Toronto’s Tenant Union Is Just Getting Started
Earlier this year, the Toronto Tenant Union held its founding convention. Its sights are set high: it aims to build a mass tenant movement capable of reshaping Toronto politics.
Sharlene Henry, cochair of the Toronto Tenant Union, on organizing: “How do we push back against a corporate landlord that owns buildings across the city? The idea is for tenants to realize they’re not alone, fighting their landlord by themselves.”
On April 18, more than three hundred tenants from across Toronto packed in for the founding convention of the Toronto Tenant Union (TTU). A joint project of the York South-Weston Tenant Union (YSW) and Climate Justice Toronto (CJTO), the Toronto Tenant Union aims to unite all tenants in Toronto along a common political line.
This project has been brewing in Toronto for years. In 2023, Jacobin reported on a citywide rent strike led by YSW, in which hundreds of Toronto tenants living in buildings owned by the same landlord organized against renovictions and above-guideline rent increases that would have likely forced many tenants from their homes. Since that historic rent strike, tenant organizing in Ottawa has exploded, inspired in large part by YSW’s example.
Jacobin recently spoke over the phone with Sharlene Henry, cochair of the TTU and former cochair of YSW. In addition to her work with tenant organizing, she is a member of Unifor Local 1285 and serves on Unifor’s executive board as the black and worker of color representative. As a member of the YSW tenant union, she was at the forefront of the historic Toronto rent strikes of 2023.
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