JHM Journalism Foundation » The Johnnies » 2008 Winners » Investigative
2008 Winners - Investigative
Students fight eviction during housing crisis
By Laura Keil
Sheaf (University of Saskatchewan)
Mrs. Sheore has been living in Greystone Heights Apartments with her husband and adult son for four years. But the three-building apartment complex is now slated for demolition to make room for new condominiums. Everyone inside has been issued eviction notices, throwing them headlong into the worst housing crunch on Saskatoon’s record.
Sheore attends an English as a Second Language class across the street from the complex at Greystone School. The family’s brightly-lit apartment is also a ten-minute walk away from the university, where her husband is a scientist and her son is finishing his master’s degree in electrical engineering.
They have been given until Oct. 31 to move out.
Over 50 families live in the complex. Largely student and immigrant families who have ties to the university, they have formed a lobby group and have sent letters to the landlord, the city, the university, and the Graduate Students’ Society of the University of Saskatchewan. In a letter to the building’s management dated August 16th, the tenants call the eviction “extremely untimely,” creating a situation “whereby it will be exceedingly difficult, unrealistic, and agonizing to vacate the apartment complex as asked.”A move in October would disrupt the school year for children already enrolled at Greystone Heights, they say. “The proposed eviction comes to us as a terrible and incomprehensible shock,” the letter reads. “We find [it] very astonishing and unwelcoming.”
And, like many families at Greystone Heights, the Sheores cannot find a new apartment.
The city’s housing boom began six months ago, and the average rent has almost doubled in the past two years. Many blame apartment-to-condo conversions such as the one affecting Greystone Heights for unreasonable lending prices and decreasing rental options. The province suggested that Saskatoon place a temporary ban on converting low rent apartments into more lucrative condominiums, but the proposal was shut down by city council in August.
In April, the city-wide vacancy rate sat at a mere three per cent. Now, the coalition of residents at Greystone is asking to stay in the building until June, which would give them more flexibility to relocate.
“Students have more options in the summer,” says Mrs. Sinha, one of the lobby’s contacts. “Otherwise students must run around while doing their studies.”
Nitya Khanal, Jhadeswas Muomu, Anand Tripathy, and Sarjeev Sethi are four graduate students at the University of Saskatchewan who are being forced to relocate their families from Greystone Heights apartments by the end of October.
Khanal, a master’s student in plant science, is raising three children with his wife. He insisted that grad students receive limited funding and many affordable rental units outlaw children, limiting his living arrangements even more.
Both he and Tripathy pointed out that the waiting lists for the university high rises are six months long. If the eviction had come last June, Khanal says he could have at least moved without disrupting his childrens’ school year.
To make matters worse, graduate students are not eligible for the UPASS, adding the cost of transportation to their bill if they cannot find accommodations in the area.
Three of Saskatoon’s post-secondary institutions have started free online boarding registries, allowing property owners to offer boarding opportunities to students.
The University of Saskatchewan’s administration has also waived user fees on the university’s housing registry for two weeks. The university’s administration is now considering opening lounges for students and even renting out entire hotel floors.
Khanal said that he checks the USSU’s housing listing every day, but for a family of five, the option of boarding with another family is not realistic.
The eviction notices at Greystone Heights, were distributed at the beginning of August in an un-dated letter with an illegible signature at the bottom. The letter had only the name of the management company; some letters were not signed at all.
This is an important detail, said the tenants. According to Section 60 of the Rental Tenancies Act, if tenants wish to dispute their eviction notice, it must be within 15 days of receiving it. After 15 days, the act says, “the tenant is deemed to have accepted that the tenancy ends on the effective date of the notice.”
The eviction notice Mrs. Sheore and her family received was not dated, and there was no envelope.
According to the Act, even if the notice is indeed not valid the landlord may still issue a proper eviction notice as long as it is dated one month before the eviction date.
While the eviction notice states that the management will help tenants find suitable accommodation in the area, none of the tenants have been able to contact the manager or managers directly. Even though the manager also lives at Greystone Heights, they were unable to deliver their letter of protest in person.
“We mailed it Express,” says Khanal. “We have not heard anything since then.”
According to Rob Hanson, a lawyer and nominee in the provincial constituency that includes Greystone Heights, the city is not doing enough to relieve the crisis.
While the city is partnering with affordable housing organizations like the Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) and the Saskatoon Housing Coalition for future housing projects, he believes that in the case of the Greystone Heights Apartments “the city is not going to interpret their policy the way I would hope.”
City Counsellor Charlie Clark said that he is sympathetic to the families at Greystone Heights who are facing eviction, but admits that the city has no policy to delay the demolishment of useable apartments, even as demand for housing continues to outrun supply.
There is a mandatory two-year waiting period to convert an apartment block to condos, but no such time guarantee exists for demolishing the same building in order to build condos on the land, as is the plan with the Greystone Heights buildings.
“I don’t know what our stance is on this. It’s not on Tuesday’s agenda as far as I know,” said Clark.
According to Clark, the city has allowed building projects to go ahead with the view that the new buildings will be more beneficial when they are completed in one or two years.
That will be too late for many, says Sethi, a recent Ph.D. grad who lives at Greystone Heights.
Sheore and her family represent many in Saskatoon who are anxious about where they will stay this winter. The Sheores have been able to absorb the rent increases in their current building, but once they are evicted, like many middle-class residents in the city, finding a suitable place to live will be extremely difficult. Like other residents, she fears the break-up of their community and the ties within it.
“Our apartment is its own community,” said Tripathy. “If we need to leave our kids, we can leave them across the hall with our neighbours, and they can [do so] also.”
Khanal, who has two years left in his Ph.D. thesis, cannot simply leave Saskatoon.
“I wish I could, but I can’t,” he said. “I’m halfway done my Ph.D.”
They are hoping that City Council will stabilize the housing crisis, and in their case, prevent the eviction until next spring. “They should intervene,” says Khanal. “That is our expectation. We don’t want to lose our home like this.”
