Posted by: 551 Riverdale Tenant Association
By the 551 Riverdale Tenant Association
When you look out your window, are you able to see your neighbours? Canadian-American writer and urban activist Jane Jacobs suggested that this quality of “eyes upon the street” was key to understanding what made city neighbourhoods like ours thrive.
We’ve been thinking about this a lot, ever since we were told of plans to demolish our townhouse community at 551 Riverdale Avenue. More than 20 households in your community now face demoviction.
Jacobs was writing at a time of persistent shortages of affordable housing. In the 1950s and 1960s, city administrations were demolishing entire blocks to make way for highways and large housing developments. Instead of building housing that turned its back on street life, Jacobs argued that urban planning should start with the needs and experiences of the people whose lives are interwoven with the complex fabric of cities. Modernist planning, she believed, reduced diverse communities to abstract blocks that could be cleared and rebuilt.
It’s important to note that Jacobs’ ideas have also been criticized for giving insufficient attention to racial and other systemic inequalities and placing too much faith in informal community surveillance. But her central challenge remains powerful: the first step for any planner should be to pay attention to the people who actually live in a neighbourhood. How do they play, work and enjoy life together?
To that end, Jacobs advocated for dense, mixed-use development and walkable streets, with the “eyes upon the street” of neighbours helping to create safety and care.
And if that sounds familiar, it’s because these are the qualities we all value about Old Ottawa South.
You know where 551 Riverdale is: it’s likely on your walking route to Windsor Park. You’ve walked your dogs past the tenant-created gardens, and your kids might have gone to daycare here (we host two). You might have picked apples from our trees. You have probably admired the gardens on the dike and wondered: what’s it like to live there?
A few days ago, we had dinner together in the courtyard of 551 Riverdale and played a game: with each bite, we looked at a window. Jane Jacobs would have approved of the view.
From below, each window was a distorted rectangle of yellow light: ceiling above the drapery, the edge of a lamp or picture. Mind you, Jane wasn’t proposing you spy on your neighbours – she was saying that neighbourhoods thrive when our city spaces support neighbours who are aware of and care about each other.
In that moment, each window represented an individual in our collectivity. Catherine was bartending on Elgin Street, listening to stories about life in the city. Kevin was sitting with their guitar, composing songs for a radio musical. Sue’s window was dark and her Opus bike gone; she would return from her hospital shift long after everyone was asleep. And after the last child had left her home daycare, Brenda was tending to her garden.
Window after window brought a story, rich with decades of memories of people sharing a life together. This is community: our fundamental human need to exist and remember in and as a collectivity. And at 551 Riverdale, we are about to lose it.
JSS Riverdale Holdings Inc., which has owned the site since the early 1970s, has submitted Zoning By-law Amendment and Site Plan Control applications. It proposes to demolish four blocks containing 23 rental townhouses and replace them with a four-storey, 92-unit rental apartment building. The application records meetings with City and conservation-authority staff, the Old Ottawa South Community Association and the Councillor’s office, but does not record consultation with the tenants whose homes would be demolished.
In written responses to tenants, the landlords estimated that residents may have to leave in spring 2027. They said that they plan to offer residents the right of first refusal after construction, but no terms have yet been provided, and rents would be set by the market at completion.
551 Riverdale is an affordable, multi-income, multigenerational community: older adults, children, disabled, queer and trans neighbours; health-care and service workers; students, artists, musicians and volunteers. Among us is Olympic gold medallist Linda Thom, who faces eviction from the community beside the park bearing her name. Our two home daycares serving at least ten local families could also disappear, taking their owners’ livelihoods with them.
In Old Ottawa South, detached home prices average about $1.2 million and a three-bedroom rental can cost about $3,500 a month. So many of the neighbours we care about and who make our lives better, cannot afford to stay. Our displacement will ripple outward to all the places our neighbours are supporting: churches, playgroups, the Accessible Circle Garden at Brewer Park, and other quiet networks of mutual care.
This is not an argument against new housing. The proposal would add 69 units to our neighbourhood, and compact housing near transit is necessary in a climate crisis. But when landlords prioritize density over affordability, here’s what happens: while it increases housing availability, it radically reduces who can live here. The planning documents contain no affordable-rent commitment and no promise of comparable replacements for family-sized townhouses with gardens. 53 trees, shrubs, and hedges would be removed. Demolition would also discard inhabited and useful buildings, together with the material and embodied carbon already invested in them.
What can you do? Search the City’s Development Applications portal for D02-02-26-0066 and D07-12-26-0092 and submit a comment. Write Councillor Shawn Menard at capitalward@ottawa.ca. Contact the 551 Riverdale Tenant Association at 551tenants@gmail.com. Follow our events and tell others what is at stake: you are about to lose a trusted part of your neighbourhood.
We are not asking Old Ottawa South to remain frozen in time. We are asking whether new housing here must begin with the destruction of affordable housing and the dispersal of a living community.
We are asking JSS Riverdale Holdings to withdraw the applications and work with tenants, public agencies and non-profit housing partners. Together, we could explore repair, careful infill, and a cooperative future that adds homes without erasing the thriving community already here. We can do better than the 1950s “tear it all down” approach that Jane Jacobs was arguing against.
Because the point of a neighbourhood is not simply the number of homes it contains. What makes Old Ottawa South a thriving neighbourhood is the people who live in those homes and the web of recognition and care that grows with that everyday connection.
The 551 Riverdale Tenants Association was formed in September 2026 to support tenants.
Featured in the October 2026 OSCAR.