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“The Applicants ask the Tribunal to determine whether a landlord has the right to displace a large group of residents of a low-income, family-oriented, racialized and immigrant community in order to create a predominantly affluent, adult-oriented, white and non-immigrant community in its stead.”

Lawyer Daniel Tucker-Simmons, who filed the application on behalf of the Herongate Tenants Coalition, said the case could be one of the most significant to ever to argue that housing is a human right.

“With a strong ruling from the tribunal we’d put an end to this predatory form of gentrification in Ontario,” Tucker Simmons said.

“This is a type of development that disproportionately affects racialized and immigrant communities. We can show that. And that’s prohibited by the Ontario Human Rights Code.”

Timbercreek acquired the Heron Gate rental development near the convergence of Heron and Walkley roads in 2012 and 2013 and spent $45 million to upgrade the property. It demolished 86 of the townhouses in 2016 and another 150 units this year, after having evicted or relocated the remaining tenants in 2018.

The 14 claimants in the human rights case were all forced out of their homes in the 2018 Phase 2 evictions.

The application alleges Timbercreek plans to replace the townhouses with housing geared to higher incomes to lure affluent residents from nearby Alta Vista.

“Timbercreek’s plan is thus to gentrify the Heron Gate neighbourhood on a mass scale and at an accelerated pace” it says, a process the claim calls “hyper-gentrification.”