Why are some tenants using the ‘last resort’ of rent strikes?

In today’s Big Story Podcast, there are several rent strikes happening in Canada right now, mostly in Toronto. Some of them have been going on for six months or more. Evictions have been long-threatened, but slow to happen. And most tenants haven’t seen any concession or negotiation, even when the mayor stepped in.

Ricardo Tranjan is a senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and the author of The Tenant Class. He says these tenant actions are a response to an increasingly untenable situation for Canadian renters.

“So that housing market, that is set up for profit creation … sometimes it goes too far and becomes a little bit too greedy, and starts squeezing too much out of tenants,” says Tranjan.  

So what are rent strikes, how do they work, and what should you know about a renter’s “last resort”?