Tenants unite to halt building’s decline
It was once Oshawa’s ‘mini-palace.’ Today, it’s plagued by crime and fires, and residents have had enough
Leaking roofs, peeling paint and cockroach infestations are only the start of it. There has been a SWAT team bust of a grow-op, a pool of blood left in the staircase by a fleeing thief, and 28 water cutoffs in one year, all in this single south Oshawa apartment building, tenants say. Then there are the fires. In the past year, three fires have broken out at 275 Wentworth St. E. Tenants blame faulty wiring and poor maintenance; the Oshawa Fire Department says at least one was set intentionally.
“There’s non-stop crap in this building, and we still pay high rent.” TERRY GLOVER RESIDENT OF 275 WENTWORTH ST. E., OSHAWA
“There’s non-stop crap in this building,” said resident Terry Glover, “and we still pay high rent.”
But it hasn’t always been this way. Six years ago, tenants described the building as a “mini palace.”
“They had a fountain out front. You could eat off the floors,” said resident Janice Parker.
Parker says she was forced out of her apartment after the most recent fire last month and hasn’t been able to return. On a recent drizzly afternoon, Parker stood in the parking lot, looking up at her unit’s blackened windows, when a group of neighbours came over to comfort her. Among them was Raymond Fortune, who banded together with a group of other tenants recently to form a tenants’ association — one of Oshawa’s first — and says demanding your rights is the only way to improve your living conditions.
Anna Prokop is general manager at the building’s landlord, Rose Garden Apartments Inc, who told the Star she speaks on behalf of the owner. She says she has upgraded the firealarm system since the fires, as well as the roof and hallways this year, all without raising rent above guideline.
To combat criminality and drugs, she says she has made a deal granting Peel police 24-hour access to the building. Prokop explained at length the difficulties of running a low-income building to the Star, saying her ability to do repairs was constrained by the large number of people behind on their rent and the fact that many won’t give her access to their units for repairs and pest control.
“Every penny that comes in is being put back, plus more,” she told the Star. “If the tenants aren’t happy, they can take me to the Landlord and Tenant Board.”
The Wentworth apartment building is known at Oshawa City Hall, where 162 complaints were filed in the past five years, the majority for substandard property conditions, said Jerry Conlin, the city’s director of municipal law and enforcement.
Tenants’ association members took the Star on a tour of the building recently, pointing out the dead cockroaches in the hallway lights, floors that had been torn up but never replaced and long-neglected repairs that they say were finally completed after the association was formed.
Fortune, who has been studying landlord and tenant law as well as city bylaws, says tenants who know the landlords’ obligations are more likely to get repairs done.
He says a neighbour whose peeling floor was left unrepaired for months was astonished Fortune was able to get his own floor fixed, weeks after having a city bylaw officer come in.
“He asked: ‘How did you get it done?’ I told him: ‘Follow the process.’ ”
Oshawa Councillor Amy England has taken notice of the group’s work and wants to get similar associations started in other aging apartment buildings. “We’re starting here and moving to the building across the road, empowering renters,” she said. “Eventually, we’d like to start a citywide association, like Toronto.”
Oshawa has rental stock mostly built in the ’60s and ’70s, England said, and these aging buildings are rife with maintenance problems. Newer rental buildings are typically targeted to specific groups: seniors, aboriginal people and students. People who don’t fall into such categories have few rental options.
“Toronto has a big housing problem. Suburbia has the same problem, but no one’s talking about it,” said England, who has helped draft and print 21,000 “know your rights” flyers that will be mailed to every apartment building unit in the city.
“We haven’t had very many complaints, because I don’t think tenants are really aware of the rules,” she said. “This is only the beginning.”