McIvor Court residents hold rally over safety concerns

Residents of a south-side Thunder Bay social housing building say they're "fed up" over ongoing criminal incidents there.

Residents of McIvor Court — which is owned and operated by the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board (TBDSSAB) — held a rally at the building earlier today.

"Residents are wanting to voice their concerns with things that have been happening here," said Tracey MacKinnon, a resident of McIvor Court and one of the rally's organizers. "It's been getting worse."

"I thought (Friday) would be a perfect day, kind of a play on words for Valentine's Day," she said. "Kind of like, 'DSSAB, where's our love,' right?"

MacKinnon said drug trafficking takes place in the building, with non-residents regularly on the premises.

"I hear pounding and knocking and a lot of traffic all the time of the day, all time of the night," she said.

People will then be found sleeping or using drugs in the building's stairwells, or other areas, MacKinnon said.

"Every morning we have the maintenance crew having to clean up a lot of things they shouldn't have to clean up," she said. "That's not fair to us. It's not fair to them. I think we have a housing issue, a poverty issue, so many crises and epidemics."

"They're all related, and this is kind of ground zero, if I can call it that."

McIvor Court was the scene of a homicide earlier this year, and a woman was charged with arson over a structural fire there last June.

"Every day something new," said resident Gordon Malcolm. "You hear people, you don't know what's going on, you don't want to know because you don't want to open your door."

"People are afraid," he said. "

Malcolm said he understands the need for people to find somewhere warm to stay, especially during the winter.

The TBDSSAB does have 12-hour, overnight security at the site, Malcolm said. However, he said there are two security officers on site at a time.

"Two guys against, the other day I counted 24 people in the staircase," Malcolm said.

TBDSSAB CEO Ken Ranta said onsite security is just one component of how the board is approaching the issue.

"People aren't breaking into the building, they're being let in," he said. "If a tenant of the building lets an individual in, that circumvents every other measure that we have in place, whether that be security guards on site or security cameras or door locks."

"We don't have a number of individuals that break into the building, and that's part of the challenge," he said. "People have asked us and stated, you know, quite bluntly, 'why don't you evict the troublemaking tenants?'"

"It's certainly one of the options we have available to us. If there's a legal matter that has been a breach of our lease or security or some other activity that is grounds for evicting an individual, we will do so."

However, Ranta said, there are procedures that must be followed when evicting a resident, and that process takes time.

"That delay causes great frustration to the tenants in the building who see a problem perhaps today and would like that problem dealt with today," he said. "We will take every legal means possible at our fingertips to make sure that we take the appropriate actions."

"We involve police, we involve education. We have other community groups that come in to work with our tenants."

Malcolm said many of the residents of McIvor Court are elderly, and disabled.

"So what are they gonna do if something violent happens? Nothing," he said.

And the problem, tenants said, has been going on for a long time: CBC Thunder Bay did a story on issues at the building back in 2013.

Ranta said other measures that have been implemented at the building include electronic locks and video surveillance.

"I wish I could say the challenges we face are isolated to this particular home, this particular property," he said. "We're seeing an increase in concerns in our community in general."

"We work very closely with our police and  of course share information. What we're seeing as a community has increased over the last 10 years," Ranta said. "We're not seeing less violent crime, we're not seeing less opioid addictions, we're not seeing less behavioural issues due to lack of medical or health supports."

"We're not seeing less criminal activity with respect to Toronto gangs or guns," he said. "I'm not trying to minimize what's happening in any particular location, but it's prevalent throughout the community. It's not isolated to this particular property."