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Tenants at a highrise in an up-and-coming Toronto neighbourhood have staged a rent strike, saying landlords are taking advantage of loopholes in Ontario’s housing law to drive low-income residents out of their homes.

Over 50 tenants of a building in Toronto’s rapidly gentrifying Parkdale community are refusing to pay their rent after the property manager — Nuspor Investments — applied for government permission to increase rent by nearly double the legally permitted amount.

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“This building is going to kick people out with the rent increases if they’re allowed to go above the (provincial rent) guildelines,” striking tenant Mark Farquharson said.

“A lot of people in this building are pensioners and they’re going to be gone in another five years because they can’t afford it.”

Last year the government of Ontario extended rent control — which previously had applied only to units that came into use prior to November 1991 — to all residential properties in the province, setting an annual cap on rent increases tied to the Consumer Price Index. The cap for 2018 is 1.8 per cent.