OCAP holds rally and film screening demanding expropriation of vacant lots for public housing

Toronto: The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) and its allies will rally outside 214-230 Sherbourne St. tomorrow, Friday, August 23, to demand the City expropriate the 7 vacant properties to build rent-geared-to-income housing. The action will start at 8:30pm outside 230 Sherbourne St. – the sole abandoned 30-room house that remains standing on the lot – rally and short film screening will follow.

“Homeless people are dying on our streets at the rate of two a week. The shelters are full and there is a waiting list of over 100,000 to get into TCHC. These properties sit vacant at the heart of a deadly housing crisis. We cannot sit by and wait as more people are evicted, as more people die. The City must expropriate and build rent-geared-to-income public housing now,” says AJ Withers, organizer with OCAP.

“Here at Dundas and Sherbourne we’re reclaiming space that housed Toronto’s poor for at least 50 years. After demolishing houses on the lot and leaving it vacant for a decade, the owners now want to sell the land to developers. The absolute last thing the Dundas-Sherbourne neighbourhood needs is the development of another condo-building. The City must stop wasting time and use this land to build housing that poor people can actually afford and desperately need,” says Cat Chhina, OCAP Organizer. OCAP has been demanding the City expropriate these properties, which sit in the heart of a neighbourhood with extremely concentrated homelessness, for several years. The primary film shown will be: Free Bleecker St. (1974).

Additional details about the action are available on our website.
Media Contacts: Cat Chhina (416-564-0612), and AJ Withers (647-884-2290)     
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
157 Carlton St #201 Toronto, ON. M5A 2K3Phone: 416 925 6939Fax: 1 855 714 0566 (toll free) Website: ocap.caTwitter:@OCAPtorontoFacebook:facebook.com/OcapToronto
               _______________________________________________
ocap.newswire mailing list
ocap.newswire@masses.tao.ca
https://masses.tao.ca/mailman/listinfo/ocap.newswire