Tenants at the Lamoreaux Gardens apartment complex in Hamilton, Ontario, created a zine to document ongoing maintenance issues within their building [1].
The project represents a shift toward creative activism, using art to create a permanent record of grievances that residents say have gone unaddressed by management.
Led by artist Sonali Menezes, the tenant association produced the publication titled ‘Welcome to Lamoreaux Gardens’ [1]. The zine serves as a collective archive of the living conditions faced by the residents, transforming individual complaints into a shared community narrative.
By documenting the failures of the complex, the association aims to raise awareness and put pressure on the property owners to implement necessary repairs [1]. The medium allows tenants to present evidence of their environment in a format that is easily shared and distributed.
“We wanted to create something that would really highlight the issues we were facing,” Menezes said [1].
The initiative highlights the frustration of renters who feel that traditional channels of communication with landlords are ineffective. By organizing into a formal association and utilizing artistic expression, the residents are attempting to reclaim agency over their housing situation, a move that documents their struggle for basic habitability.
Lamoreaux Gardens residents continue to use the zine as a tool for advocacy, ensuring that the physical state of the complex is recorded and publicized [1].
““We wanted to create something that would really highlight the issues we were facing,””
This effort demonstrates the use of 'artivism' to address systemic housing failures. By shifting from private complaints to a public, documented zine, the tenants are creating a social record that can be used for collective bargaining or legal evidence, bypassing the typical power imbalance between corporate landlords and individual renters.
