Letter to the Editor – Tim Bird of Oshawa Frustrated After Million Dollar Fire – Sept 26, 2014

Please accept this as a letter to the editor, or as a news story lead:

I write this letter out of pure frustration with Oshawa City Hall.  For 7 years our community has been “boring” our City officials with warnings that their ridiculous approach to the student housing issue, would spawn some catastrophic event.

Well on Sept 24, it finally happened.  There have been dozens of close calls, but this time two student lodging houses burnt, causing over $1,000,000 in damages.  As a community, we are only dumb lucky that no one was injured or killed.

In our quest to turn around their mindless approach, we have discovered and shared the following with all City officials, mayors and councillors:

– In 2009 The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that these houses were illegal.  But the City decided to give them licenses to operate anyway.

– We attained copies of some license applications, which showed the City had awarded licenses to houses which failed the fire inspection.

– In 2012 we shared this evidence with this council and with City officials.

In return for our concerns of the young people in these houses, we have been met with arrogance, indifference and we were even laughed at by one councillor.  That councillor has been uncharacteristically quiet on Facebook, since this fire occurred.

Best Regards

Tim Bird