75 Silver Springs Boulevard

erhume

Reviewed on Dec 9, 2020

Overall score

12345

April, 2020 was the day the unit was shown to me by the leasing agent who clearly addressed the unit did not have any mice, cockroaches, or bedbug issues. The unit is located on the ninth floor behind the garbage room.

Just a few days after I moved in May, 2020, I began to see mice. One day, I saw a mouse running away using an open located below a kitchen cabinet. Using my cellphone to look inside, is how I found a dirty place with a drywall full of holes.

In the leasing agreement, the landlord did not provide an email or phone number I could use to contact her directly; she only provided the phone numbers of the Resident Helpline where I was told I needed to report all maintenance issues to the Superintendent. I tried to contact the Property Manager using the phone number posted in the bulletin board of the building but only to hear a recorded message saying: “the number you are calling does not receive incoming calls”.

Deeply concerned of the poor responses shown by the Superintendent and the Rental Management Office to attend the mice and bad odors problems, I decided to call 311 where they gave me the name and phone number of a representative of the Municipal Licensing and Standards. Also, on June, 2020, I decided to hire the services of a Pest Control company to inspect the unit and provide feedback. The Pest Control report clearly addressed that mice were coming from the building because they have managed to reach the top floor from the ground level and were entering the unit from different transit lines.

Five maintenance requests were sent to the Rental Management Office and two formal requests were made to the Municipal Licensing and Standards Office, before the landlord sent her pest control company to inspect the unit on July, 2020.

On August, 2020, a contractor came to the unit to seal the holes of the drywall I found plus another big open that also existed behind the dishwasher. The contractor did not seal other holes that both the Pest Control companies recommended and was until a representative of the Municipal of Licensing and Standards came to inspect the unit on August, 2020, that a second contractor came to finish sealing the rest of the holes.

Concerning bad odors, we always had the problem without knowing when the landlord would fix it. This problem was verbally addressed several times to the superintendent (and assistants). Also, a Maintenance Request and an email to the Property Manager were sent. Because pictures cannot be taken to show bad odors, I provided the Landlord and Tenant Board pictures showing how dirty the Garbage Room and hall outside the unit frequently were. I was hoping all these bad odors would disappear once the holes found in the kitchen were sealed but, unfortunately, this did not happen. My son and I were mitigating the bad odors by leaving the windows open and leaving the exhaust fans on all day, but in winter we would not be able to keep doing this. We were overly concerned about the situation.

Almost five months we were forced to live in an unhealthy and unsafe place. We had to cook and eat our food in a kitchen with bad odors, and to sleep every night knowing mice were inside the building and the unit bringing all kind of diseases. The stress was enormous not only because we did not know how our health would be affected, but also because we did not know how these living conditions could increase the risk of getting COVID-19. Of course, we would not have rented the unit if we knew about the mice and bad odors issues of the building, or if we had seen any of the holes we found in the unit after moving in. The Apartment Building Standards of the City of Toronto clearly address that once a landlord is aware of pests at the property, besides eliminate them and prevent their spread into other portions of the property, they need to stop renting any units with pests to new tenants.