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.”
top contents
chapter previous next