Barbra Bois is dealing with some unwelcome visitors to her shoebox-like rental unit in downtown Sault Ste. Marie.
Her place is infested with rats — as many as half a dozen at once — that have been known to scurry around the pantry of food found in her tiny kitchenette.
This wasn’t exactly what Bois had in mind when she moved here from Sudbury, Ont. this past December, after being subjected to hundreds of rejections from prospective landlords across Ontario amid a national housing crisis.
“Nobody’s doing anything,” she told SooToday. “This place should be condemned. It’s uninhabitable. The list goes on and on with the issues.”
Bois lives at Midtown Residential, a former motel located at 40 Hynes St. that’s been converted into an apartment complex comprised of 36 bachelor units, five one-bedroom units and a single three-bedroom unit.
Since moving in a few months ago, Bois has been hearing multiple property-related complaints from her neighbours, including leaking ceilings and holes in the walls, in addition to vermin, bedbugs, ants and cockroaches.
Tenants there also say there’s a growing issue with black mould in their units, prompting concerns around their health and safety.
Bois was killing time outside of her unit when SooToday arrived on scene Monday afternoon, waiting for a contractor to fix the mess left behind by flooding to her place that happened in the early morning hours of March 15.
“Water was pouring in everywhere,” she said.
But her main issue is with the rats, who have essentially forced Bois to remain somewhat confined to her couch while they slink around her belongings.
She believes that neither her landlords nor the multiple agencies and officials she’s reached out to are going to do anything about it.
“I can’t cook. I can’t prepare food unless I’m constantly sanitizing,” Bois said.
“These rooms are 140 square feet at most — I’m confined to my couch because the rats are coming in day and night.
“I can’t live like this.”
Another tenant at Midtown Residential has also experienced vermin in his rental unit.
“Rats have chewed through a lot of my stuff, which sucks. I’m thankful that they haven’t chewed through certain things, because it would be devastating — it’s just clothes and stuff, and books,” Jordan Gauthier told SooToday.
“It’s stuff that shouldn’t have been destroyed in the first place.
“They should have this all taken care of.”
Jordan says the landlords — a property management company by the name of SID Management, a division of SID Developments — need to “take accountability for what they’re doing.”
“They’re neglecting us, they’re neglecting the property, and they’re just treating us like animals,” he said.
Terry Gauthier, who is Jordan’s father, has lived at 40 Hynes St. for about five years now, and was dealing with a leaking ceiling in his unit for years before eventually being relocated to another unit downstairs.
In January, the Landlord-Tenant Board ruled in Terry’s favour, ordering SID Management to repair the leaking ceiling in his former unit, the missing siding from the rear of the building, and the rotting patio deck on the building’s upper level.
The landlord was also ordered to pay the tenant a 25-per-cent rent abatement from May 1, 2022 to August 31, 2024.
Terry didn’t hold back when asked what his experience at Midtown Residential has been like.
“Stressful. I wanted to commit suicide because of all of the [expletive] lying and bullying they do,” he said of the property managers.
“Every time I catch them on stuff, they try to write me up and bully me — because they’re negligent in not fixing the roof.”
Both Terry and his son recently received identical N5 notices, threatening to evict them for allegedly accumulating trash in their units, drawing pests and removing smoke detectors, among other things.
The father and son deny those allegations.
“They’ve been bullying me because of all the stuff they’ve been doing to my dad, and him getting upset and stuff like that,” Jordan said.
“I got an eviction notice as well, and it says the exact same thing that my dad’s says.”
Messages to SID Management and SID Developments left by SooToday Monday requesting interviews have yet to be returned.
Freddie Pozzebon, chief building official and property standards officer for the City of Sault Ste. Marie, confirmed with SooToday that an inspection by bylaw enforcement was scheduled for Monday with respect to “property standards issues.”
Bois maintains that “everybody just keeps passing the buck,” when it comes to cracking down on SID Management, despite the property management company being slapped with a handful of orders from the city’s building division to comply with property standards.
For now, she is left to contend with the rats, who have started to gnaw on the power cords in her cramped living quarters.
“Who’s going to pay for my laundry, or who’s going to pay for the food to be replaced that the rats have been chewing on and walking all over?” she said.
“They have no answers — they just ignore the question.”
Zack Files Real Estate initially purchased a total of seven properties locally in 2021, including Midtown Residential. Records indicate that all of the properties were purchased simultaneously at a combined price tag of $2.65 million.
Aruba Butt — chief information officer for SID Developments and partner of Robby Clark, the former child actor behind SID Developments — signed for the purchase of the buildings as director of Zack Files Real Estate.
As previously reported by SooToday, Butt was one of four insolvent landlords behind a group of corporations that sought creditor protection in January 2024, claiming $144 million in debt and less than $100,000 in the bank.
This past December, the landlords lost 323 homes — representing 79 per cent of their real estate portfolio — after Ontario Superior Court approved the sale of the properties through a credit bid process involving numerous lenders.
SooToday wrote about Midtown Residential when it first opened as an affordable housing building in 2011. Back then the apartments appeared to be immaculate.