Winnipeg high-rise residents decry compensation offer for weeks without water

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This article was published 29/10/2021 (1469 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For two weeks, Walter Beaulieu’s routine was punctuated by a practice of hauling water.

Several times a day — sometimes late at night — he would load a shopping cart with buckets and bottles, make his way to the laundry room of a nearby building to fill up, and trek back to his wheelchair-bound neighbour’s apartment to help fill the toilet tank for a flush. Then, he would do it all over again for himself.

“It was just too much for me, I was having anxiety attacks, I was panicking all the time,” the 54-year-old tenant of 400 Webb Pl. says on a phone call this week.

“There were nights I would cry because I couldn’t do it all. And to see other people suffering like that? It was just like hell for us.”

Between Sept. 17 and Oct. 1, many residents of the 21-storey downtown Winnipeg apartment building were responsible for hauling water to and from their suites after a pipe in the building burst. Floors 1 through 16 had cold water only; the top five floors had nothing.

Now those residents are organizing to demand better compensation from the management company that left them out to dry.

“There was nothing we could do, we were just hopeless,” Beaulieu says of the weeks he spent tending to elderly, disabled neighbours left without a safe water supply. “We’re not supposed to live like that.”

When water returned Oct. 1, property manager Cityscape Residence Corp. offered residents a discount of $100 off that month’s rent to compensate for their troubles.

Residents, who formed the 400 Webb Tenant Association to advocate for themselves while the water was shut off, are asking instead for $500 per unit in compensation.

“I think almost everyone accepted the $100, but they did so under duress,” says Collin Wynter, a resident who helped organize the tenant association. “If you don’t pay rent it’s weighted in the landlord’s favour — you can’t not pay rent.”

The group met midway through the month, and decided the $100 discount was meagre compared to the financial and emotional stress of weeks without water. Tenants expressed frustration they were not invited to negotiate fair compensation for their troubles.

“We agreed it’s not acceptable,” says Wynter. “I’m carting up buckets of water to fill the toilet tank. That took up a lot of time, energy, not to mention we were still being charged full price — we thought at the time — for rent.”

Residents of the building, which forms part of the Place Promenade apartment complex behind Portage Place shopping centre, say they were not notified when the water shut off, and it took several days before the managers created a plan for residents to access water in the laundry room of nearby 410 Webb Pl, or from a rented City of Winnipeg water tank.

Meantime, the company was difficult to get in touch with, says Wynter, and not available to help residents in the first few days without water.

Several tenants in the building are newcomers, he added, while others are on disability or employment assistance and faced physical and financial difficulties securing clean water.

Through the month of September, another resident, who asked not to be named, began living from his car and office, sneaking into his work bathroom an hour before his shift to clean up and brush his teeth. He worked 12-hour days to stay out of his home as late as possible.

“It is inconvenient for all,” he says. “It inconvenienced my life.”

He adds when the water did come on, it was visibly tainted with rust for several days.

“It was dirty,” he says. “The water was contaminated… it was very cold also.”

There were portable toilets installed on the main floor. Some residents showered in a nearby building; they ordered food from restaurants; they bought potable water.

“(Cityscape Residence Corp.) tried to give us $100 compensation for all of that, and a lot of us are saying, that’s not enough,” Beaulieu says.

The tenant association says a letter of request was submitted to the rental company Oct. 14, with a demand it respond by Oct. 21. As of Oct. 28, no response had been received.

Cityscape Residence Corp. declined Free Press requests for comment Friday.

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jsrutgers