47. From Rent Strikes to City Hall w/ Chiara Padovani

Antifascist Dad, Episode 47: From Rent Strikes to City Hall with Chiara Padovani Guest: Chiara Padovani Matthew Remski: Hello everyone, this is Matthew Remski and this is also Antifascist Dad podcast, episode 47, From Rent Strikes to City Hall with Chiara Padovani. Chiara Padovani: When I ran the first time in 2018, this was before every single political insider was talking about how important housing was because rentals and tenants were very much not on the political agenda. Back in 2018, in fact, we were taken for granted. We were a voting bloc that just nobody seemed to be talking to, especially in municipal politics. But when I went and I ran, every single political insider told me, don't bother knocking on apartment doors because tenants don't vote. Matthew Remski: As you know, you can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name and I'm on YouTube and TikTok as antifascistdad. The Patreon for this show is antifascistdadpodcast. And if you're listening to this on the day that it dropped, you know that because you're a subscriber and you get an early access privilege opportunity to a second weekly episode every week. And this week the schedule is a little bit different because municipal elections here in Toronto are right around the corner. October 26th. And so for the next few weeks, I'll be publishing interviews with local socialist candidates about what they're up against and what they hope for. And I have to pack a lot into a short period of time. That means squeezing the schedule a little bit and then shortening the unlock time. So my thanks to all you Patreons who are supporting this podcast and making this possible. I know you'll understand that it's also good to support local candidates and their socialist work. And so to that end, this early access will only be for a few days because I really want to get this episode out and into Chiara's constituency. All of the show notes will have the information that you want in terms of links, including the link to my own book, Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times. And so here we go. For the last few years, my cross border socials feed has been filled with excited buzz over tenant union organizing. Tenant unions played a huge role in coordinating with DSA door knockers on the Mamdani campaign. And one of my parasocial besties in New York, Toni Marrero, was recently an honored speaker representing the HOPE Tenant Union at a presser for Mamdani's Rental Ripoff Report. This is an initiative that identified 23 ripoff hazards and regulatory fixes involving inspections, heat, elevators, harassment, fees, AI altered listings, that's a thing now, and tenant union recognition. And so far, they've started in on three of these things. They're fast tracking housing court. They've got heat complaints and inspection texts due this fall. And what are inspection texts? Well, it's a small thing. That's actually a big deal because currently when a housing inspector arrives to inspect a coding complaint and hopefully issue a repair order to a slum landlord and can't get into the apartment, the city has so far left a paper note on the door, which of course, you know, delays everything and requires a lot of follow up and all that. But starting this fall, the city will now text the tenant to coordinate. Anyway, here's Toni. Toni Marrero: Our city is turning the corner on tenant power. When we organize, we win results. The Mamdani administration is emboldening us so that we no longer tolerate the violence of evictions as a matter of business as usual. Matthew Remski: So Toni sounds a little muffled there because she's wearing a Covid respirator, which of course the worst right wing media ghouls in the world picked up on as a sign of her execrable wokeness, along with the fact that she called evictions a form of violence, which is just a fact. But she's undeterred because she's right. And she's not alone in Manhattan. She's part of the 75% of total residents who are tenants. And then here in Toronto, there's been a slowly quickening drip of news stories about successful tenant union actions. Rent strikes, sit ins, protest campaigns, all of them are gaining traction. And increasingly they are interweaving their resources with socialist campaigns. And that's how I've come to know Chiara Padovani. Social worker, food bank worker, tenant union organizer, and now candidate for Ward 5 York South-Weston in the municipal election coming up here in Toronto on October 26th. I was super happy to learn from her in this discussion. Chiara Padovani, welcome to Antifascist Dad. Chiara Padovani: Thank you, Matthew. I'm happy to be here. Matthew Remski: Okay, some history first. You grew up in Mount Dennis. This is a working class suburb. It's the site of the old Kodak plant. It's been home to like, one wave of immigrant community after another over the past century. Did that place inform your views on how people from many different parts of the world can discover shared values? Chiara Padovani: Yeah, 100%. And it also, I think, shaped me in a way that turned me into the social justice warrior that I am today. You know, when my grandparents first immigrated to Canada, they were part of an Italian wave of immigration that was not welcome in Toronto, though exploited for their labor and cheap labor. And I remember my Nonno telling me stories about how he was spit on in the street. And so that really shaped kind of the way I see every new wave of immigration that comes and settles here in Mount Dennis. It's very much the landing pad for a lot of new waves of immigration that all contribute and help build up the city in different ways. So it definitely is a neighborhood that I love, that is very diverse, and we're better for that kind of diversity. And I'm really proud to call Mount Dennis, to call York South-Weston home. And I love it here. And I would be especially honored to represent us down at City Hall as the future city councillor for York South-Weston. Matthew Remski: All right, so we'll get to Ward 5 in a minute, but I just want to do some background because as you've mentioned, you've been a social justice warrior, but professionally a social worker, you've worked for the North York Harvest Food Bank. And I'll get to the tenant union. But first, like, what is the through line in all of your various career paths? Like, what have you discovered about power and money and inequality along the way? Chiara Padovani: I mean, the through line is basically inequality, right? There is more than enough food and housing to go around. But what we're seeing and what I see firsthand in the food bank is that the systems of inequality are now so entrenched that it's getting to the point where even if you are working a full time job in, in Toronto, you're still in need of using the food bank. And that is shocking. It's shameful that in one of North America's most wealthy cities, you can be working a full. You need two full time jobs to afford the rent and pay for food. So it's really as my experience in a social worker. And actually, Matthew, there's a few moments I can pin to that made me want to run for council. And one of them is as social worker, especially at the food bank, I feel like banging my head against the wall. All right. Because so much of our social safety net is so broken, the wait lists are so long that I can't, like, I can't really do anything as a social worker to really give people the support that they need because they just don't exist anymore. They just really don't exist. And even when you're working a full time job, you still can't afford groceries. Like this is. There's something wrong with the system if that's the case. And so I got tired of banging my head against the wall and I decided, all right, I can keep trying to work within this broken system or I can organize to try and fix it, to try and change it. And so I've done that both as a candidate, but also as a community organizer, especially when it comes to housing. Matthew Remski: So that's next. But I just want to say that I imagine that your educational path and experience as a social worker is premised on this idea that there is a social welfare system that the worker can actually work within and deliver services within. And that's exactly what's been eroded over the last, what, like 30, 40 years, right? Chiara Padovani: 100%. 100% social assistance right now. I don't want to get on my soapbox, but social assistance right now is the same exact dollar for dollar amount for Ontario Works as it was in the 90s, so when I was a kid. So we're expecting people to be able to live on the same amount of dollars that Mike Harris froze when Mike Harris froze social assistance back in the 90s. Matthew Remski: Okay, wait a minute. But you're saying, so you're saying the dollar amount, this is not, it's not like adjusted for inflation. You're saying it's actually the same number. Chiara Padovani: It has not been adjusted for inflation for decades. It's 730 to $35. 33. And it has been that for decades. So it's just like this. Our social safety net has been eroded, eroded, eroded, eroded. And it is impossible, it literally is impossible for people to get by. And we're seeing more and more people and more and more income brackets feeling like it's impossible to get by because you're working two full time jobs and you still can't afford the rent. Right? So anyway, it's been, I'm seeing that, my generation is seeing it, we're feeling it, you know, in a lot of ways, but I'm seeing it, especially as a social worker at the food bank, just how dire things have become. Matthew Remski: One of the most effective ways in which you've pushed back at anything, I think, or it seems, is that in 2017 you co-founded the York South-Weston Tenant Union and that grew to cover 15 buildings and I think 2,000 members. And you had some real wins. And before we detail those, why is it that tenant organizing is so powerful? And why is every democratic socialist organizer in the global north, or maybe everywhere in the world talking about it and working on it right now? Chiara Padovani: I think housing is the working class issue of our time. Every single labor gain that's being made with labor unions is being eaten up by the financialized housing system that we have. Because wages are just simply doesn't matter where you are in the economically, wages are just simply not keeping up with the cost of housing. And was what I did. And I'll just correct you, Matthew, because I founded the York South-Weston Tenant Union after my first run for city councillor, which was in 2018. Matthew Remski: Oh, okay. Right. Chiara Padovani: And I say that just because it really was. When I ran the first time in 2018, this was before every single political insider was talking about how important housing was, because rentals and tenants were very much not on the political agenda back in 2018. In fact, we were taken for granted. We were a voting bloc that just nobody seemed to be talking to, especially in municipal politics. And so when I ran first for in 2018, a big reason why I decided to run was being in Mount Dennis. We were the beginning or end, depending on how you look at it, of the Eglinton Crosstown. So there was massive land speculation happening in that. In that community. And so many people were getting squeezed out and pushed out because of real estate speculation. Right. And that was in 2018. And so I ran in order to help protect the people of my community from the unintended consequences of, you know, a major transit station, the second largest next to Union, coming into our neighborhood, and what that meant for people who've lived there. But when I went and I ran, every single political insider told me, don't bother knocking on apartment doors because tenants don't vote. Matthew Remski: Oh, my God. And that was it. That was it for you. Chiara Padovani: Yeah, yeah. Matthew Remski: You were like, I'm gonna start knocking on tenant doors. Chiara Padovani: Tenant doors. And I started knocking on apartment doors. And I learned some other ways in which. So right off the bat, tenants are widely excluded from municipal politics then. Matthew Remski: Right. Chiara Padovani: And I learned that the municipal voters list. Matthew, get this. The municipal voters list was based on the MPAC list. It's the Municipal Property and Assessment, Corporate Property Assessment Corporation. It's the guys that put a value on your home. So they only have property owners on their list. Matthew Remski: This is like 19th century shit, right? Chiara Padovani: Exactly. Matthew Remski: That's wild. Okay. Chiara Padovani: The City of Toronto was using a list based widely on just property ownership to invite people to participate in their constitutional right to vote for the city government. Okay. So tenants were so widely excluded out of municipal politics. And it had been before, it's changed now. But before and back then, it was only property owners that would get invited to a community consultation about a new development. Just property owners, not. Not people, not residents who lived in the neighborhood? No, just property owners. And I noticed when I started knocking on doors that, you know, at least a dozen or so tenants told me, oh, I can't vote in the city election because I. I just. I don't own this home. I rent it. Matthew Remski: That's what they thought. Chiara Padovani: Yep. And of course, that's what they thought, because the whole system was based around property ownership to participate in the elections. So, anyway, that's my little. That's my little rant around that. But after running in that campaign and obviously deciding the reason why I'm running is because we need to protect the folks who are living in this community and are getting squeezed and pushed out and displaced. And then on top of that, I'm entering into the system that is very much built to exclude renters, on top of the fact that that's 50% of the neighborhood, that's now 50% of the city are now renting. So I ran and I started organizing renters within that campaign. I was really proud of how well I did in that election. Even though it was my first run. I just. I was proud that I was able to distribute it, distribute tenant rights information to every single renter in the community. Every single renter received a pamphlet with what their rights as tenants were, both in terms of voting, but also in terms of housing, what their rights were to housing, and what their landlord could and couldn't do, what they were entitled to, and things like that. So I was really proud of that. And on top of that, one of the biggest flexes I think I'll always have, no matter how far my political career goes, Matthew. But one of the biggest flexes I'll have as a candidate and a community organizer was I organized with my team two buildings, two CAPREIT buildings, so owned by the largest landlord in Canada. We organized those buildings during the campaign, and we beat an AGI, an above guideline increase that their landlord wanted to put against them, tenants got their rents reduced. And this was all during the campaign. And then after they won, they erected a massive sign for my cat, like a massive election sign for me. And under right in front of their buildings and underneath it in, like, Bristol board with marker they taped on, this sign is approved by the tenant association of 2180 and 2190. Matthew Remski: So you've got pictures of that on your wall. Chiara Padovani: Oh, of course. Of course. It's the biggest flex I think I'll ever have. And that in spite of the fact that everyone told me, don't bother walking on apartment doors. Matthew Remski: Well, let me come back to that. So who's the everybody? Like, who are these people? Consultants who. Like, who's telling you that Chiara Padovani: they're the folks who've been in power. I'm not going to out anyone. They're the folks who've been in politics for a long time. And it's not. They're not even wrong. It is true. The voter turnout for poorer and predominantly rental communities is always lower than wealthier, more homeowning communities. Matthew Remski: By design. Chiara Padovani: It's both by design because of the electoral system and how people were being invited to participate back in 2018 and in 2022. Actually, it's only this year. This is the first year that the municipal voters list is not based on MPAC in Toronto. It's based on the provincial and federal voters list anyway. But it's also because candidates and campaigns weren't talking to tenants. Matthew Remski: Right? Chiara Padovani: So obviously, you're not going to bother going out for somebody who's not talking to the issues that matter most to you. Right? You always do an analysis as a candidate, you do an analysis, you say, okay, how many votes do I need in all of these sections? And where, obviously, it's faster and easier to get votes in areas that have higher voter turnout than in areas that have lower voter turnout. Matthew Remski: Right. Chiara Padovani: So they weren't wrong. It's just. It was the political wisdom of the day. And in a lot of campaigns, I would say it still is. Matthew Remski: Does it also mean that all of the polling projections have been off for, like, decades or they've been corrupted by the fact that 50% of the residents have actually been left out of the consideration? And so when people say, oh, yeah, Frances Nunziata is gonna be elected again, she's a shoo-in, or something like that, they are going from the perspective of, oh, she'll be drawing from the same voter base. Chiara Padovani: 100%. Matthew Remski: Okay, so polling then is almost irrelevant in that situation. Chiara Padovani: 100%. The only poll that matters is election day. All right? And I say this as an underdog candidate for the last three elections. Every single poll, including in 2022 when I came within 94 votes of beating the incumbent, every single poll put me behind by, like, by ages. Like, put me way, way behind. Because, yeah, they're not polling. They're not polling the renter who just moved into the neighborhood. And only it doesn't have a landline. The number of polls. Matthew Remski: That's a very boomer situation. Chiara Padovani: Don't even get me started on the landline. Nobody. Nobody has a phone, a landline anymore, except a very. Matthew Remski: Right. Well, they would have been able to ask your nonna exactly how she was gonna vote. Chiara Padovani: And my nonna would have said she was voting for me. I can say that I would have gotten at least one person. Matthew Remski: So do you know what's really so strange, too, about don't knock on apartment doors is this might sound funny, but I remember, just as a boy, I delivering newspapers that you really wanted to have apartment buildings on your route because it was so easy to drop one paper after another, door by door. You didn't have to walk for ages between the porches and stuff like that. And so I don't know, there's something very efficient as well. And it seems to me that when you lose in the last election by 94 votes, it's not like you're saying, oh, geez, I just, you know, I came that close. You're actually against the last result. You're measuring. Oh, this is how much more coverage I was able to effect with regard to this unrepresented population. Chiara Padovani: 100%. 100%. And one of the things when I was running in 2022, and one of the things that is really quite shocking, but it's not when you think about these systems, is that in 2022, there wasn't a single renter elected to the city government. Matthew Remski: Yeah. Chiara Padovani: Not a single one. So we're 50% of the population in the city now, and not a single renter is elected to the city government to make decisions about housing. Right. And for me, that's really motivating at the doors because we already feel left out. Right. My community has felt left out for a long time. And then when we add the fact that we don't have a single renter elected to city government, it's just like it's a. It puts fire under people's feet. People want to see the changes, but they want. They don't. We're jaded about the same old politicians coming around all the time and saying the same things. But when you start to actually see someone who's been with you when you were fighting your corporate landlord who wanted to try and renovict everybody out of the building, and that person was with you in the fight, shoulder to shoulder with your tenant union in the fight, shoulder to shoulder that has prevented hundreds of evictions that had stopped so many illegal rent increases that got actual concrete repairs done, when you see someone then come and knock on your door and say, all right, the election's coming up. It's time to vote. Let's send one of us in there. I'm not getting. Oh, all politicians are the same. I'm not getting that response. I'm getting like, hell, yeah, let's go. We're ready. Matthew Remski: Okay, I want to talk about some of the details of tenant organizing and who you've been up against, and because I think there's a very. A broader, even national story behind some of it. So this question is, you know, you tangled with the Dream Unlimited Corporation, you know, owner of several buildings, and is that an asset management firm? And if so, is it in that same class of company that Carney represents? And, you know, you won against them, right? Chiara Padovani: Yeah, 100%. So Dream Unlimited is a financialized landlord. And not only is it in the same kind of class as Carney, one of the things that is so frustrating for me is what. It doesn't matter what level of government you're looking at or even sometimes what political stripe you're looking at, but everyone is turning to the private sector as if they are going to somehow fix our housing crisis. And Carney. It was Trudeau before Carney. Trudeau was handing out millions or billions. I don't know. Millions or billions. At some point, you lose count, like, of public funding and financing to Dream Unlimited. While we were on rent strike against them, while they were making housing completely unaffordable in our community, somehow the government, the federal government thought these were the guys that were gonna solve it. Like, it's just so backwards. I can go on and on for ages about this, but in a context where we had our Trudeau or the Trudeau government and the Doug Ford government, because Dream Unlimited. Oh, man, where should I go back. Back in 2018, when Dougie got elected and he took away rent control. All right, he took away rent control. I always like to say rent control is to a renter what minimum wage is to a worker. Matthew Remski: Yeah, exactly. Chiara Padovani: It's the bare minimum. It's not a nice to have. It's not a. When the economy gets better, it's. It's the bare minimum for housing protection. Okay? So we got a premier who takes it away, and that is right after 22 John Street, which was one of the buildings on rent strike got built. So this building that was built on public land under John Tory's Housing Now program, built on public land with public funding from the city, the province, and the feds, gets opened, and everyone's patting themselves on the back saying, look at this amazing affordable housing project we all did in this P3 partnership. I don't know, like if your listeners. Public, private partnership. Matthew Remski: Yes, yes. Chiara Padovani: We give the public land, we give some funding, and the private sector laughs all the way to the bank with the profits. All right, so they open up 22 John. The very first year that the rent in, that's 350 units. The very first year that the owner could increase rents, some tenants were getting rent increases as high as 25%. Insane. Insane. And then years after, we fought back against that increase and we brought it down to 5%. All right? Still way too high, still way above inflation, but we fought back and we brought it down to 5%. Then both buildings, because they own both buildings, an older building and a newer building, Dream Unlimited. We went on a rent strike because things were just getting out of hand, right? The rents were going up, wages weren't, and the rent increases were just way too, too much for people to handle. And they tried everything before the rent strike. They tried everything else, right? You don't go on a rent strike one day to the other just because, okay, you got a rent increase. No, you do. You exhaust every other channel. Matthew Remski: It's serious, right? Chiara Padovani: But of course, yeah, it's serious. And they did. We exhausted every other channel. And the folks in the building were like, we've tried everything and nothing has worked. Nobody, whether it's the feds, the province, the city councillor, nobody is stepping in to protect us against these rent increases. So we're going to protect each other. And they went on a rent strike. And it was 16 months. Oh my gosh, 16 months on rent strike. And the just like the audacity and the courage of all of my neighbors at 33 King Street and 22 John is like. It gives me chills actually, just thinking about it, because this is the kind of courage to just like not accept the status quo that I think is going to be and has been game changing for our tenant union. So not only did after 16 months, the landlord finally come to the table and finally come and agree on a collectively bargained agreement like Matthew, the tenant movement. The tenant movement is where the labor movement was 100 years ago. Matthew Remski: Yeah, well, I want to get to that. Yeah. Chiara Padovani: And we got a collectively bargained agreement. After 16 months, not a single tenant was evicted, not a single tenant was evicted because of the rent strike. And not only that, but every tenant who went on rent strike and was part of this collective agreement had an extra layer of protection because we got into the agreement and this is all public, that if the landlord wanted to try and come after them to evict them again. They had to go through the union first. Matthew Remski: Wow. Chiara Padovani: Unheard of in tenant organizing, but it was historic. And I'm just so proud of what my neighbors were able to do at 33 King and 22 John. It was really something, and it really set the bar and I think inspired a lot of other renters that they didn't have to. They don't have to accept the status quo just because it seems like the odds are all against us. We can really overcome them. Matthew Remski: Yeah. When they act as a class, when they're no longer atomized or individualized by the contracts. Now, just a sort of point of order on rent strikes, because I don't know that much about them, but when tenants take strike actions, are they more or less protected than striking workers at CUPE? Like, are the landlords able to get court orders and impose fines? And if that happens, does the union have a strike fund? Like, at the end of that 16 months, are the tenants in arrears in some way? And so with a new agreement, they have to pay something, and that has to be covered by a fund. Like, how does that all work? Chiara Padovani: Yeah. So there is no protection for a tenant who goes on rent strike. The only protection they have is with is the numbers. Right. It's the fact that so many of them are taking the action together. Matthew Remski: Right. Chiara Padovani: And when it comes to a rent strike, everyone, everybody knows that the rent, like, we have our demands, and when the demands are met, they will pay the rent. Okay. So that's kind of how it is. So there was a trust that people were paying their rent into eventually. And if there wasn't. Not everyone. It's the way it all worked out. Not everybody had a trust fund. So people were saving their rent outside. Now, was everybody able to save their rent all the time because of the high cost of living? No, because that's why we want to rent strike in the beginning. Matthew Remski: Exactly. Chiara Padovani: And so eventually, everybody was able. I mean, I. There's only so much I can say about this because the agreement was all kind of NDA, so. But yes, you go on a rent strike when the rent strike is over and some demands are met, you pay the rent that you withheld. And so the rent is temporarily withheld until the rent strike is over. And in this case, it lasted 16 months. At the end of the 16 months, there was an agreement that we came to with the landlord. Matthew Remski: So I'm thinking now about Carney's Bill C-39, where he's actually changing the Labour Code and Section 107, to sort of make it this almost mechanistic expected process by which the employer, the boss, is going to be able to just sort of expect that the mediator is going to step in, that it's going to go to arbitration, and they're not really going to have to face the uncertainty of, well, what are the workers going to do? Because this negotiation is going to be imposed from the outside, basically at the will of the labour minister. You know, as soon as the slowdown or the work stoppage gets painful in any way, it would seem to me that striking on rent is probably more painful than the. Or more effective in some way than the work stoppage. Because it's not like anybody's going to order you back to work. Right. It's not like the government is as incentivized to say, oh, you're slowing down our economy. It's really. Nobody else is impacted except the landlord or the developer or the asset manager. So it seems to be there's a lot of leverage there. Chiara Padovani: Yeah. The threat is eviction, though, right? So that's the main threat that tenants face when they do a rent strike. However, every single rent strike organized by the tenant union, not a single one, has resulted in an eviction because we got to do it together, right? The Landlord and Tenant Board, as skewed as it is against tenants, doesn't want to do a mass eviction of 200, 300 tenants all at once. And to be honest, nor does the landlord. Matthew Remski: Right, right. Chiara Padovani: The landlord doesn't want to just massively evict all these tenants and then have to try to stay on good terms with Carney and Dougie when they've just evicted and put a massive burden on the shelter system. Right? So the risk is, or the perceived risk is a mass eviction. The reality is that when tenants are coming together and doing a coordinated action as a form of protest, and it is and has been extremely impactful and effective now, it needs to be done right? And you've got to do it, you know, you've got to make sure you're organized properly. As with any strike action, right. It's got to be done right. But any law, and we, we see this because Carney is reacting or the government is reacting to how impactful work stoppages and work strikes, like labor strikes can be, and they start chipping away at the right, the constitutional right, actually, we all have to strike as workers. And so we see that. We see that be dwindled away because we know how impactful it can be now. I'd like to just bring up that this same thing is true in the tenant movement because our rent strikes have been so impactful. What we've seen is the Ford government now bringing in Bill 60. Matthew Remski: Right. Chiara Padovani: And I don't know if you know about Bill 60. Matthew Remski: Yeah, well, I do. But maybe you can just do the bullet points for our listeners. Chiara Padovani: Yeah, I'll break it down. Yeah. So Bill 60. One of the most appalling things about Bill 60 is that when a landlord wants to evict a tenant for arrears, for the tenant to defend themselves at their eviction hearing before they are even proven guilty of not paying their rent. Okay. Before. Before they're even proven guilty, they have to pay 50% of what the landlord is claiming they owe before they can raise arguments at their eviction hearing for what the landlord hasn't been doing. Matthew Remski: How is that not a Charter violation to and from hell and back? Chiara Padovani: It absolutely is. Like, I'm getting chills just thinking about it. Matthew Remski: That's insane. Chiara Padovani: Because it is so obviously against the most basic principles of our justice system. Okay, but we got a premier who doesn't give a rat's ass about our justice system and what's fair, and we're seeing him picking on renters shamelessly. Matt, I cannot tell you the number of members in our tenant union who get brought to the Landlord and Tenant Board over arrears money that the landlord claims they owe that they do not owe. Okay. I cannot tell you the number of times we are defending one of our members in our tenant union because the landlord's taken them all the way to the LTB, all the way through the eviction process, gone to the LTB. And we say we'd like a copy of the ledger because this tenant does not owe a penny to the landlord. Matthew Remski: Does this become like a union busting tactic if they're actually doing this to harass people? Chiara Padovani: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's why it's even more important. But the thing is, we see this happening whether you are unionized or not in your building, because the financialization of our housing system necessarily preys on people who have lived in their homes for more than a few years, grows, and it flourishes the more tenant turnover there is. Right. Because if you start living in your home for more than a few years, your rent gets a little bit lower over the years than what the top market rent is going for. So landlords are incentivized over and over and over again to kick out tenants by whatever means necessary because they want to double or triple their rent for the new tenants coming in. Matthew Remski: Right. Chiara Padovani: And we see this, like, we see this happening all the time. And it is absolutely shameful that now our premier has passed a law that lets a landlord claim someone owes. They do nothing to prove it. They show no paperwork to prove that money is owed, claim that money is owed, and then the justice system makes a tenant pay 50% of that claim before it's even proven. Matthew Remski: It's like a debtor's prison idea, isn't it? It's like, you owe this money, I'm gonna send the sheriff to just put you in the wagon, and that'll be that until you pay up. Chiara Padovani: Yeah. Matthew Remski: You talked about tenant organizing really being dependent on working together. And I just wanted to bring up that in one conflict that I read about with buildings owned by Barney River Investments, the union. Chiara Padovani: Total slumlord. Matthew Remski: Pardon me? Chiara Padovani: They're a total slumlord. Total slumlord. Matthew Remski: In that clash, the union supported 100 people who went on a four day sit in to prevent a single eviction. Like, 400 people showed up and what did they sit in? The manager's office? Did they obstruct some sort of administrative function, but, like, they were in support of a single person who was about to be evicted? This just seems like peak solidarity to me, 100%. Chiara Padovani: It really was. And I can tell you the story, Matthew, leading up to that eviction, because we had our member call. She called our tenant union office, and she's like, the sheriff's right outside. They're trying to evict me. I have no idea why I pay my rent every month. And I was like, all right, this must be a misunderstanding. So I go over, I go over to the building, I leave our tenant union office, I go over to the building and I say, this has got to be a misunderstanding. You know, what does she owe? What do you think she owes? Because the other thing is, if a tenant is being evicted for money that they owe, when they pay the money, the eviction's done. Okay? Like, they're not allowed to evict. So I'm like, this is clearly a misunderstanding. Maybe like a payment was short or something. So let's just figure it out and, like, let. Let Carmen stay, like. And I thought it would be over. Naively, Matthew, naively, I should have known better. I thought it would have been order over in like an hour. You know, Carmen's gonna pay. Whatever the difference is, it'll be done. We'll go on. No, but I forgot that the very motivation behind the financialized housing sector is not reasonable. It's not rational, and it certainly isn't moral. Because they don't want Carmen out because she didn't pay the rent. They want Carmen out because they want to replace her with someone who will pay double the rent. Matthew Remski: Right. Chiara Padovani: The motive is not about what's fair or just. Right. And so we find out, because it's Matthew Remski: not a home to them. It's not a home to them. Right. That's what financialization means. Chiara Padovani: Exactly right. So we go. And they agree. So after a little bit of back and forth, the cops are there, the sheriff's there, and the landlord's there. We go back and forth, and they say, all right, fine, if she goes down and just pays the difference, which was like a couple hundred dollars, then we'll let her stay. Okay. All right, this is all on camera. The cops were right there. The cops were encouraging her to go downstairs and just pay. Cause she wouldn't let anybody. She refused to leave her unit, as she should have not. Because when she went down, what happened? And I accompanied her right downstairs. She goes. She hands over her debit card to the office, and she says, okay, I'll pay whatever you think the difference is. This is before seeing her ledger, before anything, she's just like, whatever, I want the cops out of my home. And the landlord refused to accept it. Matthew Remski: Oh, my gosh. Chiara Padovani: And says, nope, you're evicted. You're not allowed back in your home. Matthew Remski: Like, as of now. Chiara Padovani: As of right now. She just walked out. She walked out with her wallet. This was a senior with health problems and dependent on medication. That's what happened. And so I said, there is no way in hell we are leaving this office without you getting back to access to your home. So I dig my heels in. I'm like, we're not leaving. And I had no idea it would take. It wasn't four days. It was three days of a sit in occupying that office before she would actually be allowed back into her home. And everyone in the building came out for her. Everyone in the building came out for her. And you know what? Perhaps the, like, peak. Peak, like really peak solidarity was is that Carmen wasn't even. That building was on rent strike at the time. Carmen wasn't even a member of the rent strike. So she was not withholding her rent and she was targeted. Matthew Remski: Oh, and they didn't look at her as some sort of. Chiara Padovani: Yeah. Somebody who was. Who was a troublemaker or. Matthew Remski: Or a freeloader or something like that. Yeah. Chiara Padovani: Nope. She was paying her rent during the rent strike. She was not on the rent strike. And the landlord still treated her this way, lied to her face to trick her out. Matthew Remski: Did they even know? Did the landlord even know that she was paying her rent, that she didn't join the strikers? Chiara Padovani: Oh, absolutely. Matthew Remski: Okay, so they didn't care? Chiara Padovani: No, they didn't care. They wanted her out. And of course, what happened after the entire building came out in peak solidarity for Carmen was she joined the rent strike. Of course she did. Matthew Remski: Of course she did. This is such an incredible story. It's such an incredible story because what you're saying is that the rent strikers did not hold it against her to say, you know, really, you should have had as much bravery as we did. And now look what you got, right? They. They said, we understand what your situation is, and it's unacceptable for everybody. Chiara Padovani: Well, exactly. And it went to show everyone in the building that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're considered a good tenant. If you do everything right. When a landlord wants to kick you out, when one of these big corporate financialized landlords wants to kick you out, they're going to find whatever means they can to do that. And that was crystal clear for Carmen. Like, it was appalling. It was appalling what they put her through. They wouldn't let her get access to her diabetes medication. It was absolutely appalling. And she was, by every means, by every measure possible, considered a very good tenant. Matthew Remski: You know, you said something a bit back about how tenant organizing is where labor organizing was 100 years ago. And you might be referring to this, but I think what I'm getting is that if you share a roof together, you are talking with each other, and you know each other, and you are in the same kind of situation that, you know, Marx and Engels are describing in the industrial factory core of Europe at the time, where people are actually able to discuss what is happening to their lives in some kind of coherent manner on a regular basis. Chiara Padovani: And. Matthew Remski: And they recognize each other and they know each other's families and lives. And so if Carmen's going to get thrown out and, you know, she doesn't have her diabetes medication, then you know who that is. It's not. There's no alienation there. Is that what you're getting at? Chiara Padovani: I was getting at inter. I mean, I love that. But what I was getting at was that there's no legislation or no protected right for a rent strike. So everything that we're doing right now is what the wildcat strikes were a hundred years ago. Matthew Remski: Right. Okay. Chiara Padovani: They're the unions that were passing. Going around and passing a hat and being like, okay, guys, let's chip in and let's come together. That's what I was getting at in terms of where the labor movement and just tenant unionization. Matthew Remski: Yeah. Chiara Padovani: Is very, very much at its. At the beginnings. It's. It's. Matthew Remski: Well, those two things can go together. Right. I mean, it's pi. It's pioneering, but it's pioneering because you're actually living together. Chiara Padovani: Yes. Right. Yep. Matthew Remski: And it's not like office cubicles or people doing gig work or, like, you know, all of these other sort of alienated spaces in the culture where it's very, very difficult for people to find solidarity. But with housing, that would seem to be, like, extremely rich. Chiara Padovani: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people, I think, underestimate just how. And this is something that our tenant union really focuses on, is that a union can be the place where we come together and fight for justice, but it's also the place where we celebrate, where we build community, where we break bread together. And that is that kind of camaraderie and community is just as important as the standing side by side each other when you've got to stand up to an injustice. And so a lot of folks in our tenant union are members because it is a sense of community for them as well. Whether or not we're in the middle of a big fight to stop get the elevators working or fix the, like, massive mold problem in a building or things like that. Matthew Remski: I want to get to your platform as we bring this home, but, you know, first to say you are running in Ward 5 again against Frances Nunziata, who has been at City Hall for most of my adult life. Like, it's been so long that I think she has a nonna flat there with tomato plants on the balcony. You know, maybe if you win, she'll do her own tenant strike and she'll try to stay. Chiara Padovani: I don't think so. Matthew Remski: You oppose her politics, but, you know, she has maintained a certain kind of social support over all that time. And so, like, do you have to win over her constituents or. I mean, we know you're motivating the tenants bloc, but is it a little bit of both? Chiara Padovani: It's definitely a little bit of both. And I would say, like, there's no. I don't. I don't shy away from this. That I'm a renter, and that it's a big motivating factor for why I'm running for City Council is around housing and around, you know, our right to home and to call York South-Weston home. But it's not the. It's not the only thing. It's not the only issue that's impacting our community. And so my platform is broken down into five main pillars, and housing and tenant rights is just one of them. The other ones, also one of the other big main priorities for me revolves around home as well, but it revolves around protecting our homes from flooding. Matthew Remski: Right. Chiara Padovani: We are in the worst possible place for flooding in the city of Toronto. We are the hardest hit by flooding in Toronto. And so it makes our community especially vulnerable to the bigger rainstorms that we're having because of climate change. But we've also just been horribly neglected by the city's infrastructure. And one of the biggest, biggest pillars in my platform and another major motivator for why I decided to run back in 2018, was because it was that year that our current councillor, Frances Nunziata, supported the sale of a big chunk of public land that was in the belly of the beast of our floodplain. And she supported the sale of it. And it was permeable before. Okay, so it was like just green space. And then what did it get sold for? It got sold to be turned into a parking lot. Matthew Remski: Oh, so in the flood, there's no water absorption? Chiara Padovani: No, of course not. Matthew Remski: Right. Chiara Padovani: So instead of making. Instead of taking proactive action to protect homes from flooding, we have a councillor who's putting. Bringing us backward and literally paving over the floodplain. Okay. Or she didn't personally do it, supporting the sale so it could later then be paved over in the floodplain. So protecting our homes from flooding is another one of my pillars. I'm a social worker. As you know, opportunities for our young people, children and youth is another one of my pillars. I really want to start a new partnership with our school board and the city in order to provide more city programming, universally accessible city programming out of our schools. Because the wait list for city run programming for children and youth is getting longer and longer in my community. So I want to start a new partnership with our school board. Unlock those facilities, make sure that kids have a safe place to be after school and on the weekends, and pair it up with a youth employment strategy. Because I want every first opportunity a young person in York South-Weston has to make a dollar. I want it to be an honest one. I want them to be able to see a future for themselves that isn't just one of neglect and wait lists and being told to just wait and wait and wait. So that's with my youth and the final pillar of my platform. Or no, there's two more. The other one is road safety. Man. Matthew, we don't even talk about road safety. I've been hit by a pickup truck crossing the street, okay? So road safety. I feel it in my bones. I don't want to be reacting to a tragedy. I want to make sure we're putting in the preventative measures to keep our roads safe for every kind of road user. I'm doing road safety audits now across around the neighborhood to make sure that our roads can be safe and any problematic intersections. I'm doing safety audits there. I'm bringing in road safety experts, and I'm seeing what are the things we can do to this intersection to make it safer today. Not in 20 years. Not in 30 years. Today. I don't want to wait. And then the last one is around revitalizing our main street to making sure that we can have, you know, main streets that we can be proud of. I come. Listen, I come from an Italian generation, all right? You had to have your lawn pristine. Okay. Matthew Remski: Yeah. Chiara Padovani: They built their homes with their bare hands, and they made sure that everybody walked by and said, what a beautiful home, you know? Matthew Remski: Right. And that sense of pride and very particular about gardening. Very, very particular. Yeah. Chiara Padovani: And so that sense of pride, I see. I see it in our neighborhoods here. But then you go to the main streets, and we got weeds that are taller than I am right off of Jane and Lawrence, and we've got garbage bins that are just overflowing. So I want to make sure that we can clean up our main streets and have this sense of pride of where we live and make sure that our local businesses are supported on our main streets. Matthew Remski: The thing is, we spent a lot of time on tenant organizing, and we talked about the financialization of housing. And I think this still ties together. Because what you're talking about with regard to main street renewal is what some sleazy developer would come in and talk about as they were trying to displace everybody, gentrify. Gentrify your neighborhood. And you're talking about something altogether different. You're saying, what are our actual resources for main street? Who could open our shops? Who could do our gardening? Chiara Padovani: Exactly. Matthew Remski: And then also, it's like the flood stuff. You know, I'm just looking at the map here, and I'm realizing, are you actually below lake level or something like that? And then the Humber River swells up and gets into people's basements. Chiara Padovani: Yeah, right in the south of our riding in Rockcliffe-Smythe, we are, yeah. Where the Humber River can flood and it gets backed up into people's basements. And Matthew, this isn't overland flooding. This isn't like rain that. That comes in over land. This is sewage. This is sewage coming into your basement. And people have had like three, four, five, six feet of sewage in their basements. And at this point now, homes in York South-Weston are getting flooded by sewage almost every year. That's how bad it's getting for my community. And one of the things I want to do, and you'll notice this when you check out my platform, is I'm somebody with a lot of fire under my feet. Okay. I have a big vision for long term, and I imagine a community where we, you know, can all feel this sense of belonging and fix all of these really big problems. But I also know that there's a sense of urgency to start addressing these things right now. When you're getting flooded every year by flooding by sewage, you're not thinking about a major infrastructure project that might take 20 years to finish. You want to know, how can I stop my basement from filling up with literal okay, every year? Is that okay that I say those words? And so one of the things that I want to do is I want. I've been talking to engineers. I'm like, guys, what. What's. Like, what's a immediate fix we can do so that people get at least a little bit of relief from this kind of flooding? I want to change the building code to allow for something called a sewage ejection pump for homes in the floodplain. And then once I change the building code to allow it, I want to make sure that homes can get some help from the city, because the very fact that they were allowed to build homes that get flooded and are so vulnerable was a failure of the city's foresight. And the fact that the city's infrastructure is failing them so much is a failure of the city's infrastructure. So I want to build in these sewage ejection pumps into the basement flooding subsidy program so that folks can get a little bit of financial help when installing them, because they're not cheap either. But it is a way that we could actually stop and prevent some of the flooding that people are seeing on an annual basis as soon as I get that building code changed and increase that subsidy program to help account for them so that homeowners or anybody living in a basement isn't putting the whole bill in front because it's not cheap either. But that's one of the things that I want to do immediately when I get to city council. Matthew Remski: Right. Well, I think that's going to make a lot of difference for the people who have been represented by the electoral process over the last number of years. Last thing is, you know, I've interviewed Diana Chan McNally. I'm going to be talking with Jennie Worden. There's a lot of really cool people running for council this year. Are you networking with them and other like, socialist minded candidates? Chiara Padovani: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So Jennie and I have known each other since her first run back. And one of the things I did because I kind of, it can feel lonely being an outsider, you know, outside of this political system. And I think when it comes to just having a little bit of, you know, camaraderie with other folks, it can be a lot better. So I, Jennie and I connected the last time when she ran in 2022, and we've been connected since then. Diana Chan McNally and I have been working together because through my work at the food banks and we've been fighting Bill 60 together for a while around just making it easier for evictions. I mean, she works, I work in the food banks and she works with supporting homelessness, folks who are homeless. And, you know, it was just a natural kind of. So it really helps to be working together and encouraging because this is my third run at it. Yeah, you know, you build, you develop a thick skin when you've gone through it as much. But your first couple of times, it can be, it can be quite challenging because people are really quick to criticize, but there's very few people who are brave enough to actually step into these kinds of roles and put themselves forward. So I commend both Jennie and Diana Chan McNally. And honestly, there's countless folks that I would really love to be on council with when I get in there. Matthew Remski: All right, well, may it be so. We'll be watching and pulling for you. Chiara, thanks so much for all of your work. Thanks for helping walk the listeners through some of the just amazing culture of tenant union organizing. I think that's incredibly important to learn about. And yeah, good luck. Chiara Padovani: Thank you, Matthew, so much. It's been great to be here and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your podcasts. Matthew Remski: So good luck again to Chiara Padovani. I think the cool thing about getting to know my local socialist political campaigners is that, you know, win or lose, they're just gonna keep on being awesome and serving their communities, and it's like. Yeah, I mean, what's. What's better than that? What higher service is there than that? All right, thanks for listening, everybody, and take care of each other.