Residents at St. Boniface seniors' complex cry out over unmet health, safety issues

Bedbugs, water damage, unwashed floors, violence: these are just some of the issues residents of a Manitoba Housing complex in St. Boniface say no one is addressing, and they're tired of it.

After having repeated requests for help fall on deaf ears, the tenants held a protest outside their building at 101 Marion Avenue last week to call attention to their living conditions.

The 16-floor building is reserved for people 55 and older.

Randall Wolak says he's at his wits' end trying to get someone to address the myriad of concerns he and other tenants of the Manitoba Housing complex share.

Recently, he said it took a month to get someone to repair a leaky faucet in his suite, which was attracting cockroaches.

He says it's gotten to the point where he and other tenants have started doing their own repairs and cleaning, even washing the floors in common areas of the building.

Another issue is security. Wolak says there used to be 24-hour security at the building, but that was pared down to evening hours only. Last week, he said he had to call 911 because someone was trying to attack tenants outside.

"That's one of so many incidents," he said."Manitoba housing is acting as slum landlords. Their refusal, I have documented pictures, emails, of all that has been going on."

Adrian Collins has lived at 101 Marion for eight years. He's currently living with a tarp covering a wall of his apartment after the eighth floor recently flooded and waterpoured into his second story suite.

"It was coming out, water out from underneath the walls," he said. That's on top of an ongoing bedbug infestation.

"I've thrown away a bed. Thrown away a couch. Thrown away a loveseat. Thrown away $300 worth of rugs that I had on my floor because the bedbugs got in there and started multiplying. I had to take everything and throw it out. I went down to nothing. I was sleeping basically on the floor because I had nothing to sleep on until my family stepped in."

Allan Tillenius recently just moved into the Marion Avenue complex to get away from a neighbourhood with a high crime rate. He too has seen bugs in the laundry room and people sleeping in the stairwell.

Tillenius says residents here should get the same treatment as tenants anywhere else in the city.

He suffers from seizures brought on by stress, and living at 101 Marion Avenue isn't helping. He works part-time due to his medical condition and says he needs subsidized living, but it's coming at a high cost.

"For the amount of people that live in complexes like this, that is not acceptable. We are low income people but we are still people. We are not lower class people, we are people."

Wolak says he's contactedthe building's property manager, the ResidentialTenancies Branch, the province's health inspectors and Health Protection Unit, and the offices of Families Minister Rochelle Squires and Health Minister Heather Stefanson, among others for help. He's received responsefrom the Residential Tenancies Branch,health inspectors and Rochelle Squires, he said, but his repeated requests for help from the property manager and the province have been ignored.

"Theirmission statement is to provide a clean and safe environment. Manitoba Housing has provided and dirty and dangerous environment," he said.

In an emailed statement, the province said it takes these concerns very seriously.

A spokesperson said the province is currently in the process of repairing water damage to a small number of units, which was caused by a toilet overflowing. It has also scheduled pest control treatment for more than 50 units in the building.

In regards to the security concerns, the spokesperson noted that the building has a card access system and cameras on each floor and in the elevators.

"Manitoba Housing continues to make significant investments to ensure all tenants have a safe place to call home," the spokesperson said.

Wolak says the tenants of 101 Marion deserve to feel safe and live in a clean environment. He says he feels like his concerns haven't been taken seriously because it's a subsidized housing unit, which isn't fair.

"A lot of people here are smart very intelligent, nice, kind people, worked all their life. They need some peace."

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