RENTERS WON’T GO DESPITE DAMAGE
Tenants of a Keele St. house have returned following a fire, even though landlord warns the home is uninhabitable
Deborah Savage is standing in her apartment more than three weeks after a fire at the house, looking up at a hole cut in the wall of her living room and waiting for police to walk through the door.
The sun will set in a few hours and already frigid temperatures will plunge to extreme lows. There is no central heat in her one-bedroom unit — or in any of the five units spread throughout the red-brick, three-storey house — and any electrical power comes from cords plugged into outlets in the second-floor hallway. Disconnected pipes in her bathroom mean flooding if her water is turned back on.
Her landlord says he does not want her in there, but, she told the Star, she fears losing her home.
Savage, 47, along with a number of tenants of the Junction house, returned to stay in the building after being displaced by a small fire the first week in January. They’d been staying at a hotel, paid for by an emergency city fund, but a fear of being permanently evicted in a city with a severe shortage of afford- able housing has led them to return, effectively occupying their former units without the landlord’s consent.
“We are taking back our place,” said Savage, who was allowed into her apartment by the landlord the day after the fire to pick up necessities. “Homelessness is a big problem in Toronto ... we can’t be put out on the street because the landlord decides to renovate,” said Savage. “It’s the middle of winter.”
Landlord David Chun alleges the tenants broke in after refusing to accept that fire damage and issues identified through subsequent inspections mean the house is unsafe. “There are rules and laws and we are doing everything exactly by the law,” said Chun last week.
If there was a way to get them back in he would, he said.
“The police department, the fire department, the fire inspector, the insurance company, the contractor, me the owner, the city and anybody who has been there,” said Chun, when asked who deemed the house unsafe.
But Savage, who, like most of her neighbours, lives on a low and fixed income, said some would rather live in the home that is now full of holes and partially void of heat and water, than be thrown into Toronto’s rental market, which they say they’ve been priced out of.
Savage pays $650 a month and hydro is included. The average market rent for a one-bedroom unit in a purpose-built rental building in the GTA is about $1,260, according to data published by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Those figures are based largely on occupied apartments and landlords can charge what they want for empty units.
The rest of the tenants are also paying well-below average market rent.
The hole in Savage’s unit was where a strip of drywall had been cut out to expose electrical wiring and wooden studs.
“They took this off after the fire, I guess, to check for damage in my bedroom and that’s it,” Savage said on Tuesday. One of the tenants told the landlord they were back in, she said, not- ing she expected he had called the police.
Chun, who signs emails John David Chun, is known to tenants as David Chun.
Savage said they weren’t able to get written proof from the city or landlord that the attic fire meant nobody could come home.
Whether the tenants can stay or will be told to go could be determined at the Landlord and Tenant Board on Tuesday.
The tenants were able to arrange an emergency hearing Friday, where their lawyer argued they were entitled to possession and the landlord should restore full power. The landlord’s lawyer argued that the fire and problems found during inspections meant the house was unsafe and he has no choice but to keep them out until the house is fixed.
The board adjudicator said he felt it was best to hold off on a decision until a forthcoming city report could be submitted for everybody’s review.
The fire in the attic of the Keele St. house broke out on Jan. 7 and 10 people were evacuated from five units, including the resident of the attic who has not returned.
Heather Mackay-Lams, 36, who lives in the basement, says she didn’t know anything was wrong until people knocked on her door that morning. “I was in my pyjamas, grabbed the cat ... we all figured we would be back in five minutes.”
They were sheltered in a TTC bus then sent to a Howard Johnson Inn. The landlord changed the front door and two back locks the next day, they said, and told them renovations and electrical work were needed and they must collect their things.
The city office covering the cost of the hotel said their stay can be extended and no firm date had been set for them to leave.
The tenants got back in, in stages. First-floor resident John Demetriades, whose door is at the back of the house, got a locksmith to let him in more than a week ago. His insulin was inside, he said. Mackay-Lams got in through a window, something she had done a couple times since the fire. Demetriades, 60, was checking the mail on Tuesday and found the front door unlocked.
So the decision was made to stay in rotating shifts — returning to the inn to shower and eat — to make sure they were not locked out of the house again.
The house has not had central heating since Savage initially moved in. Four tenants told the Star they always used space heaters and blankets.
Savage said Chun has helped them in the past by not raising rent, and during a major ice storm that knocked out the power, he provided generators so they could stay.
On Tuesday, the residents say they found space heaters on the second floor and attic and one in the basement that provided some heat. When Clinton Reynolds, 37, returned, he also found cardboard boxes and furniture pulled from the attic in his living room. And in his ceiling, there was a gaping hole exposing the upstairs floorboards.
The police did come by briefly the next day, after being called by the landlord, but left after speaking with Chun’s son and the tenants.
Chun has been ordered to arrange and pay for an inspection by the Electrical Safety Authority, after the provincial body found Chun or an employee “have done electrical wiring” without first arranging for an inspection. He was also ordered to fix any defects by Jan. 23, based on a notice dated Jan. 9. A second notice warned that failure to comply is a provincial offence and a conviction could mean a fine of up to $50,000. Copies were provided by the ESA to the Star, for a fee.
On Friday, an inspector with Toronto Building visited the house and taped an “order to remedy unsafe building” to the front door. Chun must “prohibit the use or occupancy” of the attic apartment, hire an engineer to inspect the building, submit a damage report to the city, make sure urgent repair issues are addressed and obtain permits for all future work, according to that notice.
Prior to that, nobody from the city, including Toronto fire and Toronto Building, had issued an order to shut the building down, according to Mark Sraga, director, investigation services, municipal licensing and standards. The power was shut down and doors locked, he said, after tradespeople brought in by the landlord found problems in the house. “It is not that the city has issued any orders directing this, but the building owner knowing the requirements has acted proactively,” he said.
Deputy fire Chief Jim Jessop told the Star that the property was returned to Chun the day of the fire and “minor deficiencies” were later found in other apartments but no order was issued to evacuate the building.
Chun told the Star he has been a landlord for two decades and provides many people with affordable housing. He owns at least seven properties.
He said he has terminal brain cancer, that conversations are difficult and stress could devastate his fragile health. Some of the tenants, he said, have been harassing him. Everything he has done has been above board and legal, he told the Star.
When first contacted, Chun suggested his son could provide a tour of the Keele St. property — to show the extent of the damage — but rescinded in a text message saying the city was in possession of an engineer’s report that proved the property was uninhabitable.
He did not respond to a request to review that report or questions about prior inspections, heating issues and what tenants were told about the work.
“Stop harassing me because you don’t want to get the Star in hot water,” Chun said.
By Sunday, Savage had run a power cord through a hole in her floor to Demetriades’s apartment so he could run a heater. The water was still off.
Reynolds was so stressed he said that if Chun gave him back first and last months’ rent, covered damages and moving costs, he’d leave.
Mackay-Lams found out Sunday morning that her basement unit had flooded.
“I don’t know if I am coming or going anymore,” she said. “I feel like the lunatics are running the asylum. I have no idea what is going on.”