BY Lori Deets
MBC Freelance Correspondent
A newly formed Tenant Union in Regina is looking to bring together tenants or anyone struggling with housing to come together for learning and empowerment. Group spokesperson for the Regina Tenants Union, Mandla Mthembu, a community organizer and activist in Regina, has been initiating union meetings and information sessions for the group.
Tenants’ unions are building, neighbourhood or city-based organizations made up of and led by renters themselves to fight for our collective interests and rights. Tenant unions can help renters with evictions, rental increases, and unsafe living conditions.
Mthembu says, “There’s a whole group of people out in this city, a growing number of folks that and are living day-to-day, or living on the streets. Something needs to be done at all levels it starts with us as concerned citizens and the people that are going through it that have to face it.”
In Saskatchewan, there have been no tenant-led initiatives to help renters struggling with housing, leaving that work to non-profit organizations, community advocates, or mobilizers like Mthembu.
Mthembu says he mostly started the tenant’s union because everyone else was doing it! Mthembu would go to other cities and talk to other activists.
“They’re like what do you mean you don’t have a tenant’s union? You gotta have that!”
The first order of business for the union was to better understand tenant rights. The union set up a teach-in with lawyer Dan Leblanc to discuss tenant rights. Leblanc presented a slideshow discussing tenants’ rights and obligations.
Leblanc is a lawyer in Regina experienced in labour and employment law, working with various levels of government, boards, and tribunals.
“I think, it’s useful to know what the state of the law is now, both for your own organizing as well as communicating if you’re coming across other tenets, andtenets and then thinking about the ways in which we can pair maybe the legal side of it with the political side of it, recognizing there’s sort of two avenues to go after the same goals.”
Leblanc spoke about what a landlord can and can’t do. For example, a landlord cannot charge an application fee. A landlord cannot refuse to rent to you because you’re on social assistance, your age, your sexual orientation, or any protected class under the Human Rights Code.
The engaged group of listeners talked about landlords who still ask for an illegal application fee, then asked about pay stubs or criminal record checks, saying many renters are left with the choice to pay the application fee or provide personal information or risk homelessness. There is no recourse or place to report it.
Leblanc says that criminal records are fair game, but pay stubs may be a bit too far.
“I would say is kind of under litigated or underreported on in Saskatchewan, so criminal record check fair game. Okay, I think because well because under the human rights code, having a record isn’t a protected ground is probably fair game. You there are like privacy related elements you could raise on that basis, but its probably fair game on the pay stub side of things. I think that is offside because that is indirectly revealing of whether you’re on social assistance, which is a prohibited ground.”
Participants and Regina Tenants Union members asked questions and shared their own experiences with housing in Regina and other locations in Saskatchewan.
Here’s some resources and links to help renters and tenants learn more about the Regina Tenant Union, the Saskatchewan Tenants Association and the Office of Residential Tenancies.