These tenants were asked to vacate their $ 1,000-a-month apartments during COVID-19 to make way for renovations. Then the owner changed his plans

Glenn Henderson had already started packing in his longtime apartment. The 63-year-old took photos from the walls and put away the junk. Her clothes ended up in a wardrobe box, and her kids helped clean up more than a decade of miscellaneous items.

But now those boxes can be unpacked and Henderson can breathe a sigh of relief.

He and his neighbors from a Weston-area apartment had been asked to vacate their homes by December 31, as part of the renovation plans by the new owners of their building. Henderson said these warnings are now being canceled.

The decision – confirmed by Ryan Dolan, senior real estate investment manager for 3Gen Development Group Inc. – comes in the wake of public pressure from residents, a local tenants’ association and others to cancel alerts and a Star story this month.

“I was just preparing for the worst and hoping for the best,” Henderson said.

Leaving Weston’s building would mean losing an inexpensive place to live and easy access to two key paths in his life: one for his work, another for his grandchildren. He said he wasn’t against the renovations, but he didn’t want to leave his apartment for it to happen.

Neighbor Thamina Hunt, 63, struggled with the idea of ​​leaving the house she spent 17 years in. He said he had always paid her about $ 1,000 in rent on time, even after temporarily losing his job during COVID-19. His search for an equally cheap place had been fruitless.

Weeks ago, Dolan said his company wasn’t looking to refurbish an already above-standard building, but to upgrade the plumbing and electrical systems of a 1950s apartment and remove asbestos.

Despite formal warnings, Dolan said December 31 is not a difficult deadline. Several residents had already moved and 3Gen aimed to find “comfortable” solutions with others. When he decided to lift the warnings, only three of the units were still occupied.

Henderson was initially skeptical and asked Dolan to write down the promise, which he later did. But Hunt was over the moon: “I feel like a 1,000-pound weight on my shoulders is gone.”

Both said Dolan offered to arrange hotel rooms if the renovations required their units to be empty. Dolan declined to confirm this specifically, saying he offered to try to accommodate tenants in the event of a “major disruption,” but that at the time his company did not have enough information to confirm the specifics on the renovation plan and timing. .

“Their safety and well-being is ultimately what we strive for, and that’s what we think happened here,” he said.

Both Hunt and Henderson have expressed gratitude for the support they have received in recent weeks; without it, Henderson doesn’t believe their case would have come to the same conclusion.

Housing advocate Philip Zigman said that while the Weston case was successful, it also highlighted a gap in how information about tenants displaced by renovations is collected. N13 notices were given – informing renters that their landlord wants to terminate a lease for demolition, repair or refurbishment – but those were not followed by L2, which are eviction applications for those reasons to the Landlord and Tenant Board ( LTB).

As previously reported by Star, LTB data shows a 149% increase in Toronto homeowners filing for eviction for renovations between 2015 and late 2018. But Scott Leon, a researcher at the Wellesley Institute on whose work has focused on evictions, said LTB data would only include cases where an L2 application was made in addition to N13.

“The province, the city, they have no idea how big the problem is,” Zigman said.