Landlord withdraws rent increase after tenant strike at Toronto apartment: organizers

Tenant organizers in Toronto have successfully thwarted a landlord's effort to retroactively raise rents by more than five percent at a west-end apartment building. In March, residents at 75 Spencer Avenue refused to pay their rent following the property manager's request for an above guideline rent increase, or AGI. After six months of the rent strike, Metcap Living, the building's owner, has now abandoned the application.

While the maximum allowable increase for rent-controlled buildings in Ontario in 2025 was 2.5 percent, landlords can seek approval from the Landlord and Tenant Board for AGIs to fund renovations and improvements. The tenants informed The Canadian Press in February that the landlord had renovated the lobby and converted an office into a rental unit, but argued these changes did not directly enhance their living conditions.

Consequently, they believed they should not be responsible for covering the costs through a rent increase, asserting that a 5.4 percent rise in their housing expenses would be prohibitively expensive. The building, located in Toronto's Parkdale neighborhood, was recently sold to a new owner, prompting tenants to travel to Montreal last weekend to confront them regarding the rent hike.

Bryan Doherty of Parkdale Organize, a tenant advocacy group, remarked that the rent strike was successful because "our neighbors did the thing that everyone talks about but almost no one does: they formed an independent organization, stepped outside of legal and political convention, and directly confronted their landlord."