EXCLUSIVE: Tenant complains of repair backlog for TTC-owned property
Posted February 26, 2015 9:21 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A tenant in the city’s east end says he’s been living in one of two houses owned by the TTC, which has been slow to repair his run-down property.
Randy Starr’s company rents the three-storey home on Woodrow Avenue, near Danforth and Coxwell, for almost $2,000 a month.
He says he’s been trying to get the TTC to fix repairs since pipes burst and flooded the home a year ago.
Aside from that, the roof has been stripped of most of its shingles, one of the sliding doors doesn’t lock and there’s a hole and what appears to be mould in one of the showers. Sewage has come up through a drain twice.
It wasn’t until CityNews started investigating his story on Thursday that the TTC followed up with an email.
“All I can tell you is this is not acceptable,” said TTC spokesman Brad Ross.
“It seems like there is a real failure here on the part of the TTC. All I can tell you we are going to do everything we can, and I have made phone calls to find out what has happened here.”
The TTC plans to hire contractors to repair the home, which it bought in 2004 after it was found that decades of chemical waste from the old Danforth garage had seeped into the soil.
It cleaned up the ground though there’s still contamination deep down.
TTC Chair Josh Colle told CityNews he would like the transit agency to sell the homes.
“We have to focus on making sure that people get to work and get home and get to play on the Yonge line without interruption — not on fixing back doors,” he said.
The TTC paid $369,000 for one of the homes in 2004, which real estate agent David Cappelli said could now go for as much as $1.4 million.
When the TTC sells surplus property, proceeds go to Build Toronto.
With files from Cynthia Mulligan and Adrian Ghobrial
