Los Angeles area to influence policy makers to improve the lives of low and moderate income people.
Corus Quay, originally named First Waterfront Place, is an eight-storey commercial office tower located on a 2.5-acre (1.0 ha) waterfront site in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The CA$160 million building is the first major development planned for the East Bayfront district, and completed construction at the foot of Jarvis Street or Jarvis Street Slip. Corus Quay is Corus Entertainment's new Toronto headquarters, consolidating its 10 locations and 1,200 employees into one site. The building was designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects with interiors completed by Quadrangle Architects. The building was being developed by the Toronto Economic Development Corporation (TEDCO), a city agency. Funding for the project came from TEDCO's equity, city loans and a CA$12.5 million contribution from the city contributed via Waterfront Toronto.
Barrington Plaza is an apartment complex in Los Angeles, California, located at 11740 Wilshire Boulevard in Sawtelle. At the time of its completion, in 1962, it was described as the largest privately built apartment development in the western United States.
The Regent Park Revitalization Plan is an initiative begun in 2005 by the City of Toronto with fellow development, government, and community partners, with a focus on rebuilding the Toronto neighbourhood of Regent Park for 12,500 residents over a 15- to 20-year period. The project entails transforming what was once solely a social housing development into a self-sufficient, mixed-income, multi-use community.
Subdivided flats are flats divided into two or more separate units to house more people. The flats' original partition walls are usually removed, and new ones are erected. New toilets and kitchens are installed, and internal drains are added or altered. These updates can compromise the building's safety and hygiene.
The Costa–Hawkins Rental Housing Act ("Costa–Hawkins") is a California state law, enacted in 1995, which places limits on municipal rent control ordinances. Costa–Hawkins preempts the field in two major ways. First, it prohibits cities from establishing rent control over certain kinds of residential units, e.g., single-family dwellings and condominiums, and newly constructed apartment units; these are deemed exempt. Second, it prohibits "vacancy control", also called "strict" rent control. The legislation was sponsored by Democratic Senator Jim Costa and Republican Assemblymember Phil Hawkins.
The Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU) is a tenants union created in October 2013 to unify old and new tenants against the gentrification of the neighborhood of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York City. The CHTU has pushed for local collective bargaining agreements between tenants and landlords to be written into the deeds of buildings that would regulate rent increases and codify repair and renovation standards. They also assist individual tenants, educating them on their rights and how to enforce them, lobby in Albany for better rent laws, and participate in direct action, targeting predatory equity real-estate companies they believe to be involved in illegal evictions and harassment tactics.
Timbercreek Asset Management is a Canadian real estate company based in Toronto, Ontario. It has $7.5 billion in assets under management, through a number of affiliates, including one listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. As of August 2016, it owned 200 multi-residential properties worth $3.5 billion, making it the fifth-largest landlord in Canada.
Dean E. Preston is an American attorney and member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In November 2019, Preston won a special election to finish Mayor London Breed's term on the Board of Supervisors. He was re-elected in the November 2020 election.
The COVID-19 pandemic made homelessness in Toronto more visible, due to the rise of encampments in public parks. However, homelessness in Canada had been an issue of widespread concern long before the pandemic's arrival. A 2016 report found that at least 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness in a year, and 35,000 Canadians experience it on a given night. A Nanos survey found in 2020 that 72% of Canadians believed it was urgent to work toward ending homelessness in Canada. A 2020 report from the Wellesley Institute argues that there were disproportionately higher rates of evictions in Black neighborhoods, and that Black residents were among the worst hit by COVID-19. As part of its stay at home order in March 2020, the Ontario government instated a ban on evictions, however this was lifted with the emergency order in June 2020. The Ontario government however made evictions easier, according to some critics, due to its passage of Bill 184 which allowed landlords to bypass the Landlord and Tenant Board. One advocacy group deemed the cascading effects of Bill 184 'a bloodbath of evictions'. By December 2020, Toronto tenants were calling for a reinstatement of the moratorium on evictions. The crisis conditions of the pandemic lead to an increase in organizing against what many homelessness advocates deemed to be social murder of the city's unhoused. This ranged from legal lawsuits against the city's shelter system to calls for a city plan that would address the large numbers of unhoused people camping outside, to suits against encampment evictions, to large scale protests against the clearings of public parks. The Covid-19 encampments are best understood as emerging out of a longer history of urban informality in Toronto.
