Social agencies and condos

At least one social agency purchase inexpensive condominiums units as housing for their clients.

This puts the condo corporations in a bind as they need to show empathy for the social agency's clients and yet at the same time consistently enforce the provisions of the Act, declaration, bylaws and rules.

This may not always be easy.

Mainstay Housing
Mainstay Housing is a non-profit agency that provides housing for consumer-survivors. (Consumer-survivors refers to people who have been institutionalized by the psychiatric system or treated by mental health staff in the community—a consumer of services or a survivor of the medical/mental health system.)

Mainstay grew out of a need to give people living with mental illness decent housing with attendant supports.

Mainstay rents are geared to incomes and are subsidized by the government. They are the single largest non-profit provider of supportive housing in Ontario with 867 units in 41 residential locations across Toronto.

Tenant issues
Mainstay purchased five units in YCC #42, an older condominium high-rise in Etobicoke. Their tenants have not always been ideal neighbours.

Here is excerpts of an e-mail from a condo owner who lives below one of their units:

“Over the past 20 years there have been many occupants in that unit and I have suffered a great deal because of them. It has definitely effected my health.

For many years I was not aware what was going on, only that there were so many disturbances where security or the police had to be called.

Then for a while all was peaceful upstairs until around 2009 when the problems started again. This individual was going around threatening people in our complex and the police was constantly taking him away.

This continued until sometime October 2010 when he was hospitalized and I was told by management that he would not be back.

Mainstay then placed two new occupants in the unit, they were very good. I could not have been happier until September 01, 2011 when there was so much noise coming from the unit. This lasted non-stop for over 24 hours.

When I finally called security to make a report, the phone was handed over to a police officer who told me that one of the occupants had died and that neighbours had called security and the police.

I never found out if the person was killed or died of natural causes, the other occupant was so upset and caused all the noise, the police had to break in the door in order to get into the unit.

Since then there have been a few other occupants, some who got evicted in December 2012 and now I am left with the current two.

I can tell you since April 13th I was getting water into my unit and the water continued to come into my unit from the ceiling almost daily for 41 days until May 23, 2013 when it was supposedly fixed by Mainstay.

But almost worse than the water have been all the disturbances that I have been subject too.

These two individuals are entertaining people, and from what I had been told, some of them used to hangout in our stairways to do drugs and drink but now they go to the Mainstay unit were they can do that in peace.

Security and the police have been there many times.

I have provided Management with written complaints for most of the occurrences.  Most of the time these so called parties last all night but get really noisy after 3:00 am when the security is gone. At times they even happen during the day.

The night of the shooting I was woken up by them at 3:26 am and the police has confirmed that that unit was connected to the shooting. (A man was shot in that apartment building in May 2013.)

Now just a few days later on Friday May 24, 2013 at 1:30 am they woke me up again, I waited for a while hoping the noise would stop and when it continued I asked security to check. Apparently the police went up with security and arrested two people.

Now I don't know how you would like it, living with all this going on all the time. There are some days where I only get one-two hours of sleep, and for the first time in the 30 plus years that I have lived here, I fear for the safety of my neighbours and myself.


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