By Rajpreet Sidhu and Will Gladman on behalf of the Vancouver Tenants Union
The Vancouver Tenants Union’s (VTU) office is hard to find. It’s tucked away in a small corner on the second floor of a repurposed Chinatown mall, now bustling with non-profits and artists.
The Sun Wah Centre is secured 24/7 behind a towering metal gate. Yet somehow the VTU still gets its fair share of unwanted visitors. In November 2025, local landlord Andrzej Kowalski found his way to the VTU office to quietly serve a yellow file folder under the door. It contained a Small Claims Court claim for $35,000.
According to the lawsuit, the VTU’s alleged efforts to organize Kowalski’s tenants have caused him significant psychological distress and sleepless nights. The charges, he claims, warrant this sizable sum in damages.
Kowalski and the VTU have a long, complicated relationship. In 2022, Kowalski tried to evict all tenants in his building at 1171-1177 East 14th Avenue in East Vancouver. Tenants fought back against his plan to convert the building’s seven rental apartments into four privately owned condos. After a year of organizing by the 1177 Tenants Collective, Kowalski eventually lost the fight. Not finished, Kowalski came back the following year to try to evict Terry McIntosh, a long term tenant of 26 years and beloved local botanist. Kowalski claimed that the building needed a permanent caretaker to live in Terry’s home, but he lost once again after a hearing at the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB).
Now, Kowalski is suing the VTU. The $35,000 claim is a lot – it's an intimidating amount by design and the maximum amount one can claim in small claims court. Kowalski is using an increasingly common litigious landlord move: ambush tenants with flimsy lawsuits to scare and silence us. To tenant unions, these attacks are a sign that our organizing is working – but our organizing can only continue if we meet the legal challenges as a united front.
Not an isolated incident: Landlords are suing tenants across Canada
Retaliatory legal action has become an increasingly common tactic across Canada, employed by landlords frustrated by the successes of organized tenants.
In Toronto, Anne DeMelo, a landlord and local business owner, sued a group of tenants for defamation for protesting to improve their living conditions in 2024. That same year, Montreal corporate landlord Ian Cucurull also successfully sued the Montreal Autonomous Tenants' Union (MATU).
Cucurull’s lawsuit resulted in the Supreme Court of Quebec issuing an injunction preventing MATU members from speaking publicly or posting on social media in ways that might suggest Cucurull or his mother are “violent or threatening” (translated from French).
Court documents discuss an incident on site during a tenant-led protest at his office. Cucurull asked his mother to get him an – allegedly nonexistent – firearm, a threat which saw tenants back up enough for him to lock them out.
A 2024 CBC investigation describes landlord litigation as a growing threat.
"I have never seen that before," Toronto lawyer Danika So told CBC. "It's definitely an escalation in the tools that landlords have at their disposal to try and stop tenants from engaging in their expressive rights."
Here in Vancouver, landlords have been ramping up their legal threats over the past few years. Before Kowalski, the VTU faced down similar threats from infamous local landlord Anoop Majithia. Majithia’s firm Plan A Real Estate Ltd. has a notorious reputation for illegally evicting tenants, making false claims on leases, and conducting various other rental scams. In 2024, Majithia unsuccessfully sued the Park Beach Tenants Collective for defamation, after posters likening him to a bug and depicting him with devil horns appeared around Vancouver’s West End.
Majithia’s wife and business partner, Dr. Sharlene Gill, an oncology professor at the University of British Columbia, later made her own legal threats against the VTU, after autonomous supporters protested an event she attended in Montreal. These legal threats, too, were frivolous and went nowhere.
From DeMelo to Kowalski, the common feature of these petty lawsuits is that each was a direct response to successful tenant organizing.
These lawsuits also largely failed because they were based on flimsy arguments. In Vancouver, no landlord lawsuits against tenant organizers have succeeded. Their purpose is to rattle tenants and to drag us into expensive, drawn out fights in hopes of demobilizing our organizing efforts.
However, in our experience, lawsuits often bring tenants closer together and strengthen their drive to organize.
Teaching Landlords a Lesson
In response to Kowalski’s lawsuit, the VTU has launched the Teach Landlords a Lesson campaign. The campaign aims to defend the union from intensifying landlord threats and harassment, and to teach tenants across the city how to go on the offensive against their landlords and the real estate developers.
One aim of the campaign is to connect with more tenants that want to organize with their neighbours, strengthening the union’s nine active neighbourhood chapters. The latest battle with Kowalski has become a flashpoint which tenants have rallied around.
Another major element of the campaign is fundraising. The union relies almost exclusively on donations and member dues. Funds are spent sparingly on maintaining the union’s office, running organizing campaigns, and developing and distributing a range of educational materials. With an annual budget of around $20,000, a loss of $35,000 to Kowalski’s lawsuit would be a devastating blow.
VTU is cautiously optimistic about its chances of beating Kowalski’s lawsuit, but there is no certainty in litigation. Even if this lawsuit fails, the next legal challenge from the next disgruntled landlord could carry more risk. Insulating itself from these financial risks has become a very real priority for the VTU.
So, the VTU is fundraising – through events that build community and tenant power. So far, the campaign has raised over $20,000.
The campaign has hosted two sold-out, standing room only Landlords are a Joke comedy nights and a successful screenprinting party, where member-submitted designs were printed on sweaters, bags and more. There will be many more events to come!
And of course, we can’t forget about Kowalski. The campaign will serve as a continuous reminder that tenants have power and will use it. We will not tolerate landlords using a biased court system to bully us into submission. And while the VTU defends itself in court, we will fight the likes of Kowalski in the streets, in our buildings, and in our neighbourhoods right across the city.
Donation link: https://www.teachlandlordsalesson.ca/
