Illustration by Kumé Pather
Spring 2023
Spring 2023

The Rent Series

The average listing for a one-bedroom is $2,500, people are leaving the city, and the housing situation in Toronto has never been more dire. With stories about delays at the landlord and tenant board, housing discrimination, the city’s worst landlords, and possible solutions, the Rent Series is our ongoing look at the barriers preventing the almost 50 percent of Torontonians who are renters from making a life here.

In this issue

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Editor's Letter by Nicholas Hune-Brown

How We Misunderstand the Housing Crisis

The “housing crisis” isn’t a crisis for everyone—for some it’s a windfall. That fact infuses every aspect of our response to it.

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Feature by Tahmeed Shafiq

At the Landlord and Tenant Board, Tenants Wait Twice as Long as Their Landlords

Applications by tenants take up to seven months longer than those by landlords. Behind this disparity is a skewed system of Zoom hearings and inexperienced adjudicators that can’t keep up with a mile-high case backlog.

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News by Olivia Rania Bowden

How to Protect Seniors From Eviction

A new report on seniors in TCHC buildings shows that current eviction prevention methods need to be strengthened.

Photo by Chris Katsarov Luna
Issue 17 - Winter 2023
Issue 17 - Winter 2023

Toronto at 3 AM

In this city’s quietest hour, the people who are awake are awake for a reason. From international student security guards to crisis line volunteers, from DJs building fun in an unfun city to palliative care doctors making house calls—stories of the people who are up while the rest of the city sleeps.

In this issue

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Short Feature by Max Mertens

Building Fun in a Notoriously Unfun City

With artists getting international recognition and partygoers eager to make up for lost time, the only thing standing between Toronto and a vibrant nightlife scene is Toronto.

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Perspective by Emma Healey

Death in the Small Hours

In the middle of the night, palliative care doctor Joshua Wales drives across the city, making house calls to people during the most emotionally complex, vulnerable moments of their lives.

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Short Feature by Lygia Navarro

The Night Watchmen

In the booming private security industry, the biggest problem is finding enough guards. Then came a new source of low-wage employees—international students.

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Feature by Alexandra Kimball

The Brutish Lives and Hideous Deaths of Toronto Rats

Rats are cunning, ravenous, daring, disgusting. They stand in for everything squalid and dysfunctional about urban life and we will never be rid of them.

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Feature by Inori Roy

A Voice on the End of the Line

For the last sixty years, crisis hotlines have been the emergency rooms of the mental health world. But remote work has transformed the already challenging overnight shift into a deeply lonely one.

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Essay by Sarah Ratchford

Leaving the Party

Walking late at night, free from the noise of the day and the demands and threats of men, I can finally hear my own thoughts.

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Perspective by Lisa MacIntosh

Maybe I’ll See Raymond

For years, I walked the city doing street outreach overnight—handing out socks, listening to people’s stories, always scanning the crowd for a familiar face.

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