‘IT’S A LIVING HELL’
Sheldon Tarry, who lives in a rented house on Idylwyld Drive, says he has been threatened with eviction because squatters downstairs are trashing the property. He says the situation has gotten so bad, he stays up at night with a two-by-four at the ready.
Sheldon Tarry says he spends every night awake, sitting in a chair in his kitchen with a two-by-four piece of lumber in his hands, waiting for someone to break into his home again.
He’s too afraid to sleep after his house has been repeatedly vandalized, broken into, and robbed, the 50-year-old said in an interview on Friday.
“It’s a living hell,” he said. “I fight the same battle as everybody else here ... and we’re the ones getting called names and everything else.”
Tarry reached out to reporters after a recent article in the StarPhoenix regarding criminal issues around his home. He shares the legal suite on the main floor of the Idylwyld Drive house with his wife-to-be, Denise Addy, and another friend. Since he started living there in early April, he’s called the police “at least 15 times” about the people in the basement, he said, adding they’ve broken windows and stolen food out of their fridge multiple times in the past.
“We’ve been asking for help,” Tarry said.
According to a notice from the City of Saskatoon, inspectors deemed the basement suite illegal in March. Despite police having arrested people from the suite before, they keep coming back — and it’s getting worse, Tarry said.
“There was a gunshot, around two o’clock in the morning,” he said of a recent incident. “You’re damn right I feel threatened. And now I’m being evicted because of this.”
Tarry said he and the other legal tenants from the main floor will be forced to leave by the end of the month because of the actions of the “squatters” in the basement. Their landlady, who speaks very little English, has been trying to help them stay after mistakenly signing an eviction notice she couldn’t fully understand, he said.
“We’re labelled as a drug house, and drug dealers. We’re affected for the people downstairs ... and we’re the ones who got screwed.”
Tarry said he moved into the house in April in order to protect his future wife. He has his own troubles — he said he’s suffering from cancer, and his legs are covered with lesions from HIV. Despite being in what he calls palliative care and using a cane to get around due to his damaged legs, he has to defend his home, he said.
“If they come in, I’ve gotta protect my wife, I’ve gotta protect my life.”
Moving out is not an easy prospect. Tarry said he and his girlfriend make money by breeding and raising dogs. They have five of them, and finding a rental home that allows so many is a struggle.
Until they are forced to leave at the end of the month, he feels “worn out, tired, and exhausted” — and backed into a corner.
“What am I supposed to do — be a vigilante and take them on at night? Then I go to jail.
“If the gangs don’t get me, the cops will.”