1. The eviction crisis that landlords & the state will try to impose on #Toronto will not be because landlords can't afford to absorb the rental arrears due to #COVID19.

It will be carried out deliberately to assert the authority of landlords by disciplining struggling tenants.

2. In the last several weeks landlords, police, politicians, and the courts have dedicated resources that outweigh the rent of two East York apartment units by orders of magnitude. Resources used to evict tenants from those units during this pandemic, by any means necessary.

3. Over thirty Toronto Police have been involved. Untold billing hours in legal and consulting fees to a prominent law firm (rumored to charge $1k/hr). The scheduling and rescheduling of multiple covert eviction attempts by sheriffs in unmarked and rented vehicles.

4. Half a dozen court applications and injunctions. And all the political and social pressure landlords can muster.
If we calculate the rent owing or potentially coming in against the costs for these two evictions, the math doesn't add up.

5. That's because, to the landlords, the tenancy in these two units are incidental. Their primary concern is establishing that a landlord's ability to ransom off housing, threaten tenants with homelessness or financial ruin, and abuse working class people will not be challenged.

6. Even during a pandemic (arguably ESPECIALLY during a pandemic) landlords want there to be no mistake: They will continue to bleed the working class of this city dry.
These are the stakes. Landlords know what their interests are. Landlords know what they need to do.

7. The question is do we, as working class people, know what we need to do? Do we know what's at stake? It isn't just our unit or the unit of our neighbour.

What is happening in our city is not the unfolding of separate personal hardships. It's class struggle.

8. Their class is lining up for a long and merciless attack on ours. They are afraid of us getting organized. They are doubling down on the violence that drives this housing crisis in order to remind us that we should be afraid of them.

9. We need to meet them on our terms. We need to organize in our interest. They should be afraid of us, because we can't let this go on any longer. - end