Uprooted again.
That’s how Karen Joseph feels about her life right now, after she, her son and numerous residents in a College Avenue apartment building were abruptly told to leave their homes over the weekend.
“It’s disheartening. I have no hope. It’s inhumane,” she said.
Tenants were given little notice to leave the building, and workers could be seen removing items from their suites. Those workers are said to have looked intimidating.
“They had almost like a homemade baton made out of a carved stick and a leather strap,” she said.
An outreach coordinator from St. Boniface Street Links saw the same thing, founder Marion Willis said, adding it was “as though it was being used as a weapon.”
There are also some reports of those workers breaking tenants’ property, and throwing it out.
“I thought they were helping me, and they were throwing my stuff in the trash and I was like ‘Don’t. It’s not garbage. It’s my stuff. That’s my personal stuff,’” Joseph said.
Ivy Palmer, whose brother was one of the tenants, said, “They were taking everything apart, like all the electrical.”
Joseph said the property managers were also around, offering residents money to leave.
“The first two options I got was either, ‘You can take the money for the month, or we’ll put you in a rooming house.’” she said, but noted her circumstances won’t allow her to stay in such accommodations.
On Tuesday morning, she was offered $1,000 to leave with whatever she could take by 3 p.m., and to abandon the rest.
“What am I going to sleep on? I can’t leave my bed. I can’t leave my microwave, or my son’s TV and his bed. They just expect me to take a few bags and go,” Joseph said.
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“It’s not right. People should be given proper notice, written notice, not just ‘go.’”
Megan Levasseur, another resident of the apartments, said she didn’t exactly get the chance to save her belongings.
“I wasn’t able to come home on Friday. They wouldn’t let me in the apartment, or in the building, at all,” she said, referencing there were “a lot of guys there aggressively not letting us in.”
The next day, she asked if she could save some things from her apartment, but was bewildered by what came next.
“It was empty. Empty. Like I wasn’t able to save nothing,” she said.
Everything she has now is in one suitcase.
“I have no words right now. It’s so shocking. It’s crazy, it takes your breath away. You just come home to nothing. Where’s your stuff? Where are you going to go? I’m not even getting the 400 bucks of rent back,” she said.
Palmer said her brother was offered a month’s rent and $200 to leave.
“(He) called Saturday morning and I could hear somebody swearing in the background and telling him he has to go.”
More disconcerting, she could hear the man saying, “Nobody cares about you guys. You guys need to just take your money and go. We’ll set you up with housing,” she said.
As a social worker, she said she’s seen things like this before, but the weight still bears heavy on her.
“It’s extremely frustrating. It’s appalling. I can’t even believe that we treat humans like this,” she said.
Willis said many of the tenants in the apartment used to live in homeless encampments, and had been re-homed by her organization. Some, she said, were getting their lives turned around.
“Then, just out of nowhere like this, you’re out and you’re homeless again, and where do you go?” she said. “All the gains that have been made are soon lost.”
In an emailed statement to Global News, the City of Winnipeg said the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service attended the residence, and noted some fire safety systems were not operational.
However, the city did not order the building to be vacated. It was the owner’s decision.
“In my view it was illegal, it was the most blatant form of human discrimination I’ve witnessed in recent years. It’s disgusting,” Willis said.
Lanawae Housing Centre told Global News they are in the process of moving people out, but insisted they were ensuring residents had alternate accommodations.
Palmer mentioned her brother had been relocated to an apartment, but it was far from livable.
“On Sunday he took the key, his friend came to help move his stuff, he went to the apartment and it was full of urine, feces, toilet overflowing… it’s disgusting,” she said.
Willis said she will be filing a formal complaint with the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, and has also reached out to the Winnipeg Police Service as well as Manitoba’s minister of addictions, homelessness and housing, Bernadette Smith.
“These were people who paid rent to be there. The condition of the building, how people lived, is not the story here… These people, the people that were living in that building, were treated like they were less than human,” she said.
— with files from Global’s Marney Blunt