More than 35 people displaced after 2 buildings condemned in New Glasgow

Dozens of people in New Glasgow, N.S., were forced to leave their homes this week after town officials boarded up a pair of residential buildings and posted notices saying the properties had failed fire safety inspections.

New Glasgow fire Chief Ross White said in an interview that it was no longer safe for people to live in the buildings.

“We tried to work with the property owner but things kept deteriorating with the properties,” New Glasgow fire Chief Ross White said in an interview.

In a news release, White also said that fire inspectors had found “serious deficiencies” during an inspection last May. Those deficiencies weren’t rectified, according to the release, and led to Wednesday’s order to vacate.

The two properties are situated a few doors apart on Marsh Street and James Street near the town’s downtown. One of the buildings, which dates back to the 1800s, is known locally as the American House.

Both properties are owned by John Tomlik, who is in his 80s and had been living on the ground floor of one of the properties. Tomlik couldn’t be reached for comment.

Lisa Deyoung, who runs the town’s only homeless shelter, said there were seven paying tenants and more than two dozen others living in the American House, and two tenants living in the other building.

Deyoung said she wanted to offer lodging to those who were displaced but all of the beds in the shelter were full.

“Unfortunately there were some folks that did have to find a camping site,” she said. “There were some that slept in bank entrances and there were others that just kind of walked the neighbourhood, and there was another fellow that ended up at the hospital.”

One of the people who was forced to camp out in the freezing temperatures was Paul Boudreau. He said he had to quickly throw his belongings into a backpack to vacate the American House after living there for the past 12 years.

“Well, it’s always kind of been like the Wild West in there,” Boudreau said.

“But in the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of what you would call a bad element — IV drug users, drug dealers, thieves, people that just damage the building, threw all their garbage out in the yard and threatened people who were living there. And at the same time, the landlord was doing nothing.”

New Glasgow Mayor Nancy Dicks said concerns over liability prompted the town to act.

“If you know that a building is dangerous and something happens the next day and you haven’t done anything about it, technically I guess you would be liable for that as a municipality,” she said. “That’s what I would say about the timing of it.”

Deyoung’s shelter, called Viola’s Place Society, requested that anyone pitching a tent be permitted to do so in their parking lot so that those living in them would be close to the other services the shelter provides.

But town council rejected that proposal, Dicks said, because it didn’t think that allowing tents in that location was a solution for now or longer term.

The town and the Department of Community Services are trying to arrange suitable shelter for those who were displaced, Dicks said.