Internal city emails reveal tension over response to Hamilton tenants who went 12 weeks without water
CBC
CBC Hamilton is investigating the living conditions that tenants face and what responsibility the city has to uphold property standards. This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 can be found here and Part 3 will run next week.
When Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath turned on the local six o'clock news in late December, she says she was shocked and outraged by what she saw.
Tenants at a downtown apartment building had been without running water for two days after pipes froze and burst. The landlord had yet to make any repairs.
Within minutes of the CHCH news segment airing, the mayor sent an email to top staff, including city manager Janette Smith who oversees all divisions.
"This is unacceptable … a black eye for the city," the mayor wrote Dec. 30. "We look terrible and uncaring here…are we? I am not."
Despite the new mayor urging swift action, and Smith acknowledging in a subsequent email it was an "untenable situation," the water shutdown at 1083 Main St. E. dragged on well beyond a couple of days.
It lasted nearly three months.
CBC Hamilton obtained the mayor's email, and dozens of others sent by senior staff and elected officials this winter, through a freedom of information request (FOI), to uncover how tenants could be left without a vital service for so long.
The records reveal Hamilton's response was hindered by delays, red tape and actions questioned by council members — from a building inspection done without the inspector entering the building to the city relying on what one councillor called a "Mickey Mouse" report prepared by an unregistered plumber and delays caused by staff on holidays and city hall weddings.
"We have all the ability in the world to make sure people have access to their basic services," Horwath said in an interview with CBC Hamilton last week.
"And the fact that was not taken seriously and it went through all kinds of processes and procedures that didn't actually solve the problem, it was extremely frustrating. I'm outraged with the city's response."
From Dec. 28 to March 24, nine tenants relied on a few 22-L bags of water delivered by the city every other day, limiting their showers, toilet flushes, cleaning and cooking. Nearly all live with disabilities and receive social assistance.
The city spent $22,000 on the water and, following legal advice, has decided not to try to recover this cost from the landlord, it said in a statement.
Tenant David Galvin said in an interview that landlord Dylan Suitor's handling of the situation wasn't surprising.
A program aimed at preventing homelessness on Prince Edward Island that was halted last year due to funding issues is back up and running again with support from the provincial and federal governments.
Large crowds of people lined up around the block outside a pair of packed community halls in central Alberta on Wednesday night, to attend town halls focused on the idea of the province seeking independence from Canada.
The sight of a cyclist in January in the Yukon can prompt confusion from some onlookers — but historians say bicycles were being used to get around the territory in winter long before cars.
On Prime Minister Mark Carney's first day of talks in Beijing, the government agreed to co-operate with China more on clean and conventional energy after years of difficult relations between the two countries.
The city says it is one step away from returning the Bearspaw feeder main to full service, with a final water pump scheduled to be turned on Friday morning — if the pipe continues to remain stable.
When David St-Pierre saw the snow outside his window in Brossard, Que., south of Montreal, he decided to chance the metropolitan region's shiny light-rail transit system once more.
A Calgary lawyer who falsified court documents and repeatedly lied to a client, causing the man to miss out on parenting time with his youngest child, pleaded guilty to forgery on Thursday.
The Crown has stayed an assault charge against Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Jeremy Tunraluk.
Alberta’s minister of hospitals says a province-wide strategy has begun to ease the strain on the acute care system as frontline doctors continue to declare that provincial hospitals are dangerously overcrowded.
As snow squalls continue to blanket southwestern Ontario, school boards in the London region announced the closure of all schools Thursday morning, and police are reporting closures and collisions across the area roads.
A Canadian citizen has died in Iran “at the hands of the Iranian authorities,” according to Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.
On Boxing Day, Victoria Lethbridge and her partner took their dog and baby out for a morning walk in brand new snowshoes around the corner from their home in Hickman’s Harbour.
When a U.S. company made its data centre pitch to some concerned Saint John residents late last year, he called the city an untapped “gold mine” for artificial intelligence projects.