There hasn’t been much movement on the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) case between dozens of demovicted tenants and the City of Ottawa and Timbercreek since the application was first filed in early April 2019 (the last family left the parcel of 150 townhouses in early October 2018, and all the houses were bulldozed in Jan/Feb 2019).
Since the HRTO application was filed, Timbercreek has changed their operating name to Hazelview. This is an indication that the executives in charge want to distance themselves from the crisis of their own making.
The housing crisis is exacerbated by the judicial crisis affecting courts and tribunals across the province. Since Ford became Premier, the number of adjudicators at the HRTO has been halved, and those who have been appointed have ties to the Conservative party. Read more about this in The Globe and Mail.
On an encouraging note, this case is likely the largest housing rights case in the country’s history and it came together entirely through independent organizing by neighbourhood tenants who took bold and decisive action against both a $10-billion corporation and Ottawa’s heavy duty “old guard” landlord–developer–political class. We want to thank all of the excellent work of the legal team, consisting of lawyers Daniel Tucker-Simmons, Yavar Hameed and Nicholas Valela, with support from Professor David Wiseman’s University of Ottawa Access to Justice program.