FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 3, 2007

WOMEN AGAINST POVERTY DEMAND GOVERNMENT ACTION ON HOUSING

Toronto – On Sunday June 3rd, hundreds of women, trans people and their allies marched through the streets of Toronto to 4 Howard Street, one of hundreds of buildings in this city that have been allowed to sit empty and deteriorate until they fall down or must be torn down. Four Women Against Poverty Collective members had already entered the building, claiming it for affordable housing for women by women. We erected a tent city in support of the women inside, but several hours into our peaceful gathering, police used excessive force to move us - giving little or no warning before aggressively clearing our demonstration, and using horses to push women into small confined spaces, creating a very unsafe situation.

Speakers will address the police response as well as the following demands:

• We call on Mayor Miller and City Council to force developers to create safe affordable housing when they: ask for zoning variances, don’t pay their taxes, or allow their buildings to fall apart.

• We call on Premier McGuinty to immediately raise social assistance rates by 40% and to develop a coherent, well-funded province–wide housing policy that has timelines, clear number of units to be built, and accountability components included.

• We call on Prime Minister Harper to develop a coherent, well-funded Canada–wide housing policy and program, and to devote 1% of the federal budget to affordable housing.

Too many survivors of violence and their kids are stuck in shelters, unsafe housing, or abusive homes because they have no place to live. Homeless women face violence every day on the streets. We will continue to demonstrate for change until it happens.

The Women Against Poverty Collective is a group of women and trans people who are working together to advocate for safe, affordable and accessible housing for women experiencing violence.

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Housing protest ends in four arrests
150 had occupied an empty building near St. Jamestown

Jun 04, 2007 04:30 AM
Sheila Dabu
Staff Reporter

What started hopefully, with activists carrying banners calling for an "end to violence against women," ended with the arrest of four women.

More than 150 women's rights activists took to the streets yesterday, and later set up a makeshift tent city at St. Jamestown West Park, when police came in on horses and arrested several of them.

A spokesperson for Women Against Poverty Collective, Anna Willats, reported that the officers were aggressive and rough with those they hauled away.

The arrests followed a protest march in the park, at Bloor and Sherbourne Sts., that eventually led to the occupation of a nearby abandoned building at 4 Howard St.

"We call on the city to create a 'use it or lose it' bylaw to make abandoned buildings like this one transferred to the city so they can be housing for women who are survivors of violence," Jen Plyler, one of several members of the group occupying the building, told the Star.

Plyler said the private property is a heritage building that used to be a rooming house for about 20 people. The building is deliberately being left to decay so it can be torn down for development, she said.

The group is calling on the federal government to establish "a national law to say that housing is a human right," she said, adding the province should raise welfare and disability rates by 40 per cent.

Thirty police officers were at the scene.

According to Sgt. Frank Bergen, police tried negotiating with the protesters before arrests were made.