Atin Ito First Filipino Community Newspaper in Ontario
City calls situation ‘unfortunate and unusual’ as couple, 2 kids forced to climb fence to get into their home.
A family in St. Clair Village is frustrated after a city contractor doing sidewalk repairs accidentally drilled into their basement. Instead of apologizing, the city ordered them to fix the damage — fast.
An Oakwood Avenue family is frustrated and fuming after Toronto city workers repairing a public sidewalk Monday accidentally bored a massive hole into their basement.
To add insult to injury, Erin Bell and David Stone say, the city is now insisting the couple pay for the repairs themselves.
“It’s disappointing, it’s angering, it’s frustrating, and it’s almost unbelievable,” Stone told CBC Toronto. “The city destroyed my home.”
As of Wednesday, city officials blocked off the entrance to both the upper-level apartment and the couple’s ground-floor music school. They also tacked a notice to the front door declaring the building unsafe. The order requires the couple hire an engineer to assess the damage, apply for any necessary building permits, and have the building repaired.
To access their home, the couple and their two school-aged children have to go around the back of the building and into a neighbour’s yard, from which they climb a chain-link fence into their own enclosed backyard, which has a staircase up to their rear entrance.
CBC Toronto asked the city for confirmation that an inspector told the couple to repair the damage at its own expense and whether that’s in line with official policy.
In an email reply Thursday, the city’s media relations manager Russell Baker did not directly respond to the questions.
Asphalt replacement renders building structurally unsound
“We recognize that these kinds of unexpected situations can be challenging, which is why the City of Toronto is working with the property owner to address this unfortunate and unusual situation,” Baker said.
However, Bell says a city engineer showed up to do an assessment on Thursday following CBC Toronto’s inquiries. It’s still unclear who will foot the bills.
The couple’s nightmare began on Monday morning, when a City of Toronto contractor showed up with what looked like an excavator equipped with a heavy-duty jack hammer. The idea, Bell told CBC Toronto, was to replace a black asphalt patch on the sidewalk in front of the couple’s property. That patch was left by city workers who dug up the sidewalk while attaching new water pipes to the couple’s building weeks ago.
Security footage shows the worker hammering at the base of the couple’s front door and angled street-front wall — clearly on their property — until the hammer appears to break through the sidewalk.
The operator immediately dismounts and looks at the damage, while talking on his phone. He can be heard telling someone,”There’s a problem here.”
The visibly frazzled worker is later heard saying, “It went down into the f–cking basement…I don’t know what you want to do here. Do you want to call the inspector?”
Afterwards the contractor knocks on the door and shows Bell the damage.
“I freaked out a little bit,” she said.
The hole extends across the door front. It’s oval-shaped and appears to be about a metre wide. The sky was clearly visible from the basement until city workers covered it with planks and plastic. Concrete and plaster rubble litters a downstairs storage area and adjacent bathroom.
A city building expert arrived within a few hours, Bell said. But rather than help the couple figure out the next steps, she says he simply told her to pay for an engineer’s report within 48 hours or risk her home being boarded up for being “structurally unsound.”
“I was beyond disgusted, I was incredulous,” Bell said. “I thought, ‘this is your fault and you’re pinning it on me?’ That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
City could wind up paying for more than just repairs
By Tuesday afternoon, Bell and Stone had contacted their insurance company to work out next steps. Bell says the insurance company is suggesting the city should pay for any repairs outright, however her conversations with the company are ongoing.
Next steps could include weighing legal options, which one municipal liability expert thinks could be many.
“Oh, the city is going to pay for this,” Alan Preyra told CBC Toronto.
Preyra says it’s clear that when municipal work impacts neighbouring properties, the city is responsible for damage — even if it’s done by contract workers.
“The city is liable because the city is the one who hires them,” he said, noting that instances in which municipal workers damage private property have increased over the last decade or so as transit construction projects, such as the Crosstown LRT, become more common.
“The homeowner’s a stranger to the contractor,” Preyra said. “The city should, morally and statutorily, step forward and take responsibility.”
As for the financial cost to the city, Preyra says the city could wind up paying well beyond the cost of repairing the physical damage. Damages could include psychological damage, he says, as well as the harm done to the couple’s in-person business.
Stone says they’re experiencing a 10 to 20-per cent decline in business as he’s only able to conduct music lessons online now
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Credit belongs to : www.cbc.ca
