Hours after an 18-year-old student died in a Scarborough house fire, a landlord tells tenants to leave other houses -- now

Thestar.com
May 31, 2018
Fatima Syed

Hours after an 18-year-old Chinese international student died in a fire at a Scarborough property, a landlord told tenants at other connected properties to gather their belongings and leave.

Weisong Zhou and his wife, Yu Jing, own six properties near the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, according to Ontario property records. On Wednesday, tenants at two properties told the Star Zhou was evicting them without notice.

“He said his house had a fire and I had to move out,” said Vivian Meng, 18, who lived at 27 Challenger Court, a two-minute drive from the house at 10 Haida Court, where her close friend Helen Guo died in the fire.

Meng said she and her four roommates, all international students who were living in the basement, were told to leave mere hours after the fire that also injured three others.

“I don’t understand why,” Meng said. “He said that it was because of ‘some rules’ but I don’t know what they are.”

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The Star visited six rental properties owned by Zhou and Jing on Wednesday and Thursday -- all were large, detached, single-family homes within minutes of each other and the three universities and colleges in the neighbourhood. Jing is listed as the sole owner of 10 Haida Court, and a co-owner on one other property; Zhou is listed as a sole or co-owner of five of the properties.

At 3321 Ellesmere Rd. the Star entered and saw a basement apartment home to eight international students with shared facilities and apparent safety hazards, including two mould-filled bathrooms, two kitchens -- one of which did not have running water -- and at least two broken or expired smoke detectors.

At 3346 Ellesmere Rd., four men were observed moving the contents of the home into a dumpster.

The Star presented Zhou with a detailed list of questions outlining allegations that include apparent violations at his properties, and his decision to evict the tenants.

“All the information is not correct,” he replied.

“Right now, my priority is to make sure all current tenants are safe,” he said in a phone call. “After that, I’m not renting any more.”

“I don’t know where you are getting these rumours,” he added. “They are all wrong.”

The Star asked Zhou for more detail, but did not receive a response.

The Star was unable to find contact information for Jing, who is listed as his spouse on Ontario property records.

According to the City of Toronto’s definition, a rooming house is defined as a dwelling where more than four people separately rent out bedrooms, and share some communal spaces like a kitchen and washrooms.

At least three of Zhou’s properties visited by the Star appeared to fit the city’s definition of a rooming house -- such houses are illegal in Scarborough, but may be licensed in other parts of Toronto.

Sixteen people lived at 3321 Ellesmere Rd. On Wednesday, Zhou told all of them to leave within 24 hours, according to a tenant.

Joel, a Centennial College student who lives in the basement, said Zhou arrived at around 1 p.m. Wednesday, “freaking out.”

The Star agreed not to publish Joel’s last name to not harm his future search for housing. He told the Star he did not intend to leave the basement immediately, but is looking for other accommodation.

“He was distraught. We have to pack up and leave now,” he said, adding the owner knocked on every tenant’s door and told them to leave by Thursday, and also provided them with cash for the last month’s rent.

Three other tenants in the house confirmed the verbal eviction order to the Star. They asked their names not be published to protect their search for future housing.

Two of them told the Star Zhou is “a good landlord,” who changed light bulbs and came to help when called.

“It was unfortunate this happened to him,” one said.

In 48 hours, Zhou appeared to have visited the house three different times, and had called several of tenants personally, asking them to make other living arrangements.

Joel found the property in an ad on Kijiji. It was listed for a monthly rent of $350, but he paid $300 -- a discount he said he received for helping around the house.

There is one fire extinguisher downstairs, Joel said. On one smoke detector, the Star saw a label reading “Replace in 2017.” In the kitchen, another appeared visibly broken.

“He kept forgetting,” Joel said of his landlord.

Meng said she paid $350 a month for her room at 27 Challenger Court.

She said she moved there after hearing a presentation from Zhou’s wife at her high school in China in 2016.

“She told us the advantages of the university in Scarborough. She was also advertising her houses,” the 19-year-old said.

Moving at such short notice has “been stressful,” she said.

A May 29 rental listing on the Chinese language website 51.ca, posted by a user with the same phone number as Zhou, under the name Allen -- a name his tenants said he went by -- advertises a 150-square-foot room in a house near Military Trail and Ellesmere Rd., near three of Zhou’s properties.

The listing is for $550 a month.

Jim Hart, the councillor for the neighbourhood, said that rooming houses are a need that exists around universities. The problem is there are no bylaws that exist to help regulate or keep them up to safety standards -- leaving tenants, often in precarious employment and living conditions, to fend for themselves.

Tenants shouldn’t have to move out at such short notice, said Geordie Dent, executive director at the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Association.

“They don’t have to do that, ever. No tenant should ever do that,” he said.

“Eviction in Ontario is a process. The city has the power to order the people out for various codes, but a landlord doesn’t. A landlord’s always going to have to go to the Landlord and Tenant Board,” he said, and give tenants notice and attend hearings.

The city has the power to evict tenants in the case of illegal dwellings, namely properties that are not up to code or deemed unsafe, and will issue orders to that effect, he said. Typically, these come to tenants directly from city or fire staff.

“Rooming houses are a major hotbed issues for tenants,” Dent said. “A lot of people, that’s all they can afford right now so landlords are cashing out on the fact that there’s no affordable housing.”

Before the amalgamation of the six cities to form Toronto, each area had its own bylaws about rooming houses, said Toronto housing policy expert Paul Dowling.

“After amalgamation, the rooming house provisions were not harmonized,” he said. “No one really knows how many rooming houses there are in the city.”

As such, existing “illegal” or unlicensed rooming houses cannot be regulated or inspected, but the city can press charges against property owners for violating fire codes, property standards, and zoning bylaws.

Eight people have died in 18 rooming house fires between 2007 and 2016, according to a 2018 study by University of Toronto Cities Centre professor Philippa Campsie.

In their initial investigation of the fire at 10 Haida Court on Wednesday, fire investigators told reporters they had found multiple violations, including a basement with only one exit -- what they called a clear violation of the Ontario Fire Code.

There should be at least two exits from a basement apartment according to the City of Toronto website.

The Star saw only one exit from the basement of 3321 Ellesmere Rd.

At 49 Glenthorne Dr., another property owned by Zhou, fire investigators made a check call on May 25 because of the “accidental activation of a personal alarm,” according to Toronto Fire Captain David Eckerman.

They didn’t find any major issues.

In the aftermath of the 10 Haida Court fire, investigators could be seen going door to door.

On Thursday afternoon at 3346 Ellesmere Rd., another property owned by Zhou, the Star approached four men rapidly loading furniture parts, suitcases, moving boxes and several black garbage bags into a very large movable waste bin.

When asked if they had been evicted, the men refused to comment, stating they “didn’t know anything.”

In a half hour, the bin was filled to the top.

Of the legal, licensed rooming houses that do exist in the city, many are being demolished or gentrified, Dent said, resulting in more unlicensed, and potentially dangerous, dwellings.

“Not every illegal rooming house is completely a death trap, but again, we believe that all apartments in the City of Toronto should be licensed, and this is one of the reasons why.”