Canada Common Cause Linchpin - For Tibetans, the Fight for a Home Continues in Parkdale

For twenty years, Parkdale has been a "destination" neighbourhood for thousands of Tibetan 
refugees. They've made their homes in the mid and highrise apartment buildings up and down 
Jameson, Tyndall, Dunn, and the other streets and avenues of this neighbourhood. Their 
kids go to the schools, play in the parks, and chill on the corners and planter boxes of 
their neighbourhood. They organize their rallies outside the Chinese Consulate from the 
local shops and they march from Cowan Ave. They access public services from Parkdale 
Community Legal Services, Masaryk Cowan Community Centre, Parkdale Project Read Program, 
and multiple other settlement and language service centres. Programs of mutual aid and 
support spring independently from the library, shops, and apartment units here.

If the property owners and landlords in Parkdale have their way, this will all be a thing 
of the past. The "sense of community" and "diversity" that Tibetan working-class families 
have helped build in this neighbourhood has now made it a "destination" neighbourhood for 
others. And landlords are looking to cash in by pricing all of us out.

While what's going on today is different than the Canadian government's recent attempts to 
ethnically cleanse Parkdale of our Roma neighbours, it will carve a similar hole from the 
heart of this neighbourhood. Whereas craven racist politicians and their CBSA 
systematically deported hundreds of our Roma neighbours - they would hardly bat an eye at 
celebrating the "diversity" of "Little Tibet". Nonetheless the cold economic logic of the 
politicians' best friends - developers and landlords - demands the displacement of all 
those that can't foot the bill for a $1,100 bachelor or $1,400 one bedroom apartment.

This cold capitalist math puts almost all long-standing tenants in Parkdale's buildings in 
the crosshairs of an eviction notice -- not least of which the thousands of Tibetans that 
have made Parkdale their home. Displacement is an old story for Tibetan families, and 
gentrification is an old story in Parkdale. Tibetan organizers intend to bring both 
stories to a close.

For months there have been rumblings about what's being done to this neighbourhood by 
landlords, and what tenants can do to stop them. In stops and starts, tenants have knocked 
on their neighbours' doors, called lobby meetings, organized "town halls", formed and 
re-formed committees, been to the tribunal, and crashed their landlords' offices. In many 
ways it feels as though something is building here. But still, the walk home from the 
grocer at the end of the month has us passing the remains of our neighbours' furniture 
thrown on to the curb, and every new month starts with U-Hauls blocking our driveways.

But this is no hard-luck story. Unwilling to give up yet another place they call home, a 
committee of Tibetan tenants in a building across from their local high school are ready 
to put it on the line and fight for their homes. They're squaring off against a 
multi-billion dollar international property conglomerate intent on stealing this 
neighbourhood. Every tenant that calls Parkdale home has a dog in this fight. Every tenant 
in Parkdale owes it to their neighbours and themselves to join this fight. We know who 
this fight is with - Akelius, Metcap, and all the other landlords who want us gone. We 
need to realize who this fight is for - Parkdale isn't just a "Liberty Village adjacent" 
neighbourhood. It's the people that call it home. If we want it to stay that way, we're 
gonna have to fight for it. If we want to win, we have to fight together. Our Tibetan 
neighbours are stepping this fight up. We need them to win and they need us to help. This 
is our neighbourhood, and we are neighbours. Let's start acting like it. We fight 
together, or we lose alone.

This Tuesday April 28, tenants from 188 Jameson will take their fight to the Landlord and 
Tenant Board, to appeal Akelius' second major above-guideline rent increase for their 
building. Regardless of the outcome, the fight for this neighbourhood will continue. Every 
tenant and building up and down Parkdale's streets needs to join the fight against the 
landlords and property developers that want to destroy our community. Neighbourhood power 
is what we need. Organizing is how we get it.

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