Tenants at Park Victoria are fed up with broken promises to resolve an infestation of pests including ants, cockroaches and bed bugs throughout the south end apartment building
Y. Park, a long-time tenant at 1333 South Park Street, has been living with the problem for weeks inside his apartment. But he’s not alone.
“There are other tenants who have suffered from this way longer than I have,” says Park.
Together, those tenants have been trying to get the building’s property managers to exterminate the problem. But so far, they say, the response from the landlords has been elusive at best.
Park first contacted CAPREIT, which owns the apartment building, about a month ago when his family noticed cockroaches. The Toronto-based real estate investment trust treated his apartment but the pests remained.
“I don’t know how sincere they are, but it doesn’t really work,” says Park. “I saw a lot of cockroaches going in and out of homes in the hallway and pretty much hanging out in the laundry room.”
Park’s mother suggested he find out how many other tenants had pests, so he put up posters in the elevators asking who else had a problem. Very quickly, his neighbours began to compare stories.
It became clear there were pests on several floors, with bed bugs having been seen on seven of the building’s 21 levels.
As tenants milled through the elevators and hallways of the building they began to share and compare experiences—first as casual conversations, then in an organized group chat.
The number of tenants in the group chat has now grown to more than a dozen people who say CAPREIT has failed to fulfill the promises it made to renters.
The Coast has spoken to several of the chat’s members and viewed photographs of the pests and discarded furniture. Most did not wish to be named, fearing reprisal from their landlords or the social stigma from having bedbugs. Park Victoria’s property managers refused to comment on the infestation and CAPREIT’s head office failed to respond before publication deadlines.
Two tenants in the group chat say they anticipated an infestation after seeing furniture abandoned and left for days. One mattress, left in the hallway with a sign reading, “Bed Bugs, don’t touch,” sat unattended for four days.
Official extermination notices from CAPREIT—for ants on the top floors, cockroaches and bed bugs living in the walls—seem to have been either ignored or forgotten.
In several cases, tenants received notices urging them to prepare for chemical sprays, steam vacuums and heat treatments that never arrived, or arrived so sporadically that pests continued to thrive in the walls. A work order left in one tenant’s apartment by an extermination company showed infestations in dozens of other units.
While the problem worsens, tenants are still expected to pay rent. At least one group member says they saw their rent increase, despite infestations in nearby units and shortly before finding bed bugs in their own apartment.
One renter, an international student living in Halifax for the first time, has joined others in deciding to move out.
Park Victoria, with its convenient location close to universities and the downtown, has a history of attracting international students as tenants, and many of the group chat’s members are newcomers to Canada. Many of them are also afraid speaking out will lead to reprisal from the property owner.
“They don’t really want to bring it up to management because they’re really scared of backlash,” says Park. “They weren’t born here, so there are no people to coach them about the law here.”
The Halifax Bed Bug Registry has reports of bed bugs and cockroaches at Park Victoria between 2012 and 2016. The pest problem seems to return in waves every few years. Park, who has seen management change two times in his seven years living at the building, says that despite attempts to meet with management and promises to deal with each unit individually, tenants no longer believe CAPREIT is interested in solving the problem.
“They should more openly, proactively communicate with tenants,” he says. “Management always tries to talk to tenants about other issues. Anything else, they print out letters and slip it under the door or try to call tenants. But when it comes to bed bugs, pests and hygiene issues, they’re very quiet. It’s very evasive. They don’t want to talk about it.”
That’s why, against the advice of his mother, Park went public on behalf of his neighbours.
“This is your job,” he says of the property manager, “but this is our home.”
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This article appears in Sep 27 – Oct 3, 2018.
That sounds like an awful situation for all the tenants and must have spillover impact on the related businesses who must be worrying (restaurant, e.g.). We need massive public education for incoming students on how their poor garbage habits are impacting this whole city. Why are landlords in student houses not giving them better information on their responsibilities and then checking/cleaning up their messes? We all have to live with the resulting rodents/bugs. Almost every rental unit in the university neighbourhoods has a pest box outside but that’s not enough. Secure your garbage, dispose of it properly and clean up your messy kitchen! And then…this landlord needs to take responsibility for the mess it’s allowed to be created and clean it up.
Dear concerned Residents:
At CAPREIT we take the issue of pest control very seriously and when work proceeds with the cooperation and partnership of our residents, we can manage the issue.
Our investment in pest control programs in Halifax, including Park Victoria, in terms of time, and money has not been slight. In 2016 we were the first in the area to purchase heat treatment machines, costing over $130,000 each, and hire specialised skilled staff to run the units. These units have been shown to be one of the most effective treatments for pest issues and we are showing great success in their use. We will continue to use this treatment method at Park Victoria. We also utilize highly trained canine units to help identify problem areas, and supplement heat and canine programs with more traditional cleaning and other treatments.
In the last few years we have spent over $1 Million dollars in Halifax to monitor, control and treat any pest issues that arise. We are also constantly evaluating our vendors and technologies to make changes when the results are not to our standards.
We work with residents to teach them how to avoid pests, and if they find a problem, how they should immediately report. We also educate people on the preparation that they need to undertake to make treatments a success. When we have cooperation from residents, who take pride in their homes, we have a very high success rate in our pest treatment programs.
We are confident that any problems at Park Victoria can be controlled and will work diligently to this result.
good lord. this can’t be news.
i was an employee at the park Vic in 2011, and this was a known problem. it has been a known problem for years.
pest control attends to multiple floors daily.
good luck.
as a current resident of Park Vic, I can’t tell you how ridiculous how awful the building really is. We received a letter a few days ago threatening all tenants with fines for not disposing of trash properly… the problem is, the chutes and hardly ever emptied, which tenants have no control over, but then we get blamed for leaving garbage near the chutes instead of putting garbage down them.
Hey Park Victoria, do you even have standards? You’re trying to dilute my comments made to The Coast that I tried delivering as candid as possible, but I reported cockroaches issues more than 4-5 times since last year (when things started getting worse), and you did not do much anything real about eradicating the pests? I know you did not clean the carpets of corridors of my floor – and garbages are still left at the chute/”refuse” area daily. Get things straight, I clean my apartment unit daily and we leave no food/crumbs/garbage unattended, so no victim shaming here. I keep my vicinity very clean, sometimes unnecessarily clean. If there should be any changes, they should start from YOUR management straightening out building quality/hygiene standards first and apologize tenants who have been left helpless about this situation for a prolonged period of time. At least never insinuate your tenants do not cooperate. It’s utterly shameful.
The problem is not just at Park Vic. Many large buildings owed by corporate businesses are experiencing the very same issue. The worst part is that the city does absolutely nothing to address the issue on a large-scale resulting in this problem continuing now for many years.
Further to the aforementioned complaints about pest infestation, how about dealing with the black mold found in one apartment in particular on the 18th floor? The bathroom vent was so clogged with dust and lord knows what else that it couldn’t possibly work without starting a fire. The floors in this particular apartment are warped and swollen. Also, the painting contractors are painting over food splattered on the walls and yup you guessed it right over the ceiling mold in the bathroom! I would like building inspectors along with public health to do a random inspection of this building. I think they would agree that it should be condemned. I was never so disgusted in my entire life while helping my son move in and then immediately move out of this building. Black mold is very hazardous for anyone with respiratory illnesses. Let’s also note the green moss growing on the balcony…I didn’t dare check the status of the fire escape or the state of the laundry rooms as the garbage in the hallways (old furniture, beds, etc) were enough to tell me this wasn’t the place for our son to live while trying to better himself at university. The tenants next to my son’s apartment had been waiting for quite a few hours to get their apartment “cleaned and fumigated” but had to move their furniture in because they could only have the elevator for a specific time frame (understandable when several people were trying to move in). However, the infestations of cockroaches and bedbugs would have moved right into their furniture…my skin is crawling just thinking about it!