About 20 people are now homeless after the fire marshal condemned a pension in downtown Brockville, Ontario.
Displaced residents are now working with local agencies to secure alternative housing in a city with low vacancy rates. They have spent three nights away from home for those who lived in the building.
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“They are upset, angry, hurt, scared. Winter is coming, ”said Shirley Cain, who has been helping the homeless population in downtown Brockville for more than a year.
“It’s going to be cold. They will live on the street and sleep here. “
Cain says the need increased late last week after the fire marshal condemned a pension on King Street West.
“Nobody found out about anything,” said Elnora Miller, a friend of a displaced resident.
“It just came in on Friday afternoon. I got a call saying the building was being condemned. He was worried about an older resident there with a cat.
“So now they are all in motels.”
According to the notices found in the building, the fire marshal closed the residence due to careless smoking around combustible materials and the illegal construction of additional rooms. The owner of the building says she understands there were security concerns, but things got out of her control.
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“The smoke alarm detector, they remove it without permission, without telling me they remove the battery,” said Tang Viengkhone, the owner of the building.
“They keep repeating, they continue, they continue. I can’t … fix them. I can’t trust them anymore. “
Leeds and Grenville Community and Social Services are working with more than a dozen people to find alternative housing.
“In a couple of cases, they had friends or family that they could turn to in order to go to their location for the weekend, either short term or long term,” said Alison Tutak, Director of Community and Social Services with Leeds and Grenville.
“And we had other people who didn’t have any options available to them, so in those cases we looked at local hotel options.”
Officials say finding affordable long-term solutions can take time. Meanwhile, the building’s owner says that while she’s working with the city to make the building code compliant, she doesn’t plan to reopen to displaced tenants.
© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Reference-globalnews.ca
First, the owner should be heavily fined, sending message that this type of slum will not be tolerated in Brockville. This gives good landlords a bad name. Second, only so much aid should be given to the displaced people, they obviously did not take care of the place, and helped make it dangerous, the flamable materials and carelessly put out cigarettes were not put there by landlord. According to the news release, there were at least 20 “tenants”, imagine if they got together, and pooled $500 / month each, that’s $10,000 / month towards housing. The costs of putting them in hotels, and food vouchers, and whatever else, shouold be covered by landlord, NOT taxpayers. My guess is taxpayers already paid for these folks rents, now we’re paying again? While landlord just rakes in the money.