By Josh Hawley
Local Ottawa landlord Smart Living Properties has lost ownership of one of its newest developments, Dwell Hintonburg, only a year and a half after construction was completed. Dwell Hintonburg owner ECRE Smart Living, which owes almost $50 million in loans, property taxes and legal fees, was forced into receivership through an October 2024 Ontario Superior Court decision.
Receivership is a process used by creditors to secure their loans when a borrower is unable to repay. In this case, the judge issued a court order to appoint prominent accounting firm BDO Canada as the receiver to manage all of ECRE Smart Living’s assets.
ECRE Smart Living is owned by Tamer Abaza and Rakan Abushaar of Smart Living as well as two investors from Toronto, Cameron Hurst and Anna Tude. While this company is the sole owner on the property title for Dwell Hintonburg, the court order identifies an additional “three beneficial owners”: Smart Living Management Inc., SLH Hinton LP and ECRE Hinton Limited Partnership.
Smart Living Management and SLH Hinton are owned by Abaza and Abushaar. The Leveller was unable to find any information for ECRE Hinton Limited Partnership, other than it was incorporated in Manitoba.
Included in the tens of millions of dollars owed for Dwell Hintonburg, located at 84-96 Hinton Ave. N., is half a million dollars to the City of Ottawa.
According to the judge’s order, “the municipal property taxes on the Hinton Properties have not been paid since 2023. Cashflow statements indicated that income from June rents was used to pay property taxes. However, this is contradicted by the property tax statement from the City of Ottawa, which indicated a payment of less than $20.”
There is no indication of what happened to the June 2024 rental income or if more than $20 in property taxes have since been paid to the City. The Leveller emailed requests for comment to Abaza, Abushaar and Hurst but did not receive responses.
“How in the world could the City of Ottawa approve another development application involving the same investors who owe them half a million dollars?”
The City of Ottawa gave the go-ahead for another Smart Living development, at 112 and 134 Nelson St. in the Byward Market, in April 2024 while property taxes for Dwell Hintonburg were going unpaid. In December, two months after the receivership order, city planners and councillors greenlit another Smart Living development for a downtown property on Bank St. between Nepean St. and Lisgar St. The Leveller has covered the opposition to the mass eviction required for this development proposal. Under the banner of Bank Block Tenants, tenants living in the building slated for demolition have been organizing to protect their homes since Smart Living acquired the property in 2022.
Ironically, Smart Living has to provide a “Letter of Credit” to the City for the Bank St. building’s façade, which has heritage status. The letter of credit will establish the amount of financial compensation the landlord-developer will owe the City in the event the façade is damaged during demolition or construction.
Speaking to The Leveller, Ben Emond, a tenant at 227 Bank St. and a member of Bank Block Tenants, is appalled that the city approved Smart Living’s development application for his block.
“How in the world could the City of Ottawa approve another development application involving the same investors who owe them half a million dollars, especially knowing that in the process people would lose their affordable homes?” says Emond.
“When a city approves a development, is the financial viability of the developer considered at all?” Emond questioned. “What is to stop Tamer Abaza and Rakan Abushaar from doing the same thing with the new building that they did with the Hinton property?”
At the December 11, 2024 city council meeting, chair of the planning and housing committee Jeff Leiper defended his approval of Smart Living’s development application for Bank Block. Leiper gave a vacillating statement. “This is shitty all around,” Leiper said. “We don’t approve developments. Our committee’s role is to approve zoning.”
Leiper then affirmed his support for the development. “I don’t think there is any question in anyone’s mind that a nine-storey mixed-use building is the appropriate use of this site.”
Leiper has been the councillor for Kitchissippi Ward, where Dwell Hintonburg is located, since 2014 and was also on the planning committee in 2018 and 2020 when Smart Living submitted their development applications for the Hinton property.
In a 2020 revision to their original 2018 plans for 84-96 Hinton Ave. N., and only four days after receiving their final building permits, Smart Living argued to the City that Hintonburg needed more studio and one-bedroom units. They based this argument on census data, despite that very data showing 41% of neighbourhood units were one-bedrooms and only 10% were four-bedrooms. Their plans for Dwell Hintonburg would therefore scrap all two, three, and four-bedroom units, increasing the total number of units for this development from 85 to 134.
Construction started soon after, during which contractors hired by Smart Living violated their collective agreement with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America by hiring non-union workers for the construction of Dwell Hintonburg. The contractors were fined $136,396.
Before construction, Smart Living’s Hinton Ave. N. property was occupied by tenants living in subdivided single family houses. Abaza and Abushaar’s “repositioning” strategy (developing and renovating to increase the value of their properties) forces tenants out of their homes. Smart Living has faced backlash in recent years from groups of tenants at the centre of the landlord’s displacement campaigns, which could explain why the company is rebranding city-wide as Dwell, as recently reported by the Sandy Hill IMAGE newspaper.
Understanding the Dwell Hintonburg Finances
The Ontario Superior Court order and BDO Canada’s statement of receivership provide a rare glimpse into Smart Living’s ownership schemes. These records suggest that Smart Living owners Tamer Abaza and Rakan Abushaar create layers of holding companies and borrow from themselves.
According to BDO Canada, Abaza and Abushaar are owed a total of $6,456,715. This includes $2,714 to Abushaar personally, $11,825 to Takyan Consulting & Development Inc., another company owned by Abaza and Abushaar, and $6.44 million to Smart Living Management. The latter, which was incorporated on the same day as ECRE Smart Living, is also one of the three beneficial owners listed in the court order.
BDO Statement of Receivership.
Abaza and Abushaar have owned the properties at 84-96 Hinton Ave N. since at least 2014. In December 2018, Abaza and Abushaar entered into a partnership with a Toronto investment company, Equium Capital Real Estate (ECRE), acquiring the site for $4.8 million under the name ECRE Smart Living Hinton Inc. with the intent to build Dwell Hintonburg.
This partnership brought in three investors from Toronto: Cameron Hurst, Anna Tude and Adam Murl (Murl was removed as a director of ECRE Smart Living sometime between May 2024 and January 2025).
In May 2023, ECRE Smart Living borrowed $39 million from private real estate finance company Canada ICI Capital Corporation, which, per the terms of the loan, would be paid back in one year. By October 2024, ECRE Smart Living owed $41.4 million on this $39 million loan.
With Dwell Hintonburg’s 134 units renting at an average of $2,000 per month, it would take over 12 years to pay the $39 million loan back relying on rental income alone. However, by leveraging the property value increase, landlords like ECRE and Smart Living profit by including their assets in private equity funds.
A December 2018 press release from Cameron Hurst of ECRE celebrated the partnership with Smart Living as “a significant milestone.” The new development, soon to be known as Dwell Hintonburg, would be worthy of inclusion in an institutional investor’s investment fund, Hurst wrote. Examples of institutional investors are pension funds, banks, and real estate investment trusts.
Tenants who live at properties owned by Smart Living, now known city-wide as Dwell (ironically after losing control of the property that launched the Dwell brand), are targeted to be the casualties of these financial strategies. But groups like Bank Block Tenants are showing that when challenged, these landlords can be pushed to their limits in an effort to get them to abandon their plans.
