Weston apartment building rescinds order of eviction
Decision made after pressure from public, tenants group, Star story
Glenn Henderson had already started to pack up his longtime apartment. The 63-year-old took pictures down from the walls and packed away knickknacks. His clothes went into a wardrobe box, and his kids helped clear out more than a decade of miscellaneous belongings.
But those boxes can now be unpacked — and Henderson can breathe a sigh of relief.
He and his neighbours in a Weston-area apartment had been asked to leave their homes by Dec. 31, as part of the renovation plans by new owners of their building. Henderson said those notices are now being rescinded.
The decision — confirmed by Ryan Dolan, senior manager of real estate investments for 3Gen Development Group Inc. — comes on the heels of public pressure from residents, a local tenants association and others to rescind the notices, and a Star story this month.
“I was just sort of preparing for the worst, and hoping for the best,” Henderson said.
Leaving the Weston building would mean losing an affordable place to live, and easy access to two key routes in his life — one to his job, another to his grandkids. He said he wasn’t against the renovations, but didn’t want to leave his apartment for them to happen.
Neighbour Thamina Hunt, 63, struggled with the idea of leaving the home where she’d spent 17 years. She said she’d always paid her roughly $1,000 in rent on time, even after losing her job temporarily during COVID-19. Her search for a similarly affordable place had been fruitless.
Weeks ago, Dolan said his company wasn’t trying to renovate an already above-standard building, but upgrade a ’50s-era apartment’s plumbing and electrical systems, and remove asbestos.
Despite the formal notices, Dolan said Dec. 31 wasn’t a hard deadline. Several residents had already moved out, and 3Gen aimed to find “comfortable” solutions with the rest. By the time it decided to rescind the notices, just three of the units were still occupied.
Henderson was skeptical at first, and asked that Dolan put the pledge in writing, which he later did. But Hunt was over the moon: “I feel like a 1,000-pound weight on my shoulders is gone.”
Both said Dolan offered to arrange hotel rooms if the renovations required their units to be empty. Dolan declined to confirm that specifically, saying he did offer to try to accommodate tenants in the case of “severe disruption,” but that right now, his company didn’t have enough information to confirm specifics about its renovation plan and timeline.
“Their safety and their wellbeing is ultimately what we’re striving for, and that’s what we think happened here,” he said.
Both Hunt and Henderson expressed gratitude for the support they received in recent weeks; without it, Henderson doesn’t believe their case would have reached the same conclusion.
Housing advocate Philip Zigman said while the Weston case had a positive outcome, it also highlighted a gap in how information is collected about tenants displaced for renovations. They were given N13 notices — which tell renters that their landlord wants to end a tenancy for demolitions, repairs or renovations — but those weren’t followed by L2s, which are eviction applications on those grounds to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB).
As previously reported by the Star, LTB data shows a 149 per cent increase in Toronto landlords applying to evict for renovations between 2015 and the end of 2018. But Scott Leon, a researcher at the Wellesley Institute whose work has focused on evictions, said the LTB’s data would only include cases where an L2 application was filed in addition to the N13.
“The province, the city, they have no idea how big of a problem this is,” Zigman said.