Around 2009 scumbag real estate developer Nick Atalick and his wife Kelly Clarke bought the Leonard Hotel in downtown St Catharines. The Leonard was home to many low income people as it provided short term low barrier rentals. Nick and Kelly renovicted and displaced all the low income residents of the Leonard and built apartment suites for a higher income demographic.
Things have gotten worse for poor people downtown in the years since Nick and Kelly eliminated dozens of units of low income housing. Gentrification, skyrocketing housing costs, stagnant wages, and severely underfunded social services have made poor and working class people’s lives even more brutal, leading to increased homelessness, and a higher public visibility of drug use and mental health issues. But Nick’s hatred for the people suffering from poverty that he helped create has only grown more sadistic with time.
At a recent town hall for business owners, Nick encouraged the downtown business community to take vigilante action against street involved people with mental health and addiction issues. And a recent sign posted on the door of Nick’s building Carlisle Square (formerly The Leonard) Nick threatenes “trespassers” with physical violence. In a news article that followed the town hall, Nick argued against building affordable housing:
https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/opinion-story/8176209-familiar-name-disappears-from-downtown-st-catharines/
Then on the morning of December 7th, security from Carlisle Square was witnessed with a baton, chasing a vulnerable street person.
Nick Atalick’s real estate practices equate to violence, displacement, and dispossession toward low income people in downtown St Catharines. Nick’s classist rhetoric spreads fear and stigma about low income people, and promotes violence against us. And Nick’s thuggish security guards carry out actual physical violence against poor people in a neighborhood that used to be ours before he displaced us, simply because he is rich and we are poor.
Actions have consequences Nick. You’ve become rich by making us even more poor. So this little public information campaign is a small gesture of our hatred. We’re doubtful that you will be morally persuaded into being less of a classist gentrifier and violent shitlord, so we’re open to escalation and targeting your business in various other creative ways. Let this be a notice that your harmful business practices are well known to the community, and we are ready and willing to fight!