St. John's woman facing prospect of full teardown of garage-turned-home
CBC
A St. John's woman who believed she bought her forever home is facing the possibility of having to tear the property down and start from scratch, but now has the backing of a lawyer who has taken on the case.
Tiffany Elton purchased her first home in July 2020, but soon learned the property had significant issues — the biggest being that the structure had been a fire-damaged commercial garage.
Contractors have provided her with two options to deal with myriad structural and electrical defects outlined by the City of St. John's, after Elton approached the municipality with her concerns.
Both remediation and rebuilding, she said, cost about the same as the purchase price she paid nearly two years ago.
"I need $160,000 and I need to tear down and rebuild the house in 4½ months because the deadline (with the city) is fast approaching," Elton said in a recent interview.
"There seems to be three separate building issues. One being that it was a garage, so it is still structurally a garage. Then there's across the front foundation where the garage door was. Then there's the fire issues."
Elton purchased what she believed was a recently renovated bungalow but soon began unraveling details about the history of 11 Summer St. after rodents found a way into her home.
She discovered the building was a commercial garage that had been converted to a residential home decades before, without the proper permits from the city. The garage had been in a significant fire, and the structure was charred black.
Elton was issued a long list of fine notices by the City of St. John's after she alerted them to the issues. She has until September to rectify all of the defects. If she doesn't, she could have to pay up or get out.
"Sometimes when you notify an authority about an issue, it backfires," said lawyer Joe Thorne, a partner in the St. John's office of Stewart McKelvey.
"Calling in the city was intended to address a certain issue that she had and now the city has gone in and said, 'Well, there's no occupancy permits for this house and you have major structural issues.'"
Thorne took on Elton's case pro bono after seeing her story profiled by CBC Investigates in January.
"Honestly, my heart just went out to her," he said.
"She's really been was a victim of her circumstances, and whether or not someone is legally responsible for that, she is a victim of the process and I really wanted to help out if we could."
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