The presentation slides shown at the inaugural meeting on April 09, 2024 about the Petition can be found here:
Petition Meeting was Great Success
Considering that we had two business days and a weekend to arrange for housing providers to meet, the inaugural petition meeting in Peterborough was an outstanding success.
- 75 housing providers from across Ontario, including
- Kingston, Cornwall, Belleville, North Bay, downtown Toronto, London, Kitchener
- CBC interview team stayed and recorded for about 1.25 hours
- CBC interviewed Weiting Bollu, from Openroom.ca and Chris Seepe, author of the auto-evict petition
- CBC stated the story should be on “The National” next week (of 2024 04 15)
Petition Next Steps
- Should we form a not-for-profit (NFP) organization?
- Form either a committee or executive board to advance petition objective(s)
- 5 to 10 volunteers to coordinate
- Establish a bank account for either the petition or the NFP
- Build a website. Should include:
- Link to petition and updates for ongoing signatures
- Post actual petition and updates (with dates) to NFP website
- Links to Petition presentations
- Inaugural 2024 04 09 Peterborough meeting
- Donation/membership payment link (GoFundMe.com)
- Join NFP email list
- Sign up as a volunteer
- Webpage of volunteers, their tasks/roles, contact info
- List of MPPs who have declined to meet their constituents
- List of MPPs who have met their constituents
- Outcomes of meetings – date, description
- List of government agencies, bureaucrats contacted
- Outcomes of meetings – date, description
- Webpage of Petition media coverage
- Post links and other materials of Petition (and housing crisis) coverage
- CTV, CBC, podcasts, radio interviews
- Rebel News (David Menzies)?
- News media articles and reports that support the NFP’s industry outlook and solution
- See two examples at the bottom of this email
- Industry statistics with authority citations
- Counter of number of donations/members
- Counter of number of rental properties represented
- Counter of number of rental properties that could come back on the market
- Counter of funds objective and funds raised
- Website visitor tracking statistics
- Link to petition and updates for ongoing signatures
- Register as a provincial lobby group
- Establish a government relations committee
- Establish a media relations committee
- Establish formal newsletter for NFP organization
- Find lawyer or firm with knowledge of Ontario residential tenancy law and expertise in contract law who can provide us an expert legal opinion, case law, precedent(s), etc., regarding:
- A property (phone, car, groceries, rental property etc.) must be returned to its rightful owner immediately after the respective agreement has been breached ... in our case, when the tenant stopped paying their rent.
- Is there a case for conflict of interest, abuse of power, and/or conflict-in-law where the author of a contract (Ontario) is also the interpreter, judge, jury and “executioner” of the same agreement (LTB)?
- Establish an auto-send letter to MPPs (similar to OREA and ACORN website functionality)
- Organize Marches and Protests
- Legislative Assembly of Ontario?
- Targeted MPP offices?
- Placard sayings:
- "Don't Pay, Can't Stay"
- "No Pay, No Stay"
Needs & Requests
- It would help the Petition cause immensely if we can identify:
- How many rental units you currently own and operate
- How many rental units you might bring to the market if the petition goal was implemented
- Municipality of the rental unit(s)
- Only aggregate numbers will be published. Your name and contact info will be held in confidence and not published anywhere.
- Please send me an email. cseepe@aztechrealty.com
- Volunteers needed for all of the above action items and for the committee/executive council
- Likely meet at least monthly (remote Zoom)
- Real-time interaction for important updates
- Please email me if interested: cseepe@aztechrealty.com
- Join mailing list: to Join Chris’s Mailing List
- Go to: www.aztechrealty.com
- Click on “Contact Us”
- Click on Join Mailing List
- Send your suggestions of other tasks we can undertake to achieve the Petition goals. Send me an email: cseepe@aztechrealty.com
There can be no peace without justice.
Chris
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two Excellent "Must-Read" News Articles
1. “Housing developers struggle with population boom puzzle (RENX)” (2024 04 11)
https://renx.ca/canadas-housing-developers-struggle-over-population-boom-puzzle
"Policy around investment is resulting in capital leaving our country"
2. [New Zealand] “Changes to tenancy laws to come into force … (RNZ)” (2024 04 11)
"Housing Minister Chris Bishop … changes [to tenancy laws] … make it easier for "Mum and Dad landlords" to … get into the rental market, boost supply and put downward pressure on rents."