Hamilton apartment without water for nearly 2 months

It has been nearly two months since tenants at 1083 Main Street East have been without running water.

READ MORE: No water for almost a month at Hamilton apartment building

32-year-old tenant Chris Martinez says every day is a struggle without running water and living with a disability makes things even worse, “I have problems with my back and stuff and the jugs are about 50 pounds each, so physically it’s been very strenuous on me.”

READ MORE: East Hamilton apartment without water since end of December

Martinez is one of at least seven others still living in the building. Today marks 58 days since the tenants have been without running water after the landlord shut it off due to burst pipes exposed to the cold. Since then, Martinez and the other tenants have had to rely on jugs and bottles of water.

READ MORE: Residents of Hamilton apartment without water for two days

An initial deadline of Jan. 24 was set to have the pipes repaired has come and gone, after an appeal from the property owner. This week, the city’s property standards committee confirmed that the work must be done but assigned no repair date. The committee agreed that the units must be vacated to do the repairs.

Ward 3 councillor Nrinder Nann calls the tenant’s situation unacceptable, “it’s really really unfortunate that the landlord and property manager decided to do things the way that they did, instead of be responsible when the water pipes originally burst… what they could have done is temporarily fix the water supply to these units and avoided this entire situation from playing out in this way.”

During meetings at city hall this week, Mayor Andrea Horwath told council that weak provincial legislation to protect tenants is an overarching factor in the situation.

In a statement sent to CHCH News, minister of municipal affairs and housing Steve Clark’s office said in part, “our government has taken decisive measures to strengthen tenant protections… for instance, we increase penalties and fines for landlords who break the law, strengthened protections for tenants facing “renovictions” and increased the compensation which they were owed due to no-fault and bad-faith evictions.”

Even before the pipes burst the property owners were planning renovations saying the renovations required vacated units. This issue is being disputed before the landlord and tenant board at a hearing on Mar. 8.

Longtime resident David Galvin and other tenants have obtained legal council and say they will fight the eviction, “I personally am highly optimistic, this is my home and I’m not going to allow myself to be run off of it.”

CHCH News reached out to the property owners today asking for comment, but they have yet to get back to us. The city says it has provided about $12,000 worth of water jugs to tenants since the shut-off but that was only up until this week. The landlord has now agreed to take over that responsibility.