As the last remaining tenants of a 14-storey Regent Park building slated for demolition on Monday heaved their belongings into moving trucks on Friday, Candice McGowan said she and her two children are staying put.
Since February 2013, the 36-year-old single mother has been fighting eviction by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation for allegedly having “multiple loaded guns in her unit” and owing rent up to $2,500, according to TCHC spokesperson Sara Goldvine.
Since McGowan is no longer a “tenant in good standing,” McGowan says the TCHC has refused to relocate her to a different apartment — even temporarily, while the eviction hearings proceed through the Landlord and Tenant Board.
And so she, and her daughter Keanna 15, and son Johvon 13, are the only ones left, still occupying the three-bedroom apartment in the 14 Blevins Place building where they have lived since 2003.
McGowan, who claims there is no basis for the eviction, says they have no choice but to stay.
“We don’t have a Plan B. We would be homeless,” she says.
It will cost $10,000 per day to have demolition equipment and contractors sitting idle and waiting to work, the TCHC development director for Regent Park revitalization testified at a tribunal hearing on Sept. 25, according to a letter sent to McGowan Friday by TCHC lawyers.