“I’ve been living here for three years, and last night was the first time I’ve seen anyone come to fix the laundry room,” says a 33-year old resident of 3400 Eglinton Avenue East.

The laundry room in the basement of the Markham and Eglinton area building is full of washing machines and dryers, but several residents have complained about them never working properly, gobbling up people’s cash for no return. On hot summer days and especially in cold winter months, when the snow piles up outside the building and on the sidewalks, they have to carry their laundry nearly half a kilometre to a laundromat.

But the night before Monday October 19, someone finally came to take a look at the machines in the laundry room. That might have been because on Monday morning, the 16-storey building in Scarborough Village was being audited by officers of Municipal Licensing and Standards from the City of Toronto.

Makeshift repair of padlock on door.

The building is in bad condition, both inside and outside. Residents frequently complain about an unresponsive management. Repairs and maintenance are rarely done in a timely manner. One couple became so tired of asking for repairs that they repainted and retiled the apartment themselves—“Not because we wanted to but because we had to. We did it to protect our family—we have two kids.”

Another resident had a broken lock on his door, finally replacing it with a padlock he installed himself after waiting months for the building management to make the repair.

The most common complaint of all residents is the dirty carpet in all of the hallways, which is stained throughout and often smells. “When visitors come, they smell it and think it is coming from our homes,” one resident said. The carpet had not been changed, according to some residents, for over ten years.

After the municipal inspectors ruled that the carpets are not kept in a “clean and sanitary condition” management is in discussion about replacing the carpet. They began to experiment with replacing the carpet on the second floor—where the building superintendent lives, and have now removed the carpet on all of the floors of the building.

A surveillance camera monitoring tenants movements in the building, surrounded by hastily repaired ceiling damaged by water leakage.

Leaks are very common in the building. On October 10, the ceiling of the 17th floor hallway was dripping water that we caught on video. When the superintendent was told about the leak, she simply denied it.On the 17th floor, residents say that leaks have led to mould growing in the carpet and floor.

On October 19, one resident showed BASICS her bathroom ceiling, which was caving in due to leaks from the unit above her. A few days later chunks of the ceiling and water actually fell on her, leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling. On November 6, a plumber finally came to “fix” the ceiling—but just seems to have papered over it poorly, with nothing done to actually fix the source of the leak. The area is damp to the touch with bubbles coming out of it. “I can still hear the water dripping,” the resident said. She continues to remain concerned about mould and mildew in the bathroom, a safety concern for her three-year old daughter.

The ceiling of this washroom collapsed on a tenant due to an unresolved issue with water damage from the unit above.

BASICS spoke to municipal officers who said that the state of disrepair in the building was not surprising. Dozens of apartment buildings throughout the city are in horrible condition because the owners simply treat them as a business from which they want to turn a profit.

Despite the municipal officer’s attempts, there was not much they could do about repairs inside units unless they directly received complaints from tenants. But there are many problems, and bringing up units to minimum standards did not mean that they were good standards. The minimum standards require the building to stick to the old code, and not the new one.

For example, the bathrooms in 3400 Eglinton Avenue East all have a passive ventilation system, good enough for the 1950s, but no longer standard—bathrooms now require fans to actively pump the damp air out. The old system not only does a poor job of pushing damp air out, it can even bring damp air in from outside and from other units. This leads to growing problems with mould and mildew.

Many residents do not allow their children onto the balcony because they feel that it is unsafe.

The best and maybe only way that residents can bring about a change, according to the municipal officer we spoke to, is to build community among themselves. That means keeping an eye out for each other and for the building, and holding unresponsive building owners to account through collective action. Limiting actions to filing individual complaints will not push the management to respond. Only through collective action can we actually put pressure on the management and building owner to make the changes that are necessary for the building. 

Four years to the day after Jane Finch Action Against Poverty’s (JFAAP) founding on October 17, 2008 – the International Day for the Elimination of Poverty – one of Jane-Finch’s leading people’s organizations took to the streets once again with its allies to protest the worsening of poverty and police brutality in the community.

Designed for the quick flow-through of cars, the protest circled through the intersection that is the community’s name-sake and that corporate media and local university media loves to vilify: Jane-Finch.

The protest was very much of the corner as well, as people waiting for the bus listened to speeches and watched street theatre from their bus stops and at their red lights. The rally of some 150 people circled through the intersection, for nearly 90 minutes.

Demands from the crowd ranged from calling upon York University’s Excalibur newspaper to end its stigmatization of the area for problems on campus and in the university’s Village Community; calling for community control of policing and an end to police brutality; raising the welfare and disability rates; as well as more support for elders; and an end to horizontal violence within the community.

Despite the ‘good-cop’ act of the so-called ‘community policing’ strategy, with some of 31 Division’s foot cops chatting it up with people in crowd that has many problems with policing in the neighbourhood, the local division’s real attitude towards community residents was demonstrated when two cop cruisers barrelled through the Jane-Finch intersection, nearly hitting protestors and forcing marchers to leap out of the way.  Civilian cars weren’t irritated by the few-seconds delay caused by the tail end of the 150+ person rally that circled through the intersection on the green lights – but not for the cops.

The cop assigned to ‘engage’ with the protest quickly distanced themselves from the incident, saying that they had “nothing to do with the protest” and were simply “responding to another call” – even though the cars had no sirens on.

The protest concluded with performances from local popular theatre group, Nomanzland, as well as performances from other local artists.  The short street acts included, a mock oath to the queen, a desperate community member meeting the red tape of the social service bureaucracy, and a Jane-Finch rendition of the good’ old “Oh Canada… our home on stolen land.”

JFAAP is one of the few community-based organizations in the city that is moving the people in its community for social justice and political mobilization.

Over 100,000 Quebec students walked out on their classes in a protest against the government’s planned 75 per cent tuition fee hike (of $1,600 over five years). They came together on March 22nd  to hit the streets in what media outlets have described as a “monster protest”.

Words cannot do it justice, but time lapse video can.

Montreal Tuition Protests

We were on the scene for the entire thing and here’s some of what we saw…

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