“We had to live in a construction zone”: One Toronto family’s four-month insurance nightmare
When their home suffered water damage, the Ghassemis looked to their insurer for support. Getting it was a roller coaster
Our house, a modest 105-year-old three-bedroom semi-detached at Yonge and Lawrence, has been through a lot—and so have we. My husband, Kourosh, and I bought it in 2019, about a year and a half after I had my first son, Givan, and while I was pregnant with my second son, Tiam. We signed up for property, car and life insurance with Co-operators at the same time.
Over Family Day weekend this year, I noticed a yellow stain in the corner of our living room ceiling. At first, we didn’t think much of it—maybe a pipe had sprung a small leak—but day by day, the yellow stain grew, bubbling the paint and peeling away the plaster until part of the ceiling came down. At the same time, we noticed a leak above our window in the kitchen.
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We’re used to fixing things ourselves, and Kourosh was reluctant to make a claim with our insurer. We were struggling through this economy like everyone else, and we didn’t want our premiums to go up. But we’d been paying about $700 per month for home, auto and life insurance—more than $45,000 over six years—without drawing funds for any property-related claims. Support in a situation like this was exactly what we were paying for, so I called our insurance provider on March 3 to open a claim for both the living room corner and the smaller issue in the kitchen. It was a simple call that took no more than 10 minutes.
A few days later, Co-operators sent out a contractor from a company called First Onsite, a group the insurer regularly works with. I watched as the contractor inspected the damage. He found far more moisture saturation than just the yellowing corner—the walls, floors and ceilings beneath the second floor were all compromised by water damage caused by ice. My stomach dropped as I realized that our home was crumbling beneath our feet.
To make matters worse, the insurance company took close to three weeks to authorize any repairs. We were in their hands: there’s no way we could have taken on the financial burden ourselves. Later that week, our adjuster told us that only emergency damage would be covered, but no one could agree on what constituted emergency damage.
Finally, on March 21, three weeks after we made the initial call, a representative from the company called to tell us it would cover the damages in two claims, one for the living room and one for the kitchen. They quoted us about $4,690 for drying, demolition and sanitization in the living room and the connecting upper floor and about $1,620 for the smaller damage in the kitchen. We decided to start with the more urgent repairs to the living room first and deal with the kitchen later.
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I was so relieved that I actually yelled hallelujah when they told me. The timing coincided happily with the Iranian New Year. My parents were coming to visit from Iran for three months starting in June, and I wanted to host them in a house that wasn’t falling apart.
On that call, I asked about temporary accommodation should we need it. Our premium package was supposed to cover additional living expenses of up to $123,000, which seemed like more than enough for a few weeks in a modest Airbnb. The adjuster told us that we’d be covered if the work caused the home to be unlivable. The coverage wouldn’t include mould removal should they find mould, but we had to accept their deal and move forward. I kept thinking, Let’s just get this over with.
The following week, First Onsite showed up again and blocked off half of the house using tarps. Giant industrial fans and dehumidifiers filled the living room and the primary bedroom above it, which were now walled off by tarps that also partially covered our spiral staircase. We were told that the fans had to run non-stop for two weeks. The droning was unbearable. Kourosh and I took turns working from home to supervise the contractors, and we had to take video calls outside in the cold. All of our furniture and belongings had to be crammed into the other half of the house, so there was little room for us to move around freely. But, more than anything, I worried for our children’s safety. I kept imagining them slipping on the tarps or hurting themselves on the machinery.
I moved us into the basement to escape the noise, but since our only usable washroom was on the second floor, I often had to carry the kids, who are five and seven, up through the scary obstacle course that was now our house.
We endured the fans for two weeks, which felt like two years, but at least it meant the issue was being addressed. Then, when the two weeks ended, no one came by to turn them off. In fact, everyone working on our case disappeared. Another two weeks went by, and still nothing. I didn’t want to turn off the machines myself and risk negating the work that had been done, so we just waited. Eventually a subcontractor confirmed that we shouldn’t touch them. In the meantime, I was calling Co-operators every couple of days for clarity on next steps, but no one would answer the phone or respond to my voicemails or emails. I was so desperate that I started texting with a kind subcontractor who had given me his number, but his boss had to politely ask me to stop calling because he couldn’t help us until the insurer gave him the go-ahead.
Finally, at the end of April, more than a month after they’d set up the machines, the subcontractor texted me to say they had been authorized to turn off the fans and start the next phase: demolition of the damaged areas. Even though I got the news third-hand, I was relieved.
On April 23, the demolition started. It was loud, dusty work. They ripped up drywall, tore into the ceiling, removed the flooring and tossed it all into a giant dumpster that began to fill with pieces of our home. Thankfully, it took only two days, and they didn’t find any mould. I asked when the rebuilding would start, assuming it would be the following day, and one of the contractors gave me an incredulous look. “Oh, that’s not us,” he said. “We’re just demolition.”
No one told me what the plan was to rebuild our home. It was a gutted and gaping mess with an exposed attic, open walls and wide holes in the second floor. We lived that way for a month without a project manager or a timeline for repairs. Our house was already old; now it was protected only by flimsy sheets. Rodents could easily be making their way in through the rafters, and it was more susceptible to mould if extreme weather hit. I called or emailed Co-operators nearly every day. I had nightmares of insects crawling into my children’s ears as they slept. We needed our insurer to deal with the mess immediately or find us somewhere else to live.
On May 17, I demanded that they finish the project by May 31 or cover the cost of an Airbnb comparable to our home in our neighbourhood. Three days later, they replied, but only to say they had approved the estimate for the rebuild. They wouldn’t commit to an accelerated timeline or tell us when the building would start. They said only that, once the rebuild started, it would take six to eight weeks.
I lost it. When would the work start? September? Or later still? That’s when they suggested another option: if we wanted to speed up the timeline, we could find our own contractor and get refunded around $24,500 later. Doing that while looking for a suitable Airbnb was a burden, but it was worth it to regain a sense of control over our lives. I scrambled and found a detached three-bedroom nearby that we could live in for six to eight weeks for approximately $19,365, and when I asked if it would be covered under our additional living expenses, our adjuster said it was “perfectly fine” and that we could move there when construction started.
Five days later, a new Co-operators employee took over our case. The first thing she did was try to walk back all of our previous agreements. Many of the conversations I’d had with adjusters were frustrating, but no one until her had made me feel bullied or belittled. She told me that, because we had water and electricity, the house was considered livable. I asked her if she’d insure a house like ours, one missing crucial pieces of walls, floors and ceilings. “No,” she admitted, but she wouldn’t agree that it was unsafe for us to continue living here.
She denied both the Airbnb approval and the $25,000 claim. I sent her screenshots from my correspondence with the previous adjuster to persuade her to honour the claims, and eventually she conceded to the rebuild claim. But she wouldn’t budge about covering an Airbnb for the construction period. She would offer only $4,500 from our additional living expenses coverage, as what she called a “courtesy.”
I asked her for a justification. All she could come up with was that the home I’d found wasn’t comparable because it was fully detached, not semi-detached like ours. Had she sent us a similar home in our neighbourhood for that much, I would have taken it gladly, but all we could find for $4,500 was a basement apartment for two weeks, which we accepted just to escape the final stretch of construction.
We couldn’t afford anything else out of pocket, so we had to stay put for the first six weeks, through the sanding, sawing and hammering that started at the beginning of June. Around that time, Israel bombed Iran, my home country. I barely had time to grieve or reach out to friends back home as the construction zone swallowed up all of my attention. Thankfully, my parents had arrived in Toronto safely on June 4, about a week before the bombing started, but I was still embarrassed to host them in our half-built home.
We’ve started the work of filing a complaint with the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario. The first step was requesting a final position letter from the insurer, a firm statement of what they’ll cover. Ours confirms that Co-operators will not cover more than $4,500 of our additional living expenses—$14,500 less than our original adjuster agreed to—but it mentions that we can hire a lawyer if we disagree. After months of unclear communication and life in a demolition site, I can’t face another fight, let alone legal fees. But I hope the complaint process brings me a modicum of justice.
Four months after our nightmare started, we finally returned home. There’s still painting to do and dust to sweep up. Our kids are looking forward to spreading their toys out on clean floors instead of keeping them in suitcases. My parents will be here until September, and I’m glad we finally have space for them. We’ve since switched providers for home and car insurance, but because Kourosh and I are 48 and 45, respectively, we’ve had to keep our original life insurance policy. Giving it up now would mean a much higher premium and a vastly reduced payout.
I’ll never sign another contract without first scrutinizing the fine print. Families pay to be protected, and they deserve a solid roof over their heads, so when I considered four different insurance plans after leaving Co-operators, I made sure to find out how each defined a “livable” home. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the stress, fear and helplessness of feeling abandoned exactly when we needed our insurer most.
In response to a request for comment from Toronto Life, Co-operators wrote, “While Co-operators strives to support our clients through the challenges of a loss and the insurance claim process, we recognize that clients may be unhappy with the process or their claim decision.” The company also noted that it has several dispute review mechanisms, including a complaint management process, reviews by client volunteers and an ombudsperson service, but it declined to comment on this case due to privacy and confidentiality concerns.
