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Though visually imperceptible, a front line has been drawn along Heron Road, Baycrest Drive and Sandalwood Drive in Ottawa’s Heron Gate rental community.

It runs across the neighbourhood’s overgrown lawns and overflowing garbage bins, in front of aging townhouses from which tenants have emerged to form a coalition that proclaims “#DefendHeronGate.”

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“We are now being told, for the second time in two years, that our community will be destroyed and we have no say in the matter,” the coalition wrote recently, in a self-published article titled: “The Battle for Heron Gate Begins.”

“Enough is enough. This is our neighbourhood and we are staying.”

Earlier this year, a month after residents were invited to a “visioning session” with Heron Gate landlord Timbercreek to plan the future of their community, 105 households learned that vision did not include the homes they were living in.

Timbercreek announced in May that it intends to demolish 150 townhouses along three streets in its 16-hectare, 1,665 unit rental complex. In so doing it’s displacing hundreds of residents, many of whom are new immigrants and low-income earners, paying affordable rents for three- and four-bedroom units to house families twice that size.