After visiting Patricia Stanford and other tenants in one of Toronto’s most notorious rental buildings , Mayor Olivia Chow vowed Tuesday to get help for her and other people living in “unacceptable” conditions. “Half of the City of Toronto are tenants, they are not homeowners,” Chow said before tenants’ rights group ACORN gave her a tour of 500 Dawes Road, an apartment tower in East York. “They have the right to live a decent life in a clean, safe environment and I’m going to support the tenants so they don’t feel so alone.
” Stanford was one of three residents on different floors visited by Chow. Most belongings in her 11th floor apartment were in plastic bags to keep them away from rodents who invaded the unit last year, she said, and chew things, urinate and defecate despite spring traps throughout the small unit. Mayor Olivia Chow met with tenant Patricia Stanford in her Dawes Road apartment on Tuesday.
“They have the right to live a decent life in a clean, safe environment and I’m going to support the tenants so they don’t feel so alone,” Chow said during a tour of apartments in the rental building. “Terrible, terrible, I feel shame to bring my friends in here,” said the Toronto District School Board personal support worker who works with disabled children. She says her landlord has ignored pleas to help her restore the unit to its previously clean and “beautiful” state.
“My teacher, she wants to come see where I’m living — I have.
