Ottawa Citizen: Heron Gate residents protest planned February eviction

For 31 years Mavis Finnamore has lived in her Heron Gate townhouse, watching it decline as ownership passed from Minto Group, which built the housing complex between Heron and Walkley roads, to a Toronto-based landlord called TransGlobe.

 

 

“This is the place where I brought up my children,” says Finnamore, 61. “It was a nice place, prosperous, lush, middle-class development when I moved in, and what it’s turned into is pretty sad.”

 

Still, she and other Heron Gate residents had reason to hope when Timbercreek Asset Management took over the 1,750-unit complex in 2013 and promised to address its many problems, starting with 500 outstanding work orders from the City of Ottawa.

 

In late September, however, Finnamore and 52 neighbours in her townhouse block on Sandalwood Drive received eviction notices. They learned they have to be out by Feb. 29 so Timbercreek can demolish their units and put up a 300- to 400-unit low-rise apartment complex.

 

“We were kind of left in the dark until the last second that they decided to announce, ‘Blam, we’re demolishing you and you have five months to get out,” she said.

 

For Finnamore, who is battling breast cancer, the most concerning part is that Timbercreek is pushing them out in late February.

 

“If you’ve ever done a move in the winter, as I have, it’s a lot of frozen fingers with stuff falling in the snow and it’s just a miserable time,” she said. “Why do you have to push people out in the winter? It doesn’t make sense to me because I don’t believe you are going to start doing any real construction until the spring.”

 

Activist group ACORN, which has long pressed for improvements at Heron Gate, has taken up the cause of the displaced residents. On Thursday it will hold a noon hour rally at the site in the hope of persuading the landlord to delay the move-out deadline to the spring.

 

Timbercreek executives were not available for comment, but a public relations firm hired by the company said the deadline is necessary for work to stay on schedule.

 

“From a construction perspective, it’s good timeline to work forward,” said Dennis Jacobs of Momentum Planning and Communications “If they didn’t start demolition until sometime in June, then there’s a good chance they would be well into the fall and into the winter when they’re actually doing construction.”

 

Momentum’s president, Suzanne Valiquet, said Timbercreek realized after taking over the complex that the units in Finnamore’s area were in poor shape.

 

“Once they started doing the repairs to the homes, they also looked at what their long-term plans were and one of them was to redevelop Heron Gate block seven,” Valiquet said.

 

Under the Tenant Protection Act, a landlord looking to make major renovations within a lease must provide 120 days of notice to tenants plus compensation equivalent to three months’ rent. Timbercreek is going beyond those provisions, giving its tenants five months’ notice plus an additional $1,500 per unit for relocation costs.

 

All but eight tenants have accepted the offer of the moving allowance, which Timbercreek says will expire Dec. 1. Finnamore, her husband and two children who live with them will move to a new home in the Centrepointe neighbourhood.

 

Jean Cloutier, city councillor for the Alta Vista ward, says he has been working with both sides to make sure residents understand the process as the moving date approaches.

 

“I agree with ACORN that having to move out at the end of February is very disruptive,” Cloutier said. “I have encouraged Timbercreek to be flexible in the moving date of Feb. 29. That being said, they are completely in compliance with the law.”

 

That is no solace for Magda Ibrahim, who lives in one of the units with her husband and six children. Ibrahim and six other Heron Gate residents are in government-subsidized housing, with only Ibrahim left to be accommodated in subsidized housing elsewhere, said Cloutier.

 

Ibrahim said the eviction has been extremely stressful, and she doesn’t want to uproot her children, who have already committed to credits and programs in their neighbourhood and at their schools. Timbercreek offered her family another townhouse within Heron Gate, but she said its front stairs would be unsafe for her youngest daughter, who has co-ordination problems. Now she fears she won’t get the relocation allowance.

 

“I’m losing this money because I can’t find a place that I’m able to like,” Ibrahim said. “Maybe I’m not going to be able to leave by February. I’m not going to be in the winter outside with my kids, just to evacuate this place.”

 

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Article by Eric Elliott for the Ottawa Citizen