JUNE 21, 2007:  THE SCARBOROUGH MIRROR

By: MIKE ADLER

 

A certain house on Calverley Trail has the neighbours upset.

It's not just the unkempt lawn or the overgrown rose bushes by the sidewalk. Residents of the street near Ellesmere and Morrish roads allege the home has been an illegal rooming house for over a year now.

Police visit frequently, sometimes twice in one week, neighbours told a visitor last Friday, complaining they have also seen tenants urinating on the driveway or drinking bottles of beer outside.

They were particularly shaken, they say, by a June 9 incident in which they watched several police cruisers parked beside the house.

"The next thing we know our youngest daughter comes out of our house screaming and shaking," recalled Sue Nabert, explaining the girl, preparing to open a back door, froze when she saw a man jump a fence into the yard.

The man jumped another fence but to several residents, who had already petitioned Ward 44 (Scarborough East) Councillor Ron Moeser demanding "you obtain whatever proof you require" to enforce the city's ban on rooming houses, this seemed like a last straw.

"No one wants to listen," Judy Ko said.

Though it typically doesn't attract such attention from police, a city-wide pool of cheap, temporary housing sells rooms for cash in Scarborough, where prices advertised online this month were as low as $20 a night or $140 a week. One "guest house" in the Birchmount Road and Eglinton Avenue area boasted a "total of 15 bedrooms."

Scarborough homes can legally contain a separated rental apartment and rooms for two boarders. Ratepayers and some local councillors say they're determined to shut down rooming houses that exceed the law as threats to both property values and safety. Some say a fatal fire this week in a Markham home on Steeles Avenue, allegedly a rooming house, has boosted that resolve.

Shutting such operations down is often difficult because owners can refuse entry to bylaw officers without a warrant, which city officials say are hard to get.

Fire department inspectors can enter homes to find fire code violations but other city staff cannot go with them. The Calverley house passed a fire code inspection last fall, a result "which stunned me," said another neighbour, Brian Yong-kee.

In an interview this week, Moeser said he's seen the house and declared it "awful," calling the situation on Calverley a safety issue not just for the home's tenants but for its neighbours.

Officials need more legal tools to protect single-family neighbourhoods, the councillor said, adding he knows how hard it is to shut a rooming house down. "I had one in Highland Creek that took me two years."

A man identifying himself as the owner, however, said the house has only two tenants left and he gave them notice to leave by the end of the month so the house can be sold. "One week from now there won't be any problems," Frank Tia added Thursday.

Tia said he made a mistake in not screening tenants after he bought the house in February, the result being "too much headache" for not enough money. The house contained "troublemakers," he said. "Most of them don't pay rent."

Tia said he also rents rooms in another house he owns on Calverley but that one is "only for students," who he described as much better tenants.

There's not been much progress lately towards an easy solution for shutting rooming houses down, Ward 39 (Scarborough-Agincourt) Councillor Mike Del Grande said this week.

Some people, meanwhile, are getting rich by exploiting roomers, Del Grande charged.

"If people are upset about this, they should put their MPPs on the spot," he said, arguing the province should help the city by allowing a "reverse onus" requiring owners of suspected rooming houses to prove substantiated complaints are false.

Scarborough Centre MPP Brad Duguid said the City of Toronto Act recently gave municipalities expanded enforcement powers for search and seizure.

The city can now show evidence of rooming-house activity in photographs instead of being required to seize it, said Duguid, adding, "We'd be open to suggestions that are legal and constitutional."

A former Scarborough councillor and now parliamentary assistant to Ontario's housing minister, Duguid admitted the bylaw can be tough to enforce but said that's part of a necessary "balance between adequate policing and a police state."

Denis Lanoue, president of the Heathwood Ratepayers Association in northwest Scarborough, said he's been delighted to spot signs in the past month indicating three homes he alleged were rooming houses are up for sale. Though one home in question is still being advertised on web pages, Lanoue said he believes Del Grande motivated city staff to enforce regulations, encouraging operators to leave.

There are, however, other rooming houses in the area, south of Kennedy Road and Steeles Avenue, Lanoue said. "If you ask me how many rooming houses do you have in your neighbourhood, I would say three dozen."