Next Meeting Sept. 19 + Cooling Motion Update

Reminder: Our next public meeting is Tuesday September 19th at 6:30pm in the basement of the New Westminster Public Library (Uptown Branch, 716 Sixth Ave, New Westminster).

We will be providing updates on work the NWTU has been doing this month, and continuing working committees on the No Fault Eviction Campaign, and exploring ideas and opportunities for Mutual Aid Projects in our community.

For both of these projects, the more perspectives, community connections, and people-power we have the bigger the impact, so if you have time to make it out we would love to see you there!

Two weeks ago we had an amazing group of folks come out to speak to the New Westminster City Counsellors and Mayor in support of City Hall developing a rental unit cooling bylaw. In the same way landlords must keep their units warm and habitable in the winter, this bylaw would require landlords to keep at least one room in apartments below 26 degrees celcius in the summer.

Shelly, Andrew, Margaret, and Jessica shared the impact that rising temperatures and overheated rental units have had on their lives and the lives of their neighbours. Brook shared the results of our survey of our members about the cooling by-law, including powerful stories from folks who were unable to come to the council meeting. Everyone attended the meeting for four hours to witness the decision city council would make, and eventually the motion to start preparing the by-law was passed unanimously.

If you would like to view the video recording of the cooling by-law portion of the council meeting, you can do so here:

The results of the NWTU survey were also shared in the bind newsletter which can be viewed here:

Should landlords be responsible for cooling in their buildings?

A survey by the New West Tenants Union, presented recently to city council, showed strong support by tenants

the bindthe bind

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to speak and stayed to apply pressure to city council to do what is right for renters in this city! When we work together our voices are heard, and it made the difference here.