Tenant wants answers after pipe bursts in apartment
It’s mid-morning on Valentine’s Day and Marie Trudel is sitting on a recliner, wrapped in a Red Cross blanket, tight as a sardine in a friend’s apartment, wondering when she’ll ever get home.
Romance, we safely say, is not in the air.
Trouble arrived Jan. 29, at about 8:30 a.m., when she heard a loud pop in her bedroom — the upstairs neighbour thought it was a gun going off — and hot, black, slimy water started to gush from the radiator.
Within seconds, water was beginning to pool on the floor.
“We couldn’t even see in the apartment after five minutes, the steam was so bad.”
With the help of her caregiver, Brian O’Callahan, 57, she made it to her electric scooter while they called Ottawa Community Housing, which owns McAuley Place, an 11-storey, 126-unit building on Laurier Avenue at Lyon Street.
Within minutes, an OCH staffer was on scene, as was the fire department. But the damage was done. There was a black residue all over the tiles, and water had spilled as far as the hallway, damaging as many as 15 units.
Now what? She’s surviving with a monthly income from the Ontario Disability Support Program and living with a serious joint condition that limits her mobility, with no local family member who can accommodate the scooter. (From one room to another is about the extent of her walking range.)
Trudel says she was put up in a hotel for three days by the Red Cross, during which time she made an alarming discovery. She says an OCH worker accused her of causing the “explosion” by leaving a window open on a frigid night, causing a pipe to freeze and burst in her fifth-floor unit, for which she pays $109 a month.
It is an allegation she strongly denies, given the temperature dropped to –20 that night.
“It was freezing. Why would I open my window?”
(The pipe is probably two feet below the window. It does seem implausible that a pipe containing hot water could freeze that far below the cold source, but OCH says this is the contention of the Ottawa Fire Service.)
Trudel spent the three days wondering where she would go. She said OCH did not offer any alternative accommodation.
“They told me that I’m now on my own.”
Although she lived in the one-bedroom unit less than a year, she was lucky enough to find a friend who would take her in on the first floor. So down came her bed, her recliner, her sleep apnea machine, two cats, Loki and Mystie, and a handful of personal possessions. Her unit has been dried out, but no repair work is underway, which leaves Trudel in a state of frustration, 16 days later.
“I don’t get answers. It’s the middle of winter. I paid my rent. This is my home. I should be able to use it.”
Ottawa Community Housing is the city’s largest landlord — with 32,000 tenants in 15,000 homes — that worries about bricks and mortar and hearts and minds. (The social, health outreach is considerable.)
And, yes, things go wrong, unexpected events that require nimble, large-scale responses, like a fire on Donald Street in December that forced the temporary rehousing of hundreds of tenants, in 250 units, on short notice.
Repairs, upgrades and maintenance are an ongoing preoccupation when the average age of the housing stock is about 45 years. In 2009, an assessment put the cost of “deferred maintenance” at $333 million. By 2016, that figure had been cut to $140 million.
OCH was unable to answer specific questions about Trudel’s plight. It did say it considers all 15 damaged units, including Trudel’s, to be “livable,” which seems a stretch.
“I can, however, confirm that when a tenant (or household) needs to be rehoused due to significant repairs following an incident such as a fire, OCH provides support as needed,” wrote spokesperson Melany Chretien. She said the corporation would never leave a displaced tenant out in the cold.
Private insurance, which Trudel does not have, can also help to cover the costs of property loss or temporary relocation.
“OCH staff approach each situation on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, when there is a need to relocate, we also find that a tenant may need further support or care (hoarding, pest, or other high needs identified and that were not reported). In these circumstances, we also work with a variety of service providers and partners, etc. …”
Well. There are general, well-meaning policies, but all suffering is individualized, isn’t it? Mostly, Trudel feels ignored.
“I just want Ottawa Housing to realize that they can’t screw around with people’s lives like this.”