Eco-Tenant Organizing

The climate crisis is advancing, and the impacts associated are arriving with increasing ferocity. Climate change means more severe weather events, extreme heat and cold, poor air quality and flooding. While everyone is susceptible, people who are low-income (who are more likely to be renters than home-owners) are at a greater risk from the impacts. Yet tenants have very little control over measures that will make their homes more climate resilient or energy efficient, making it clear that climate justice is housing justice for renters. It’s imperative that we approach these dual crises of climate change and housing together, and that’s what ACORN’s eco-tenant organizing is all about.

ACORN is a local and national, membership-based community organisation of low to moderate income families that fights for social and economic justice. We believe that justice is achieved by building community power for change. We have a long and deep history of organising in low and moderate income neighbourhoods, fighting for change on a variety of issues such as affordable housing, healthy homes, predatory lending, the digital divide and more.

Low-income tenants are often members of vulnerable demographics. They are seniors, people with disabilities, new immigrants, and single income families. Yet, even the healthiest individual living in ‘affordable’ housing is at far more risk because the buildings themselves exacerbate the conditions of our climate crisis. Take extreme heat, as temperatures rise to dangerous levels, units without adequate ventilation, draughty windows and no AC can become inescapable saunas. Additionally, low-income areas consistently have less access to greenspace and cooling areas. One study found that in 2018 a 7 day heat spell in Ottawa and Montreal saw almost 100 heat related deaths. (Shu, et al. 2023). A staggering statistic, especially when considering the increase in extreme weather events over the past five years.

Moreover, low-income tenants have limited power to mitigate the environmental impacts of their homes. Tenants don’t control what heating system or insulation is used in their apartments, or how energy efficient their appliances are. That’s the landlord's responsibility. Yet consistently, the cost burdens of these inefficiencies are borne by the tenants themselves who are increasingly likely to pay utilities outside of their rent. This creates a split-incentive, meaning there is an unequal balance between the distribution of rewards and financial burdens associated with energy consumption and efficiency improvements.

So what’s the solution? ACORN believes bringing tenants into the fold and scaling up retrofits in rental communities - with some important caveats - is a big part of the answer.

In Ottawa, 34% of households are renters. ACORN believes that their exclusion from climate policy and campaigning discussions isn’t from a lack of interest - rather no one is reaching out and connecting their primary concerns of high rent, expensive bills, and disrepair in their units, to the issue of climate change. This is where ACORN’s eco-tenant unions come in. These are tenant unions that work to advance improvements in their buildings, neighbourhoods and city that are win-win for tenants AND the environment.

Our eco-tenant organizing is a double pronged approach. We are building groups of tenants to work collectively to advocate for retrofits with affordability and anti-eviction conditions in their buildings, while also developing a platform to address systemic barriers to achieving renters’ climate goals.  Retrofits are repairs and upgrades that make buildings more energy efficient. This can be anything from new light bulbs to a new heating system. It means repairs to the issues in units that not only cause inefficiencies, but contribute to making tenants’ lives costly and unsafe.

Inefficient buildings account for massive amounts of energy consumption and GHG emissions. In Ottawa, “almost 50% of GHG emissions come from heating, cooling, lighting and operating the building stock” (City of Ottawa, 2023). Reducing these emissions is imperative. As such, all levels of government have identified this reduction as part of their climate action plans. However, government programs and funding routinely focus exclusively on homeowners. There is very limited funding available for multi-residential homes or tenants of any kind. There are even fewer programs that have tenant protections as stipulations to funding. If a landlord receives funding to do retrofits there is nothing in the way of them using these repairs as justification to deliver Above-the-Guideline-Increases in rent (AGIs) or to evict current tenants to bring in inflated market rates. It means the funding we’ve set aside to improve our housing stock, has ultimately removed affordable units from the market.

Canada is in a housing crisis. We are losing the affordable housing we have at alarming rates. In Ottawa, we are losing 7 units of affordable housing in the private market for every one unit that is built. Even if we built massive amounts in the next year it would still be wildly insufficient. We need to protect existing affordable housing and its tenants like it's an endangered species on the verge of extinction, because it is.

This is an article and a call to action. ACORN Organizers are knocking on doors and making countless phone calls to tenants every single day, but our goals are big and we need your help to reach them. Here’s how you can support this work:

• If you’re a renter living in Ottawa, complete our Eco-Tenant Survey to help inform our platform of actions that governments can take to tackle tenants’ biggest climate concerns: bit.ly/EcoTenantSurvey 

• Start an Eco-Tenant Union in your building! Reach out to ottawa@acorncanada.org and we’ll help you get started

• Stay connected on this work by joining our e-newsletter for news and invites to future meetings, information sessions and events related to housing and climate justice: https://acorncanada.org/newsletter/ The retrofit conversation needs to include and consider tenants and their right to housing that is both affordable and in a good state of repair.

Our current policy frameworks prevent this by allowing landlords to pass down the costs of retrofits onto tenants, creating the split incentive and ignoring tenants in the process. ACORN is on a mission to change this, care to join? 

Katie Russell is a Field Organizer with Ottawa ACORN.

Sources 

Cha, J. M., & Pastor, M. (2022). Just transition: Framing, organizing, and power-building for decarbonization. Energy Research & Social Science, 90, 102588. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629622000937?via%3Dihub City of Ottawa. (2023).

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions fromCity Buildings: LEED buildings in Ottawa. Climate Change and Energy. https://ottawa.ca/en/living-ottawa/environment-conservation-and-climate/climate-change-and -energy/reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions-city-buildings#section-02de1d47-d842-4ebd-ba d2-5fc40ede4d97

C. Shu, A. Gaur, L. Wang, M. A. Lacasse, (2023). Evolution of the local climate in Montreal and Ottawa before, during and after a heatwave and the effects on urban heat islands. Science of The Total Environment, Volume 890, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969723031182#:~:text=The%20s tudy%20is%20focused%20on,Climate%20Change%20Canada%2C%202019).

Marhnouj, S. (2022). Renters facing record-high prices, dwindling options in Ottawa. CBC News, Ottawa. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-rent-high-prices-affordability-1.6545690#:~:t ext=Finding%20affordable%20units%20'pretty%20much%20impossible'&text=McCallum%20 said%20around%2034%20per,much%20competition%2C%22%20she%20said.

Njeukam, L. (2023). Allow cities like Ottawa to save existing affordable housing. Ottawa Citizen, Opinion. https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/njeukam-allow-cities-like-ottawa-to-save-existing-affordable -housing#:~:text=In%20Ottawa%2C%20for%20every%20one,will%20accelerate%20the%20 homelessness%20crisis.