City asked to enforce bylaws at student housing
Noisy parties, drunkenness cited by annoyed neighbours
Etobicoke senior Wanda Wloch tried everything - calling bylaw enforcement, police, the fire department, her local councillor - to deal with the rowdy Humber College students occupying a house on her street. At one point, she even resorted to the old standby: a broom.
"The fourth time it happened, I went and I took my broom," said Wloch, outside Friday, April 11 meeting of Toronto's licensing committee, where she was petitioning for tougher bylaw enforcement on off-campus student housing.
"And this one fellow was there, and I started to talk to him. I don't know what I said, but I just whacked him across the behind - right there," she said, indicating a reporter's buttock. "Now I know that you can't hit in the head, because that's very dangerous. But on the bum is OK. He grabbed the broom and threw it over there. About five minutes later he went and got it for me. But I should have whacked him harder."
Wloch, who lives on Briarwood Avenue in Etobicoke, shared that and other stories with committee members: details about drunken parties, tenants climbing onto roofs and looking into neighbours' windows and heavy drug and alcohol use.
"They get so bad with the drugs that one of my friends had to call 911 - one girl was sleeping on the corner of the street half-naked," Wloch said. "My friend had to put a T-shirt on her before the police could move her - being a woman she could accuse them of something."
Wloch's story drew out a rush of frustrations that unregulated student housing - and other illegal rooming house situations - are creating across the city.
Ward 8 (York West) Councillor Anthony Perruzza said students living in new housing built on York University lands over the past decade are causing headaches for neighbours - and he said because the problems are as much behavioural - youth being youth - as they are property issues, it's difficult to deal with it.
"They're going to have their parties on their balconies or in their collective back yards - they're going to do these things and it creates a lot of difficulty for the neighbours."
Committee chair Howard Moscoe (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence) moved a motion asking staff to look in to ways to enforce existing city bylaws and also to ask the city's affordable housing committee to explore ways to build more affordable student housing for post-secondary institutions.
Ward 33 (Don Valley East) Councillor Shelley Carroll applauded the move to try and raise the standard of student housing and to deal with the issue of rooming houses.
"Clearly this isn't just an issue of student housing," said Carroll, whose ward includes Seneca College. "It sounds to me like staff understand they have to take a good hard look at it. While I have a terrible problem and (Ward 29, Scarborough-Agincourt) Councillor (Mike) Del Grande has a terrible problem, we do have to look at it from both perspectives."
