What these Ontario tenants want out of this municipal election

If you're a homeowner or paying a mortgage, property taxes might be at the top of your list in this election. But what about if you rent? Over a third of people living in St. Catharines, Ontario are tenants making an average household income of $58,000, according to city data. Nowadays, a two-bedroom apartment costs on average $1,900, according to Statistics Canada. If we do the math, that comes out to about 40% of income going into rent. We're struggling, excruciatingly hard to keep our heads above water. It's exhausting to have to feel I have to fight for my security and safety and to not know when I'm going to be able to sustain my housing. There's empty spaces throughout this area that are being left unutilized. It would bring an opportunity to access more development to bring more jobs and revenue to this area municipal elections could help with property standards by law enforcement vacant home tax you're in a very precarious position sometimes as a renter when even if you've been renting the place for a number of years you can still they can still find a way to evict you Janet Libby who's on Ontario's disability support program says although she's grateful to be living in affordable and supportive housing she hopes to see the city do better with enforcing no open drug use and making social services accessible for those experiencing homelessness especially in the downtown area we have tons of children that live in this building and they don't need to be seeing stuff like that why don't they have something where it's not in a residential area for these people and have all the resources in one location so that they can go and get the help that they need and they can triage them to find out what's the issue and triage them to where they need to go to get help.