51: Housing is a Human Right w/ Diana Yoon

Antifascist Dad Episode 51: Housing Is a Human Right with Diana Yoon Guest: Diana Yoon Matthew Remski: Hello everyone, this is Matthew Remski with Antifascist Dad podcast, episode 51, Housing Is a Human Right with Diana Yoon, who's running for Toronto City Council in Ward 11, University-Rosedale. Diana Yoon: This is like a huge bulk of the conversations that I'm having and I think it is our responsibility on the left to not just demonize and villainize homelessness, but to like really think about how do we about this in a compassionate way, how do we bring people along with us and what does it mean to like, be much more ambitious about the fact that no one should have to live outside? Matthew Remski: You can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name. I'm at YouTube and TikTok as antifascistdad. The Patreon for this show is antifascistdadpodcast, where subscribers get early access to a second weekly episode. And this week, this is that second episode and it'll be paywalled only for a few days because of course I want to boost all the socialist candidates I'm talking to this fall in a timely fashion in advance of the October 26 election here in Toronto. If you are hearing this on drop day, I'm very grateful for your Patreon support. I couldn't do it without you. Diana Yoon is a housing and climate organizer running for Toronto City Council in Ward 11, University-Rosedale. She works in co-op housing policy. She sits on the board of the Circle Community Land Trust. She organizes with Friends of Chinatown TO and she co-founded Climate Justice Toronto, which is now part of the Toronto Tenant Union. Now, following on my interviews with Chiara Padovani and Jennie Worden, I wanted to continue this role on housing as a socialist focal point for local organizing with someone who focuses on the money. So we talk broadly about how housing has been linked to climate justice in her experience and. And then I also asked her to help me walk through the weeds of a housing development in my old stomping grounds of Etobicoke. This is a development that made national news when the presser that Mark Carney was running to announce it was interrupted by protesters from the Grassy Narrows First Nation. And that moment sounded like this. Clip: Rents are down to a 33-month low. Rental affordability is improving. The rent-to-income ratio, its lowest level in six years. Rent here in Etobicoke for a two-bedroom is down 8.4% compared to last year. Mark Carney: I can outlast her. I can outlast her. Nous avons agi. Matthew Remski: Okay, so that's a whole episode or more in itself, including the numbers and whether they actually scan out. In fact, I'm thinking about opening my current book project on Carney's polite fascism with that precise scene. So I'll leave that for another time because my focus here on with Diana was on how the Build Canada Strong rhetoric pays lip service to the affordable housing that she campaigns for while it funnels risk-free public land and money to the asset management firms that make up Carney's Davos jet set. So Diana helps me break that down while also lowering my blood pressure a little bit with her millennial pragmatism. Here's our interview. Diana Yoon, welcome to Antifascist Dad. Diana Yoon: Yeah, so happy to be here. Matthew Remski: Okay, first question. This is a big one. Is housing a human right? Diana Yoon: Yes, absolutely. Housing is a human right. Matthew Remski: Okay. I mean, we're done. This has been Antifascist Dad. You know, I think let's flesh that out a little bit because how is it being treated at the moment through our capitalist and financialized system? Diana Yoon: Yeah, obviously, you know, as much as I believe that housing is a human right, should be treated as a human right, is legally codified by the government of Canada that housing is a human right and that people should have shelter, that's not what's happening. Right. We have so much homelessness across the country and in Toronto, and many people do not treat housing as just shelter, but as, you know, investment vehicles for profit. Matthew Remski: Yeah, well, I mean, what if I want to use apartments and condos and houses as commodities to build up my own personal wealth? Like, isn't that my human right as well? Diana Yoon: I definitely don't believe that that is your right to use housing as an investment vehicle. But you know, as I said, right. It's common practice. What I believe in is that we need to do more to decommodify housing by building more social, nonprofit and co-op housing at scale. You know, like my professional work is in community housing and Canada is under the OECD average, you know, of 7%. So Canada is at under roughly 4% of all of our residential housing being that kind of non-market community housing. And I do believe it's the responsibility of all governments to change this so that more people can live in dignified, great quality housing. Matthew Remski: Okay, so we'll get to the professional background in a moment, but I just want a little bit of a background here and this might or might not be relevant. You came as a kid from Korea and I have two questions about that. Between Byung-Chul Han and Parasite and Squid Game, I'm like continually blown away by the anti-capitalist art and literature that's coming out of that part of the world today. And I'm not sure how influential that is in the culture of Korea, but has it influenced your own life and politics? Diana Yoon: Yeah, I think it's really great to see that kind of anti-capitalist art and literature. And you know, my family immigrated from South Korea when I was four. I've had a number of conversations over my life about the immense pressures that Korean people and Korean society feel like being overworked as a standard part of the corporate culture. So I think that's really where some of those stories are coming out of, where people are feeling like they're really struggling in a capitalist society. But even here in Canada, as part of an immigrant family, there are real challenges. Right. I'm worried about my mom, who doesn't have a pension and much retirement savings. And so that's why when governments do more to improve our social safety net, like with dental care, like that made a real difference to my mom's life. And so ultimately, you know, whether it's in Korea or here, I think it's important that politicians focus on affordability and cost of living and improving material conditions for people's lives. And you know, I think I come to that largely because of thinking and understanding about like, what it would mean for people to not just survive day to day, but be able to like, thrive and contribute to their communities. And also I think it's really important to think about international working class solidarity. Matthew Remski: So I've interviewed Chiara Padovani, she's running on Ward 5, about her life in tenant union organizing. I've interviewed Jennie Worden about her work supporting tenants rights in Beaches-East York, which is where I live. I'm going to ask you the same question that I asked them. Why is tenant organizing so powerful? And why is every democratic socialist organizer in the global north, or maybe everywhere, talking about it and working on it at this point? Diana Yoon: Totally. Tenant organizing is so powerful because we are seeing what is possible when renters mobilize and organize to demand better living conditions. And they are building collective power against negligent and corporate landlords that are profit driven. Instead, we are creating people coming together to demand what they want to see, to demand good quality homes so that they can fight for the things they need and not just accept, accept the decades of neglect. Right. And so that's why I think it'd be really amazing to fill City Hall with fierce tenant organizers like Chiara and Jennie, who are both my friends. And I think there's a lot more we can do to use campaigns, but just outside of election cycles, too, to continue building tenant power. Matthew Remski: Okay, so at the end, I've got a sort of a walkthrough of a problem of how that actually practically comes to be. But before we get there, tell us about your work with ACORN and the Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations. Diana Yoon: Yeah, for sure. So my involvement in tenant rights is maybe different than some others. I was a climate activist at first, and so I started my career in environmental nonprofits working in climate mitigation and sustainability. And so it was really cool when I first got to work with ACORN nearly 10 years ago because I helped them secure a climate grant to connect with tenants to talk about the conditions of their buildings, to evaluate and assess health metrics, and to engage more deeply before and after doing energy efficiency retrofits in their buildings. And so I think one of the main lessons we learned from that was that, what do we need? What are the recommendations so that the costs of retrofits are not passed down onto tenants because we can't be trying to improve climate action and making these buildings more climate resilient and adding cooling and then have those costs go down to tenants in the form of rent increases. So, you know, that's. That's largely how I got involved with some of ACORN's work for the first time. And then even as I was trying to do this important climate work, I was really personally struggling as a renter. I was living in a house in Little Italy with multiple roommates where we got bedbugs that year. Then I moved to another apartment where I had a crack in the ceiling and the landlord wouldn't do anything about it. And so that's one of the motivations for me to then get to know Federation of Metro Tenants' Association, the FMTA. I applied to be on the board after going to their tenant school, and I learned a lot about what it would take to actually get repairs done if the landlord is delaying or just not doing it, and then how to organize tenant associations. So, yeah, it's pretty full circle. It's been interesting. My climate activist group that I helped co-found, Climate Justice Toronto, also went through a very similar transformation, and they merged earlier this year with the York South-Weston Tenant Union, which is how I got to know Chiara Padovani. And, yeah, we all became the Toronto Tenant Union earlier this year. Matthew Remski: So I just want to note how impressive it is that with ACORN, we have this conjunction of issues that we know that climate change is impacting the livability of apartments. We know that it's. It brings up questions of efficiency and appliances, it brings up questions of air conditioning and heating. And it forces, I think, a chunk of the culture to look at environmental effects and economic concerns impacting some of the people with the lowest amount of political power in the city, all as part of the same piece. Is that fair? Is that what makes part of that powerful? Diana Yoon: Yeah, 100%. Right. Like, I think it's the, it's like thinking through, you know, like, as we see more heat waves, it's not okay for like seniors and renters and high rise buildings to suffer without any cooling. You know, cooling cannot be a luxury as we change and the, you know, as our climate changes and the climate crisis. And I think this is where so much of the work and organizing is intersectional. Right. That kind of like housing climate juncture, talking about the maximum temperature bylaw, is putting the onus, not on tenants to just figure out, can I buy a portable air conditioner or a window AC? But to say, isn't it the responsibility of, if you own and operate a building to care about the safety and livability and health of the people who live here. Matthew Remski: That's right. Just like the toilet has to flush. Diana Yoon: Yeah, exactly. Matthew Remski: It's not any different from that. You know, do you face generational issues, even amongst people who might be on the left side of the spectrum or progressive, with regard to the notion of AC being a luxury? Because I know that in my own life and amongst, you know, people my age, that there was almost like a, you know, personal piety around. I don't need that. That's going to contribute actually to, you know, energy expenditures or I can get by without. And now it's becoming quite clear that no, actually there are safety issues involved with not having air conditioning in the summer, but that involves a cultural change. Diana Yoon: Right, right. Yeah. And actually this is what I studied for my masters. Different kinds of. Yeah. Like tenants and energy efficiency and protections. And one of the things I found was that, yeah, many renters do, just not even if they have access to air conditioning. If they're paying their own utilities. Right. They weren't turning it on. I think that generational piece is really interesting. I think it's, it's very varied. Right. Like some of it is culture, some of it is like that. Your heat tolerance, I would say, you know, when I was doing energy efficiency retrofits as part of The Atmospheric Fund, we were going in and putting in heat pumps into Toronto Community Housing. And so, you know, that improves the overall, like HVAC system. It improves the heating but also adds cooling for the first time for many of those tenants. And that was really, really welcomed. And so I would say the thing that was hard about that and as part of that kind of ACORN project I talked about earlier, was that the tenants also wanted us to holistically fix anything else. Right. It's like the pests in their building, their kitchens. So, you know, I would say generally, I think the attitudes are changing. You know, I think that like when we see wildfire smoke and like weeks of 40 degree heat and it's not just here, but like, you know, we have to learn and treat this as kind of a health emergency as well. And B.C. heat dome was a number of years ago. You see it in Europe. It's just like, how do we treat this as a public health measure as well? And I think that can resonate to older audiences as well. Matthew Remski: You know, the other cultural issue that I wanted to bring up just comes out of my own experience, which is that, you know, I'm 54, so I start renting when I'm about 18 years old as a student of U of T. And you know, I wasn't, I didn't have bedbugs in Little Italy, but I lived in rooming houses on Bathurst and, you know, on Ossington and places like that. These were like, you know, homes that were rented out and there was five or six roommates or something like that. They were in terrible condition. And I just had the assumption probably for 10 years that that's just the way it went. I had never heard of tenant union organizing. I never thought that people would try to gather together and say, let's try to put pressure on our landlords in some way. I mean, that's easier in buildings than in houses. But I just wonder whether you run into folks who were like, really, this, can we can do something this. It's not supposed to be this way. Like, I just assumed that this, this was going to go on forever. Diana Yoon: Yeah. I mean, so much of the work and success we've had has been in apartment buildings where you have the same corporate landlord. Right. I would say, like these, the real gaps is things like when you're in a house, right. People like, you know, who don't feel like they have rights or they, they don't know a lot about, you know, the condition of how do you fix anything here? What do we do? Right. And so I think this is where one of the things I've been thinking about is I'm on the board of Circle Community Land Trust. This was, you know, 600 scattered homes, family sized housing that was going to be sold off by City Hall in the Rob Ford era. And instead the tenants there were like, no, we do not want these homes to be sold off. And so, you know, because that was something that they had shared in common. Even though the houses were kind of across the city, they were able to like mobilize. It was like a ten year battle. But now it's a nonprofit, now it's the Circle Community Land Trust. And those homes will be family size social housing forever. And so, you know, I think this is what we're trying to achieve with things like the Toronto Tenant Union, where, you know, you're not alone just because you're not in an apartment building where you don't know anyone, right? It's like, how do we collect some of those, like, common themes and like basement units or in like different rooming houses? And what can we do more to preserve the affordable housing we have? You know, I think it'd be great to increase the quality and the livability of many of these apartments and homes, but also like, we can't lose them. We are losing a lot of that, like naturally occurring lower rental stock because it's getting demolished or densified or renovicted. Matthew Remski: Let me hear the full Diana Yoon door knocking pitch. And along with like, what are you hearing at the door? Diana Yoon: You know, I start by saying my name is Diana Yoon, I'm running for City Council in University-Rosedale. Or I mean, they're, they're there, but like, you know, I work in affordable housing. You know, I decided to run because I think the city needs to do a lot more to address chronic homelessness across the city. And we need people to get help, healthcare and permanent pathways to be off the streets. And so that's really kind of how I start many of the conversations at the door because I think it's one way to talk about housing, whether or not you're a renter or you're a homeowner, to think about how does housing impact our society? And I do think that it is much more visible. People are really struggling and the former councillor that I was running against, you know, had cleared encampments and the people who were in that community knew, like, you know, like, I'm talking about Kensington Market, right? You know, there are so many unhoused neighbors there and St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Church, the priest, Maggie Helwig there, she wrote a book called Encampment, chronicling like all of these people who didn't get homes and those concrete blocks are still there outside of the church. They still are. You know, I would say this is like a huge bulk of the conversation that I'm having, and I think it is our responsibility on the left to not just demonize and villainize homelessness, but to, like, really think about how do we talk about this in a compassionate way? How do we bring people along with us and what does it mean to, like, be much more ambitious about the fact that no one should have to live outside? Matthew Remski: Do you ever feel yourself in conflict at the door around just questions of basic empathy? Like, are you faced with. Well, you know, I don't think that giving people free housing is really going to help them with their issues. Diana Yoon: 100%, you know, and I think that that's talking through, like, well, do you believe that they need mental health and addiction support? Yes. Right. And then it's like, well, how are Matthew Remski: they going to get that? Diana Yoon: Yeah, but, like, I believe that it is. We have to drag the province along with us. For those healthcare dollars. There is capital dollars available federally for support. We need those wraparound supports. University Health Network is doing it with Dunn House and Parkdale. But that is one model. Right. We need to scale that across the city. I would say the things that are hardest are when people are like, well, people should be in jail. And I think that this is one of the things where in the news this week, we saw the province's change the building code to potentially allow for overcrowding in jails. Like three inmates to a cell. That's not okay. Matthew Remski: Oh, I didn't see that. That's just. Diana Yoon: Yeah. And so this is the kind of thing where, no, the carceral solution is not going to improve things. Jails are full and two. And so many people are in. Are. Yeah. Like, are imprisoned for things out of their control. I think that, like, largely, you know, we can't say we're solving homelessness by putting people in jail. So I think that's the hardest conversation. But I think the vast majority of people do still have a lot of empathy. Matthew Remski: Do you feel like you are in a direct sort of ground war at the door with somebody like Brad Bradford, who is saying actually the opposite, that he's now floating ideas like involuntary commitment of unhoused people who have substance disabilities? Because that's the way conservative reactionary politics are going in this city. And I'm wondering if you're hearing that very specifically that influence. Diana Yoon: I don't hear that that much. You know, I think generally we talk about like safety. You know, I think I talk about like safe communities and like, what does that look like? And like how can we do, how can we have more interventions of like crisis support services and like de-escalation and like actual people trained in mental health, addictions, mental health nurses improving the like entire system? You know, because I think that, that it is like a huge use of police dollars and of, you know, our emergency, like, you know, our health care to have to go down that route. And I would say that like it's proven that involuntary treatment doesn't work. You know, I think we need to figure out a broader social safety net to get people help. Matthew Remski: Do you feel that the arguments around policing are effective with regard to, well, police really shouldn't be frontline workers with regard to issues that unhoused people face. And that's why we need to move funding into social work and to street provisioning? Diana Yoon: Yeah, I mean, I'm running in University-Rosedale. Right. And so I think by and large it does feel like a fairly progressive community. You know, there is differences in like wealth disparity across the ward. And you know, I would say some of those concerns are, are. Yeah, you know, like they want their police to focus on like car thefts and break-ins. And so it's like, you know, what else can the city invest in and use funding from higher orders of government to invest in things like youth violence prevention programs. Matthew Remski: Okay. So with regard to investment from higher levels of government and in relation to you've had success in securing funding for co-op housing, I have like an affordable housing and money puzzle for you to help me with. I know this is not in your ward, but I think it brings up some of the basic problems that progressive or leftist organizers and legislators face. So I've got this scenario for you and because you have some expertise in it, I want you to see if I've got this right and maybe you can help me walk it through. Diana Yoon: Sure. Matthew Remski: So there is a property at 5207 Dundas West. And it's. So it's in sort of like East Etobicoke, sorry, West Etobicoke. And it's very close to where I grew up. And the development is called the Stella. And it made the news back in March because it was the place where, you know, where Mark Carney and Doug Ford and Olivia Chow gathered for this press release that was being protested, the kinsfolk of Grassy Narrows, asking the federal and provincial governments to help them with their mercury cleanup in their reserve, which has been like a 55 year problem. Diana Yoon: Absolutely, yeah. And I went to the Grassy Narrows River Run rally. Matthew Remski: Yeah, right. So I grow up around there and I'm aware of the terrain and the land changes in that corridor over time. I'm researching this, you know, this incident, this media incident, and I wanted to figure out like, okay, well, what was the actual announcement about what is this housing project? And it took me through this sort of like, you know, the mechanics of what we face when we try to plan for affordable housing. So it's city owned land and it's offered through the CreateTO program, but it's been leased to the development companies under terms and land rent conditions that are confidential. And this is after the city paid $77 million to prepare the surrounding sites for development. It's called the Six Points Interchange and the developers are Tricon and Kilmer. Now, the report from the city also says that additional affordability contributions were made, but these are also confidential, they're unknown. So the city has given to the developers some sort of leeway aside from reducing or canceling development fees. There's all kinds of like, we're not just giving you the land, but we're sort of trying to make it as easy as possible for you to develop it for your own profit. So in deals like this, development charges get waived, property tax exemptions are offered on the affordable units. And the development company, well, Tricon is owned by Blackstone, which is one of the largest asset management firms in the world. And it's getting city land to develop and profit from under these secret terms. They're also getting an undisclosed amount of CMHC financing, up to 100% is the rule. And so that's low cost, 10 year fixed rate financing to build and they only have to commit to 30% affordable housing. But then the definition seems strange to me because it can be between 40 and 100% of average market rate. So, you know, average market rate isn't going to be like what they could get for that unit in that place when it's built. It might be a little bit below that, but it still might be, you know, only 20% off what their actual market units are. Diana Yoon: Totally. Matthew Remski: And so my guess is that, you know, the developers get all of these sweetheart deals and then they end up just setting their own price points within some sort of range. That lets them say, yeah, we kind of provided affordable housing, but we may not even be audited, just like in their regular business model. It doesn't seem like it's that much different. And so I'm wondering if this seems to you like a standard or typical arrangement these days and what it means for you as you consider going to council in terms of what you're going to be facing. Diana Yoon: Yeah, 100%. So thanks for shining a light on this development proposal. It is fairly standard. Right. So much of the funding that came out of CMHC and the National Housing Strategy went to the Apartment Construction Loan Program, formerly the Rental Construction Financing Initiative, and really, truly is indicative of what you're saying is subsidizing market development. So this is what I think. I believe that city land and all public land should be used for maximum public good. Matthew Remski: Right. Diana Yoon: And so that's why I believe in CreateTO doing things like Kennedy Green Co-op, which is, you know, at Kennedy station, it's new 612 new co-op homes on a former city parking lot. And that's mixed income. Those homes will get more affordable over time. And that's also, you know, a partnership. But like the city is not a developer. The co-op sector does not have, you know, a development arm that's necessarily building. It is still working with private developments. But just the scale of what we're building there is that those homes are essentially as close to rent control or more as they can be because they're a co-op, because the members will have to vote for rent increases. And overall, compared to other market units, they will get more affordable over time. But that is like nearly impossible. Matthew Remski: And so can I just pause you there? Is it nearly impossible because it's just very, very rare that the conditions come together where the sort of co-op arm can seize control of the appropriate land and begin to put this into motion. Diana Yoon: Totally. So let me explain. Yeah, so with the federal funding that I was able to secure through my professional work at the National Co-op Housing Federation, we got CMHC to create a new program, the Co-op Housing Development Program, and that covers 100% of eligible costs, 2/3 loans, a third grant. And that funding is different than other types of funding that available from CMHC. This is really a dedicated fund which we have not had for over 30 years from the federal government to build new co-ops. Ultimately, I think it is very challenging for, you know, community groups, for nonprofit housing organizations to apply for land even when there are, you know, RFPs and different municipalities are putting requests for proposals for, you know, we do want to see affordable housing. A lot of the time what does happen is that, you know, a private developer bids on that site and says, we will have a partnership with a group and then maybe some. Some portion of that. But I think, you know, I have found that this is just, you know, we're slowly starting to make progress in the right direction when there is significant amount of capital. But it is not true. Most of the time, you know, I was part of a community group, Friends of Chinatown, where we were challenging a development on Spadina. And it, you know, was going to displace. It did. It did displace like a dozen businesses, including Rol San, which thankfully moved across the street. But it was gonna, you know, it created 220 units and had zero affordable housing. Matthew Remski: Gosh. Diana Yoon: You know, and so this was. Matthew Remski: So it's just a gentrification project because, I mean, everybody. Everybody who would be in that portion of Chinatown would have. Have probably needed affordable housing or benefited from it. Diana Yoon: 100%. So we spent a year and a half working with the former councillor at the time, who is. Who I'm running against now, and the community and the planners to say this process has to change. So they translated the development sign outside of it in Chinese for the first time ever in planning history. And then we did successfully fight to get that building to agree to 10% affordable housing. But that is like, what you're saying, right? It's the 80% of average market rent. And we were. We were like, this is not a win. You know, the city was like, this is a win. This is like the best we could have ever gotten from the developer. And it happened because of a huge amount of community organizing. Matthew Remski: And is the city incentivized to say it's a win because it looks good politically? Diana Yoon: For a while, yeah, 100%. Matthew Remski: Okay. Diana Yoon: But then it's like, now the building is like, almost done, you know, and it was still largely a lot of studio, one-bedrooms and that, like, 80% of affordability of average market rate. The market conditions have changed so much. I really believe that we need to fight for real rent control. So this is, I guess, to what council can do, I think, that we must demand rent control. We cannot put up our hands and say that rent control is provincial jurisdiction. We cannot just let new developments be built, you know, without rent control in all of these rental buildings. Because so much. Many of the condo developers did move to rental because they still could figure out how to profit if their pro formas worked and they could generate a ton of revenue. Matthew Remski: Yeah, because at 5207 in Etobicoke on Dundas Street, 70% of those units are not rent controlled at all. And so they are used to simply jacking the rent to whatever the maximum might be. And there's this knock-on effect to their so-called affordability package. Diana Yoon: And this is what happens when those units have no rent control. And you know, it sucks when it's city incentivized. Like I talk to a person who is, who moved into a building that was built in 2019, you know, she had an 8% rent increase for the first two years she moved into that building. Matthew Remski: What? Each year? 8%. Diana Yoon: Each year 8%. Matthew Remski: God damn. Diana Yoon: And like, really, truly, like then it was the pandemic. She like really talked to the landlord, you know, the corporate landlord, and like, they were like, fine, we won't increase it another 8% the third year. But like, she really worked hard for that. But then she knew another neighbor in that building who like, like randomly that year had a 13% rent increase maybe because she fought to get hers down. And then they moved out. And so this was so arbitrary, you know. Matthew Remski: Wait a minute, are they gaming tenants against each other? Like, this kind of reminds me of how I heard Cory Doctorow talking about how with nursing agencies in the States, they're now running on like Uber platforms where, you know, before somebody goes to book a nurse, the AI runs like a credit check on the available nurses to see who's most in debt. And then they offer them the lowest wage per hour. And I'm wondering whether they can individually kind of assess where tenants are and then just say, hey, they can probably afford 14, they can probably only afford nine. Diana Yoon: But that's not okay. Right. Matthew Remski: And so are they doing surveillance pricing? Diana Yoon: I've not, I, I cannot say they're doing surveillance. Matthew Remski: You can't say that. Would you doubt it? Diana Yoon: But I wouldn't doubt it. And I would say that what we do have to fix is this lack of transparency. Right. I think that that is where mobilizing tenants across Toronto and frankly across the province to say we need rent control. Like, you know, we created a guide to tenant rights as part of my city council campaign to say, this is the rent control increase for next year, it's under 2%. And then for all buildings built after 2018, there's no rent control. And it's not acceptable that we just say that that's fine because this is what's happening to people's lives. And you know, I think that the more we talk about how that needs to change, you know, 2018 was not last year. You know, the market is different and people, people do. I think renters deserve stability and predictability. And what we're seeing and what we're hearing is that the rent increases are just really a tactic to jack up the rent to kick tenants out. It's like, you know, it's completely unfair to people living in these buildings. Matthew Remski: So two technical questions. Are you saying that the municipality does have leverage to demand rent control with just a council vote? Diana Yoon: Well, if it's city land and it's CreateTO. Matthew Remski: Yeah. Diana Yoon: And they won't, you know, it's like, why can't we try? Matthew Remski: Yeah, well, I guess that's what I'm wondering is whether it's really CreateTO that is the stopgap, that is the place to invest the sort of political capital because it seems that it's CreateTO, that's actually brokering the initial land deals with, with, you know, whoever is going to take over places like 5207 Dundas and you know, but Diana Yoon: CreateTO is a city agency and there could be more political will. And part of the mayor's re-election platform is to create more affordable homes which include rent controlled homes. Right. And so despite the province having these loopholes, as we're building new units, as we're building more supply, it's the. What, what is the kind of supply we're building? You know, I would love to see family size units, I would love to see more co-ops and that is what's happening. But largely because we were able to get federal funding. I think another thing that is kind of low hanging fruit is preservation of affordable housing. And that is where, you know, for example, like the Spadina development, a lot of that energy and momentum in the Chinatown community then move towards the Toronto Chinatown Community Land Trust, new organization and they're looking to buy their first building now with city support, but also through a crowdfunding effort. And this is because, you know, as you say, right. We can't just let gentrification and displacement happen to our communities. I think there can be a real proactive approach to saying when buildings go up for sale, how can we create the conditions for more community ownership? Matthew Remski: Thank you so much for helping me understand all of this a little bit better and thanks for all of the work that you're doing on this campaign. Diana Yoon: Yeah. Matthew Remski: And I guess, you know, whatever happens, you're going to be still working on all of this for the foreseeable. So I wish you all of the luck with that. Diana Yoon: Yeah, thanks so much. You know, I believe people are really open to change at the local level. I think that we have a real shot to win this election here in University-Rosedale. And I think ultimately, that's because of the focus that the campaign has had on affordability, on tenant rights, about ending homelessness, and believing that the city should have a vision to be as ambitious as possible about the kind of city we want to see. Matthew Remski: Thank you so much, Diana. Diana Yoon: Thank you. Matthew Remski: So. Thank you again, and good luck to Diana. On October 26th, Toronto, go out and vote. And also socialists around the world go out and vote, not because electoral politics will defeat capitalism somehow, but as a way to foster community and occasional progressive wins, so that we have some breathing space to organize social revolution, take care of each other.