Stop voting for the illegal world you don’t want! A history lesson on the legalization of consumable alcohol, speakeasies and rooming houses
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - Georges Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1906 Think for a second what it means to be a tenant living in premises that municipal bylaws hold to be illegal. You have no rights and you have no voice because – according to law – you shouldn’t be living there in the first place. This is the way that some rooming house operators profit from illegality. And for some Toronto City Councillors, that’s where the issue ends. When they vote to keep rooming houses illegal, they are voting for tenants to live illegally. But there is much we can learn from past examples of illegal real estate. Like speakeasies during the Prohibition era in Canada, rooming houses (multi-tenant accommodation) share a common…