Your Ottawa Region: Vermin, mould is just the tip of the iceberg: Heron Gate tenants

Waving posters featuring dead mice and mould found in their apartments, Heron Gate-area residents shouted slogans like “don’t move, make your landlord improve” as they marched down Baycrest Drive to protest what they say is landlord negligence.

“My cat brought me a mouse from the basement yesterday. We’ve got bugs. We can only do so much. We don’t want to live like that. We pay a lot,” said Heron Gate-area resident Jennifer Macwaters, who lives in a three-bedroom apartment with her husband and two young children. “We want things fixed. Our parks are disgusting, (the landlords) don’t take care of the property and there’s garbage everywhere.”

Macwaters was one of roughly 50 people, including mothers and their children, who showed up for a rally hosted by Ottawa ACORN Heron Gate Tenants

Ottawa ACORN is a branch of ACORN Canada, an independent national organization of low and moderate income families.

Waving posters featuring dead mice and mould found in their apartments, Heron Gate-area residents shouted slogans like “don’t move, make your landlord improve” as they marched down Baycrest Drive to protest what they say is landlord negligence.

“My cat brought me a mouse from the basement yesterday. We’ve got bugs. We can only do so much. We don’t want to live like that. We pay a lot,” said Heron Gate-area resident Jennifer Macwaters, who lives in a three-bedroom apartment with her husband and two young children. “We want things fixed. Our parks are disgusting, (the landlords) don’t take care of the property and there’s garbage everywhere.”

Macwaters was one of roughly 50 people, including mothers and their children, who showed up for a rally hosted by Ottawa ACORN Heron Gate Tenants

Ottawa ACORN is a branch of ACORN Canada, an independent national organization of low and moderate income families.

Macwaters described a series of maintenance issues that have happened in her unit since she moved in during February 2010. She said when her fridge broke on a Friday, nobody showed up to attend to the situation until Monday. Macwaters said with two small children in the house, the family needed a fridge.

“We got our own fridge because my in-laws had one,” Macwaters said. “They left our old fridge at the front of our door for three weeks.”

TransGlobe Property Management Services, which owns the residences, took over direct control of the properties in June.

Danny Roth, a spokesperson for TransGlobe, stood across the street from the rally and watched it unfold.

“We were certainly surprised when notices went out in the building that a small protest was planned,” Roth said. “We reached out to them last week, and nobody responded. They seem more interested in the protest than in progress.”

He said that a dialogue between the managers and the tenants would have been a more effective way of making change.

Roth also said that the buildings are “well-run” and “well-maintained,” but that for individual issues like Macwaters and her fridge, “there are different levels of detail and back story specific to units.”

“The ultimate responsibility is ours as property managers, but tenants have a role in keeping it clean and secure,” he said. “On a larger scale, we need to work co-operatively.”

Roth said he went to the rally to make sure there was still a safe environment for tenants not participating.

“I’m happy to meet with a small group and get a handle on the issues,” he said. “If the organizer wants to sit down with management, we’d be happy to talk.”

Jane Schweitzer, a member if the Ontario Landlords Association, said tenants have the responsibility to also keep their units clean and to be good tenants.

She said bad tenants can often leave garbage around, which explains mice and other pest problems.

However Schweitzer said as a landlord, she takes preventative measures to make sure there are no pest problems for her tenants. She also said that her buildings have had pest problems in the past, and she’ll get an exterminator.

She also believes that the way the rules are written now give too much power to the tenant – which makes it hard for landlords to evict the bad tenants.

Schweitzer added that if an appliance supplied in an apartment like a fridge breaks, it is up to the landlord to get it fixed immediately.

“That’s a necessity, and absolutely that should be replaced or fixed immediately,” Schweitzer said. “They have to get in one right away. Let’s say (the landlord) has ordered one – they still have to replace it.”

Even though Schweitzer said landlords should be given more rights to protect against bad tenants, it’s important for both sides to work together too.

“When you own a property, you want to be on top of it,” she said. “When you have a building worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, it doesn’t make sense to let it go.”

She added that it’s important for tenants to keep written documentation of requests to their landlords, and important for landlords to take before and after pictures of their units when a tenant moves in and out.