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Fire displaces
11 in building owned by controversial landlord
Daniel Jungwirth, The
StarPhoenix, November 01, 2005
Eleven residents were displaced
from a westside apartment building in Saskatoon after a fire
Monday morning, the fourth in seven years at the address.
At 5:30 a.m., firefighters
responded to a fire at the four-storey building at 203 Ave. E
North. The fire was contained to an occupied suite on the third
floor and was under control within 10 minutes.
Although the fire was confined
to only one suite, fire marshal Patti Hoffinger deemed the building
unfit for human habitation.
"Having (the building)
exposed, going through it all, we just closed the building down
because there is going to be a lot of work that's going to be
required," said Hoffinger.
"It's been a few months
since we've been in there and a lot of things have been depreciated.
For example, the plumbing stack is leaking, so it's done a lot
of damage in the last few months to the drywall and the fire
separation integrity."
Hoffinger didn't want to go
into further details as an order was being written up, which
can be appealed by the owner. She said the building is fairly
old and work will need to be done from the basement walls up
to the roof.
"This building keeps us
busy. We're constantly asking for deficiencies to be corrected.
They're always followed up but there's always more to identify."
With the cause of the fire
still under investigation, Hoffinger reported the fire alarm
system was working.
Fire dispatch reports obtained
under Freedom of Information legislation indicate fires at the
address in 1998, 1999 and 2004.
The property is owned by Grover
Holdings LPD. Landlord Jack Grover has been a controversial figure
in the city, accumulating 77 convictions and paid tickets since
2000 for violations under the Fire Prevention Act and the fire
bylaw. His properties have also been cited by fire inspectors
with 88 improvement orders under city bylaws and the Fire Prevention
Act.
Grover controls, through five
business names, a growing inner-city empire of at least 33 apartment
buildings and houses representing 99 units. Grover was not available
for comment late Monday afternoon.
In March, a child and an infant
died after a fire at 214 Ave. E North, another Grover property
just houses away from the apartment building.
There were no injuries in Monday's
incident as most of the residents had been outside by the time
fire crews arrived.
Kevin Welgush of the Salvation
Army is working with the residents, trying to get food, clothing
and shelter. Although the residents declined to comment, he said
the general mood of the residents he has seen is shock.
Welgush and others at the organization
have taken residents to the Red Cross and Wal-Mart to get needed
personal items. The Salvation Army has also provided vouchers
for groceries and clothing at their thrift store.
Hoffinger said the residents
will be able to enter the building to pick up their personal
items and a couple already have.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
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Provincial crackdown
on landlords proposed
Rod
Nickel, The StarPhoenix, August 22, 2003
The province should crack down
on inner-city landlords with histories of fire and maintenance
violations and inspect every home before social assistance clients
moves in, says Coun. Owen Fortosky.
"We've got to be working
a lot closer with social services to make sure these properties
are safe for people to be living in."
The councillor, whose ward
includes the core neighbourhoods of Riversdale and Pleasant Hill,
was responding to a StarPhoenix report that a single landlord,
Jack Grover, is responsible for one in five violations levied
by city fire inspectors since 2001.
The province maintains that
social-assistance clients are capable of picking their own housing.
But Fortosky said the poor are often forced into substandard
housing.
"You have a lot of people
coming, for example, off-reserve. They don't have the same ideas
of a home necessarily as someone living on the east side of the
city. They're just looking for a place to stay. Unfortunately,
some of our landlords take advantage of that."
The city has raised the issue
with the province before, but is usually told that closing buildings
would result in tenants being left on the street, Fortosky said.
"It's quite simple. You
board those things up. Eventually, the land owner has to fix
it up or sell it. There are groups in the city that will purchase
these homes, like Quint Development Corp., and turn around and
sell them through their affordable housing program.
Jim Wasilenko, chair of the
Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership, said in time, the
housing supply will improve as community groups buy and refurbish
poorly maintained housing.
"The landlord that does
not manage the property well will simply not have tenants,"
he said.
Herman Hulshof, director of
communications for the Department of Community Resources and
Employment, acknowledges the department does no checking on the
quality of housing its social-assistance clients pay for with
the provincial shelter allowance. But he said the province has
been addressing the shortage of affordable housing.
In June, the Central Urban
Metis Federation bought three ramshackle blocks that previously
belonged to the Grovers near 22nd Street West at avenues T and
U. With $3.2 million in public money, the buildings are being
refurbished.
Grover maintained Thursday
that he's the victim of his own compassionate heart, which allows
destructive, low-income tenants to live in his buildings, as
well as picky fire inspectors and misunderstandings.
"It is not the landlord,
it is the people who still don't respect other people's property.
. . . Other people are not compassionate. They put them on the
street. But this landlord doesn't."
Fortosky hears a different
side.
"I've had nothing but
complaints from residents, from neighbours, from lots of people
(about Grover), believe me."
Recently, Fortosky asked city
administration to look into establishing a policy of charging
land owners for fire response. He said Grover's properties have
had three fires this year alone.
Grover suggests he's sometimes
blamed for events outside his control. He said he was no longer
the owner of a building on Avenue I North when it was demolished
in 1993. He was, however, the owner, when a fire heavily damaged
it a year earlier.
He said he intends to "renovate
completely" the dilapidated block at 127 Ave. U South, starting
with a burned-out suite.
"You have to accept the
word what somebody, (a) landlord of my calibre tells you."
There is sympathy for Grover
in some corners. A woman who identified herself as a west-side
landlord, but declined to give her name, said Grover's problems
are commonplace.
"Walk a mile in his moccasins.
(His tenants) don't work. They think up ways to torture the landlord."
© Copyright 2003 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Landlord
called on carpet repeatedly by inspectors
Rod Nickel, The StarPhoenix,,
August 21, 2003
A single Saskatoon landlord
has racked up a staggering 186 violations, improvement orders
and convictions for the quality of his inner-city units from
fire inspectors and the courts since 2001, The StarPhoenix has
learned.
During the last four years,
brothers Jack and Pritam Grover have also racked up $26,652 in
fines and surcharges.
And it's the provincial government
that keeps the cash flowing to the Grovers, since it pays rent
for social assistance clients who fill most of Grover's units.
The StarPhoenix acquired city
documents under Access to Information legislation that show Grover
Holdings Ltd., Seema Holdings International Ltd., Pritam S. Grover
and Jagdish (Jack) Lal Grover are the runaway leaders among city
landlords for failing to abide by the fire and protective services
bylaw, the property maintenance bylaw and provincial and federal
fire acts.
But Jack Grover, who runs the
Grover properties, says he's at the top of the list because no
other landlords own so many units in inner-city Riversdale and
Pleasant Hill.
It's "picky, dictatorial"
fire inspectors and vandalizing tenants who are to blame, not
the landlord, he said.
"I get up in the morning
and I don't have stress. Go to bed at night, no stress."
Jack and Pritam Grover and
the two Grover companies they operate, own spots one through
four on a list, acquired from the city, of 19 landlords with
five or more offences since 2001. Violations rung up by Grover
et al. since 2001 account for one in every five flagged by fire
inspectors, documents show.
The list spans 29 months, from
January 2001 through May 2003.
Grover Holdings' four-storey
block at 127 Ave. U South, a few kilometres from Premier Lorne
Calvert's constituency office, is one of the worst blocks in
the city, inspectors say, but it shares common shortcomings with
other Grover buildings.
Dark, profanity-scrawled, pockmarked
hallways appear to have more in common with American ghetto-style
housing than the prim west-side bungalows only a few blocks away.
Holes are punched out in doors
where deadbolts once had been and ripped, dirty linoleum lines
corridors.
In the laundry room, a washer
is neatly turned upside down, still plugged in. The hallway of
one floor is entirely dark.
"We're trying to get out
of here," said Gordon Napope, 24, who lives in the building
with Melissa Taniskishayinew, 23, and their infant daughter.
"(It's) slummy, not suitable."
"It's no good to stay
here," Taniskishayinew added, catching a cool breeze outside
the stuffy block on a hot morning. "His apartments are no
good."
How is it that the young family
and others like it collecting social assistance, live in substandard
housing with the province paying the bill that keeps Grover's
rental empire operating?
The director of communications
for the Department of Community Resources and Employment, Herman
Hulshof, said the province doesn't check the quality of housing
in which its clients live.
"The clients are capable
of managing their own affairs . . . They're the ones who choose
the housing. Our department doesn't get involved in the housing
they select."
Fire marshall Patty Hoffinger
acknowledges there's a breakdown between the work that fire inspectors
and social services workers do, even though they're serving the
same people.
The department is notified
only if fire inspectors close a building, Hoffinger said. Until
a few years ago, the fire department also forwarded copies to
the province of improvement orders for housing in which social-assistance
clients live.
"It was just a waste of
paper," Hoffinger said. "They weren't preventing their
clients from moving in anywhere."
Grover's offences are a catalogue
of mundane but deadly serious fire offences, such as failing
to maintain smoke alarms and fire-alarm systems, storing flammable
liquids, tampering with closed buildings, knowingly making false
statements to fire inspectors and blocking access to exits.
Earlier this summer, a fire
blazed through one unit at 127 Ave. U South. A few weeks afterward,
tenants from another Grover building moved in because of a fire
in their block, Taniskishayinew said.
Grover also frequently falls
afoul of the property maintenance bylaw for broken or single-pane
windows, holes in walls, filthy flooring, doors not locking,
and junk and weeds filling yards.
"From the exterior to
the interior, (he) is not conforming to any minimum living conditions,"
Hoffinger said. "You're appalled at the conditions. It's
just not fair for anybody to have to live in conditions like
that."
Grover is unapologetic about
the 80 units he manages or owns. Blame the tenants, he suggests.
"The basic problem of
society is the 20 per cent don't want to work in this world are
paid by 80 per cent who pay taxes to look after them," he
said in an interview. That segment of society needs to learn
responsibility, he adds, which would prevent violations such
as failing to maintain smoke alarms.
"Those are not my problem,
too. The landlord's job is to provide smoke alarms . . . When
the people steal batteries out of it, I tried to put (in) every
suite electrically, hardwired smoke alarms. When these people
have a smoke they take them (the smoke alarms) off. And then
the inspector goes to inspect. Whose problem? (They say) it's
the landlord's problem . . . Give the violation to the tenant."
Often, however, it's the tenants
who suffer from the poor conditions in Grover's blocks.
Police and fire officials carry
out the sad task of escorting tenants out of buildings that are
ordered closed, often unexpectedly.
Major Wayne McDonough of the
Salvation Army said the sudden moves are hardest on children,
especially when low-rent units are in short supply.
"You lose your home, it's
traumatic. I don't think it matters if it's a fancy house or
one that's rundown. It's your home."
McDonough said some of Grover's
tenants, who eat meals at Salvation Army, complain to McDonough
about their living conditions, describing them as "rundown
and unsafe," he said.
A related reason Grover offers
for his large tally of breaches is the sheer number of units
he manages or owns and the fact they're located on the west side.
"It is such a struggle
but I'd never give up. Why? Because I choose to help these people,
provide accommodation when other people have rejected them."
Grover said he even directs
tenants to counsellors or counsels them himself.
Grover's court convictions
result from refusing to comply with orders. He has an explanation
for the convictions, too.
"This is a battle I'm
facing to actually improve the behaviour of fire department inspectors
that they must (ensure they) know the reasons behind the violations."
A man who didn't want to be
identified and lives with his young son in one of Grover's buildings,
is unimpressed after only a few months living there.
"There was a flood when
the waterline broke, the roof caved in, the floor's sagging,
my oven isn't working. There's no air conditioning, but he says
he's going to fix it.
"It's hard. It gets pretty
hot in here."
On paper, at least, the shortcomings
of Grover's buildings have been costly. Fines and court surcharges
for the four companies total $26,652 in the last four years.
Grover Holdings Ltd.'s largest
single fine was $3,000 with a $600 surcharge tacked on, levied
in November 2002 for tampering with a building ordered closed.
But payment is hit-and-miss.
Wayne Bischoff, one of the
city's solicitors, said more than half of Grover's outstanding
fines are unpaid at any given time, thanks to appeals, new fines
being levied and simple failure to pay.
"There are limits on what
the city can accomplish," he said.
Despite the convictions, some
give Grover credit for supplying badly needed housing for low-income
people.
"Look who lives in these
places," said Randy Arnault, who was staying with his sister
Rose Morin in a Grover block on Avenue V South. "Look at
the damage they do."
Morin, who's been Grover's
tenant for a few months, said she's satisfied with her accommodations,
noting that he promptly unplugged her toilet.
"Jack is a good landlord."
"It's all right,"
said Clarissa Shetterly, who rents an Avenue R South bungalow
from Grover. But she adds she hasn't had success getting him
to fix her toilet, which leaks black water.
The number of overall orders
and violations issued by city fire inspectors has been steadily
rising. Orders almost doubled between 2000 and 2002, from 83
to 165. Violations, meanwhile skyrocketed more than 900 per cent
during the same period. Landlords were notified of 187 violations
in 2002, up from just 18 in 2000.
The increase results from a
combination of recent bylaw changes and renters' growing willingness
to file complaints, Hoffinger said.
© Copyright 2003 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell