The Tenant From Hell: How a serial fraudster took advantage of Toronto’s red-hot real estate market
In the summer of 2014, Wilf Dinnick, a former news correspondent, accepted a job running Al Jazeera’s website in Doha, Qatar. He and his wife, Sonia Verma, a newspaper reporter, had settled in Toronto in 2009. They bought a beautiful four-bedroom brick semi at 47 Lakeview Avenue, near Dundas and Ossington, for $719,000. They loved the area—minutes from Trinity Bellwoods Park, steps from their favourite restaurants and cafés, and surrounded by neighbours who quickly became close friends. Rather than sell the house before the move, they decided to rent it out. They knew that if they were ever going to return to Toronto, they would want to build their life in the same area. Plus, in a neighbourhood that continued to gentrify, selling didn’t make sense. They hired Chestnut Park, which deals with some of the most expensive real estate in the city, to manage the rental. For $4,000, Sarah Giacomelli, a realtor with over 20 years of experience, agreed to take care of everything: placing an ad, vetting the candidates, choosing the tenant and handling the paperwork. A few weeks after the family had arrived in Doha, Giacomelli reported that she’d found terrific tenants. The Gubbs were a family of four: Jesse, his girlfriend, Haruka, his brother, Troy, and his father, John. Jesse, who appeared to handle the rental negotiations for the family, worked in sales at a technology company called Web Factory Studios Canada. He drove a Range Rover, had more than $44,000 in savings and would have no trouble covering the $3,600 monthly rent. Another potential tenant showed interest in the property, but Gubb won them over with a sob story: he was trying to get his family, once estranged but newly reunited, under one roof. He upped his rent offer to $4,000 to seal the deal, and it worked.
The Gubbs’ tenancy began in October, as Dinnick and Verma adjusted to their new life in Doha. Dinnick loved his job, Verma had joined him at Al Jazeera as a senior producer, and their three kids were settling in at their new school. Verma had emailed Gubb to welcome him to their home and encouraged him to be in touch should any problems arise. Gubb sent a polite response saying he had purchased a leaf blower and was getting to know the neighbours. Everything, it appeared, had gone smoothly.
They had no inkling about what was really going on: Gubb was a serial fraudster who made a living by renting houses, claiming to be a tenant, then illegally subletting rooms to as many residents as he could cram in—almost always young women desperate for a piece of downtown living. Dinnick and Verma were only his latest victims.
In December 2014, about two months after Gubb assumed the lease, I met Karla, a 22-year-old woman from Vancouver, at a drop-in hip-hop dance class downtown. She had arrived about a month earlier to attend the Toronto Film School at Yonge and Dundas. I’m originally from Thunder Bay and know how alienating life in a big city can be, so I offered to take her out for a bite to eat. She gushed about how much she loved Toronto—the people, the culture, the energy. Karla’s one complaint, she said, was her landlord, a guy named Jesse who had seemed really nice at first but was growing weirder by the day. When she arrived in the city, she knew no one and had stayed in a hostel while she looked for a place to live. She needed something that was affordable—around $700 a month—but also relatively close to school and the part-time job she had landed as a cashier at the Eaton Centre Indigo.
On Craigslist, Karla found a room at 47 Lakeview listed for $550 a month. She emailed Jesse Gubb and made an appointment to check it out. He offered to pick her up from her hostel and drive her to the property. It was in a safe area, just steps away from the Dundas streetcar, and was big, clean and fully furnished—better than anything else she could afford downtown. She took the basement unit, which came with its own bathroom. Gubb explained that she would be sharing the house with three other young women, but the basement and bathroom were all hers. Instead of a lease, he asked her to sign a “room agreement,” a two-page document that, in addition to the rent and length of stay (one year), listed a number of rules. Shoes were to be stored at the back of the house only. There was a strict housekeeping schedule. On a rotating basis, each tenant had to sweep and mop the floors, clean the mirrors and windows, wipe down the kitchen counters, cabinets, stove and fridge, and scrub the bathroom. Failure to comply would result in a $50 fine. There was a $30 per day fee if the rent was ever late. Nowhere on the document was Gubb’s name or the address, which Karla found odd. But she signed her name, handed over her first and last months’ rent, and prepared to move in.
A few days later, she was shocked to discover that circumstances had changed. She arrived with her suitcase in hand, ready to meet her three housemates. When she got to her bedroom downstairs, she found four mattresses (another would be added later) crammed into the small room. Suitcases were everywhere, their contents spilling onto the floor. On the main floor were newly erected walls—framed, drywalled—that subdivided the living room into two bedrooms and turned the dining room into another. In the rooms upstairs were six more mattresses. Karla counted 14 other tenants, all female, ranging in age from about 19 to 25. Only she and one other tenant were native English speakers. The rest were new Canadians or visitors from China, Japan, France, Italy, Holland and elsewhere. The house had no living room, so the women crammed a table and chairs into the kitchen to have a place to gather. There was a severe lack of storage, so clothes, makeup and hair products covered virtually every surface. The kitchen, which had two fridges, was small, which meant dinnertime required complex scheduling. Privacy was virtually non-existent. Gubb would often turn up unannounced to show the property to even more prospective tenants, ignoring the legally required 24 hours’ notice. His girlfriend, Haruka, once burst into a bedroom while a tenant was sleeping; another time, Gubb barged in on the same tenant while she was changing.
Eventually, the women began noticing mail addressed to Dinnick and Verma, and suspected that Gubb likely wasn’t the real owner. Karla contemplated leaving, but she didn’t want to lose her last month’s rent. She confronted Gubb, but he was indifferent to her complaints. “It’s my house,” he told her. “I can do what I want.” Another resident, who was on a work visa from France, wanted to complain to the police about Gubb, but the other women begged her not to. They were afraid they’d be evicted.
In February, Gubb’s scheme nearly unravelled. Dinnick and Verma—who still had no idea what Gubb was up to—emailed him, explaining that their insurance provider needed access to the house to do an assessment. Gubb agreed, but he said that his father was about to have surgery. He asked the insurance inspector to refrain from entering the master bedroom so as not to disturb him. Then, on the inspection date, Gubb told his tenants to leave for three hours. In the biggest rooms, he pushed the beds together to look like one, and he hid all the other evidence in the master bedroom. The inspector didn’t notice anything amiss.
The day after Karla told me her story, I went online to see if I could find Gubb myself. After a few minutes on Kijiji, I found one of his listings: “Accepting females only,” the ad said. “We want a happy home…. We are looking for a wonderful individual(s).” The photos, showing a large and sunny living room and spacious bedrooms, weren’t of 47 Lakeview but of 995 Bathurst, another house Gubb had rented. I responded to the ad, saying I was a student looking for a place to live. Gubb replied a few hours later. “We are a very, very unique home,” his email said. “The house is super clean and organized. We know how important this is. A clean home is a happy home! I hope you’re excited about moving here and starting your next chapter of life with us.” I made an appointment to visit 995 Bathurst, and I arrived to find a beautiful three-storey white brick home. A young woman let me in. “Are you here to see Jesse?” she asked. “He’s not here. I’ll text him.” I squeezed through a narrow hallway into the tiny kitchen to wait for Gubb. The kitchen was dated but clean. A passive-aggressive note with an abundance of smiley faces and exclamation marks above the sink reminded tenants to do their dishes right away, and a cleaning schedule was posted on the wall. The woman who answered the door informed me that Gubb was on his way. She appeared to be a tenant who had grown accustomed to playing occasional receptionist for her landlord. Two other young women came into the kitchen for their morning coffee, and I chatted with them as I waited. One was a university exchange student from Germany. The other looked to be in her 30s, and had recently moved to Toronto from Alberta and found a job as a bartender.
“So how many people live here?” I asked.
“Not sure,” shrugged Germany. “Around 20.”
“There used to be 25,” Alberta added. They weren’t troubled by their unorthodox living situation, since it wasn’t permanent. After about 10 minutes of small talk, Gubb showed up. He was tall, and wore jeans and a fleece jacket. He had dark, gelled hair, and his demeanour was that of an over-caffeinated car salesman—constantly talking but never quite waiting for a reply. He apologized for his lateness and explained that he wasn’t much of a morning person, even though it was past 11 a.m. He gave me a tour of the house, the layout of which was peculiar. There was no living room, and the hallways were strangely narrow, a result of all the walls he’d erected to subdivide the space. On each of the three floors were several medium-size bedrooms, some with three to five single mattresses on the floor. He boasted about how unique the home was, how well everyone got along and how close the subway was. In the bedrooms, the tenants’ belongings were piled around their mattresses. Like the kitchen, the bathrooms were clean, with notes everywhere reminding the residents that a clean home is a happy home.
The City of Toronto defines a rooming house as a dwelling where four or more unrelated people share a kitchen or bathroom and pay individual rent. The laws governing rooming houses vary across the city, a remnant of pre-amalgamation. They’re illegal just about everywhere except the old city of Toronto and Etobicoke, where they must be licensed and satisfy fire code regulations that are stricter than those of a single family home—such as emergency lighting in hallways and stairwells, illuminated exit signs, fire extinguishers on each floor and in each kitchen, an interconnected smoke alarm system, and at least two exits on each floor. They are intended, in part, to protect tenants who may not have any incentive to warn their housemates of a fire, since they are often strangers. In Toronto, there are roughly 300 licensed rooming houses, which are inspected once a year. A recent report from the Wellesley Institute estimates as many as 10,000 people live in rooming houses, although since there is no way of monitoring the unlicensed properties, there are possibly many more. No investigative efforts are made to identify illegal ones—the city relies solely on tips. From 2010 to 2014, 3,936 complaints were made to 311 about suspected illegal rooming houses, an average of almost three calls per day. The inspectors then report infractions, usually to the fire department and the city’s municipal licensing and standards division, both of which have the ability to lay charges.
Toronto’s high rents—the average for a one-bedroom condo downtown is $1,600—and soaring population have made the city a breeding ground for illegal rooming houses. In an ideal scenario, Toronto Community Housing Corporation, the agency tasked with providing affordable housing to low- and moderate-income residents, would provide a safety valve. But the organization is a mess, saddled with a lack of funding, a $914-million repair backlog and chronic mismanagement. As a result, there are currently 92,000 families on the waiting list for subsidized housing. Rooming houses, with rents of about $500 per month, are an enticing alternative: by sacrificing privacy, safety (at least in illegal setups) and fridge space, low-income Torontonians can live affordably close to downtown.
Yet the danger is much greater than many realize. Illegal rooming houses are notorious for poor repairs, shoddy ventilation, few windows, bedbugs, cockroaches and rodents—but the greatest risk by far is fire. In a house where more than a dozen people may be sharing a kitchen, tenants tend to use hot plates in their bedrooms. In 2011, a fire in an illegal rooming house in Etobicoke killed 56-year-old Karnail Singh Dhaliwal. He died of smoke inhalation when a hot plate in his room caught fire. A friend who was staying in his room, Harbir Bhinder, suffered severe burns. The owner, Jasvir Singh, was convicted of criminal negligence causing death and sentenced to three years in prison. Singh was found to have purposely misled Toronto Fire Services when they inspected his property after receiving a complaint. He passed off his rooming house as a single-family home by fabricating documents indicating his tenants were related to each other. He has appealed the ruling. In October 2014, a fire in an illegal rooming house on Gladstone near Dundas critically injured two people who suffered serious burns. It started when a tenant who was cooking in the second-floor kitchen left a pot unattended. Fire inspectors later found 12 fire code violations, including a complete lack of functioning smoke detectors. The owner of the property, Khin Siek Kang, was fined $290,000, as well as $70,000 in court costs. And last year, two men were killed and 10 people injured in a fire in an illegal rooming house in Kensington Market. The owners of the house, Buu Vuong, Khanh Ly Diep and Trinh Lam, were found guilty of 13 fire code violations, fined a total of $136,500 and each given two years’ probation.
For Gubb, who refused to be interviewed for this story, the less affordable housing there is, the better. Since 2013, he has fraudulently secured leases for at least four houses and rented them out to as many people as he could squeeze in. Based on his Lakeview earnings, multiplied by four houses, he would have been raking in roughly $200,000 a year.
After he gave me a tour of 995 Bathurst, I headed to city hall to find out if he did in fact own the properties as he claimed. To no great surprise, he didn’t. The city’s tax roll listed the owners of 47 Lakeview as Wilf Dinnick and Sonia Verma. Shortly after, I pitched the story to Toronto Life. What I didn’t know was that Verma had written for the magazine in the past and—an even wilder coincidence—that she and her husband were friends with the editor. With my permission, the editor contacted Verma and Dinnick to alert them to my discovery and to suggest they speak to me. They were gobsmacked, and at first they didn’t believe me. It had to be a mistake, they said. They had hired a reputable firm to find a tenant, and as far as they knew, he had a sterling record. I insisted that I was telling the truth. Verma dug up a copy of Gubb’s application to Chestnut Park and googled the tech company where he claimed to work. She came up empty. She then searched Gubb’s name and found an alarming article. In 2002, police arrived at his Queen East apartment after responding to complaints about paintballs being fired at cars. Gubb and his roommate, Adam Wookey, fled the apartment, but police found 42 grams of cocaine, more than 100 grams of marijuana, more than $5,000 in cash, two stolen rifles and a sawed-off shotgun with the serial number burned off. Wookey pleaded guilty to gun possession and drug trafficking charges, while Gubb was charged with possession and received a $200 fine. Verma’s disbelief turned to indignation. She and Dinnick discussed flying back to deal with the issue in person, but first they contacted a lawyer who had a better idea: hire The Terminator.
April Stewart is a 47-year-old paralegal who specializes in evicting difficult and intractable renters. She founded a company called Landlord Legal in 2006 after working for years as a property manager and has become an advocate for landlords. “People say I’m like a mix of a bloodhound, a cop and Erin Brockovich,” she told Verma and Dinnick. “It’s never good to be on my radar.” In Ontario, it can be near-impossible to evict problem tenants. While the rules are in place to protect tenants from unscrupulous landlords, they allow opportunists like Gubb to take advantage of the system. That’s an imbalance Stewart would like to correct. Over the years, she has evicted hundreds of tenants. One was selling the owners’ belongings online, right down to the backyard shed. Another, angry after his sexual advances on his landlady were rebuffed, tried to sabotage her attempts to sell the house by leaving pornography and filthy underwear lying about during showings. Yet another opted to run the hot water all day in the basement unit so that the upstairs owners wouldn’t have any. Technically, tenant fraud is a crime, but police often brush it off, treating it as a civil matter to be worked out by residents.
Dinnick and Verma hired Stewart, who connected with Karla and the other tenants at the Lakeview house. Gubb’s lease with Dinnick and Verma clearly stated that only those listed on the rental application were to occupy the premises. Stewart needed proof that Gubb had violated those terms so she could ask the Landlord and Tenant Board to terminate the tenancy. Karla and another tenant let Stewart’s private investigator into the house to take photos and video of the walls Gubb had erected and the many mattresses throughout. Stewart sent a letter to the rest of the occupants, informing them that Gubb was not the owner of 47 Lakeview. She also informed Toronto Fire Services that Gubb was operating an illegal rooming house. A fire inspector visited and found nine violations: failure to provide fire extinguishers, failure to provide an interconnected smoke alarm system, failure to provide adequate exits, failure to provide walls and floors using materials with adequate fire resistance, and failure to provide exit signs. Armed with the proof she needed, Stewart sent Gubb a notice of hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board.
Gubb panicked. He emailed Dinnick and Verma claiming the whole thing was a misunderstanding. But they had seen the evidence. “It was horrifying,” says Verma. “I barely recognized it as my own home. Walls had been put up everywhere. We couldn’t tell which room was which. The basement, which had been renovated the year before, was unrecognizable.” Verma and Dinnick didn’t write back, as Stewart had advised. Gubb emailed again and hinted that he could pay more rent. Again, they ignored him. Gubb then called a house meeting at Lakeview with the remaining tenants. (Some had left upon receiving Stewart’s letter.) Huddled together, terrified they were about to become homeless, they demanded answers. Gubb informed them of his plan. “The only thing I can possibly think of is to…make it look like there’s only three people here,” Gubb said. One of the tenants asked him, “So, basically, you want us to lie?” Gubb replied, “Yeah.” He explained how he would rearrange their belongings to make it look like there were only three tenants, then move everything back once the fire department was satisfied. The tenants didn’t think that would work. “One hundred per cent they will buy it,” Gubb assured them. “I’ve done things like this. I know exactly how they operate.” They refused to participate. Gubb tried playing the victim: “I’ve cried. I’ve been through a lot,” he told them. They held firm. Gubb left.
He emailed Verma and Dinnick again, explaining that he had always kept the house in great condition. He obliquely threatened legal action: “I have been advised to start litigation against anyone using slander or defamation immediately and begin with my own waiver of tort. I am requesting that you correctly disclose information about me or anyone affiliated to me, and correct what has already been said falsely.” He asked them to settle the matter informally. Again, they ignored him.
A month later, Stewart prepared to face off with Gubb at the Landlord and Tenant Board. Her case was formidable: five tenants were ready to testify. She had a signed affidavit from another, a video statement from Dinnick, copies of Gubb’s bizarre rental contract, and photos and video of Gubb’s renovations. Stewart was eager for a courtroom battle. To her disappointment, Gubb folded. He stood meekly in front of the LTB chairperson, and agreed to terminate the lease and abandon all possessions in the home. Dinnick and Verma gave the tenants a few weeks to make other arrangements. On May 15, six months after Gubb signed the lease, he was gone, the tenants were out, and Dinnick and Verma had their house back.
After the hearing was adjourned, Gubb approached Giacomelli, the realtor Verma and Dinnick had hired, who had been in the back row taking notes. He tried to apologize, but Giacomelli refused to hear him out. I then introduced myself as a journalist and asked if she’d answer a few questions. Her eyes welled up, and she quickly left. It’s unclear how Giacomelli allowed Gubb to become a tenant in the first place. His rental application for the Lakeview house lists an employer that doesn’t appear to exist. He included two personal references, one with a phone number that’s now disconnected. The other was a former co-worker, who would only tell me he is not on good terms with Gubb. I contacted Chestnut Park for an explanation. Their CEO and president, Chris Kapches, declined to comment, citing client confidentiality. According to Dinnick and Verma, Giacomelli was devastated by her mistake and refunded her original $4,000 commission.
I decided to look into Gubb’s other rental properties. In July 2013, he secured a lease at 17 Huron Street, telling the owners, Vancouver residents Michael and Samantha Tam, the same family-reunion sob story he had used on Verma and Dinnick. For the credit and reference checks, Gubb supplied his brother’s name and driver’s licence. Troy Gubb could pass for Jesse’s twin, so the photo on the ID wasn’t an issue. The results came back clean. (Troy is in fact a hobby dog trainer who performs with his French bulldog, Carl, across Toronto. He told me he has never set foot in 17 Huron and has nothing to do with his brother’s enterprise. “You can’t choose your family,” he said.) In the spring of 2014, the Tams’ property manager informed them that the Gubbs did not seem to occupy the house at all. Instead, roughly 20 people who appeared to be students were living there, constantly streaming in and out like it was a university residence. The Tams called Gubb and immediately flew to Toronto to investigate, but by the time they arrived at the house, he had erased almost all evidence of his actions. Gubb, posing as Troy, told the Tams that his younger brother, “Jesse,” had let some friends stay at the house. The Tams bought the explanation and gave him another chance. A few months later, the fire department informed the Tams that their property had again been converted into an illegal rooming house with a number of fire code violations, including obstructed exits and failure to provide fire extinguishers. They took Gubb to the Landlord and Tenant Board, and on April 22, 2015, his lease was terminated.
I tracked down the owners of 995 Bathurst, the house Gubb showed me when I first emailed him. Yuill McGregor and his wife, Sylvie Turbide, live less than a kilometre away. When I told them Gubb was renting out their house to more than 20 people, they were shocked. They had bought the place as an investment property and found Gubb through Debbie Walter, another Chestnut Park realtor, who also declined to comment for this story. Gubb’s lease began in December 2013. McGregor and Turbide received a few complaints from the city about garbage and parking violations, but when they notified Gubb, he quickly resolved them. They decided against legal action or bringing the matter to the Landlord and Tenant Board. Instead, they gave Gubb two months’ notice, and Gubb agreed to get rid of the tenants and repair the damage. A week later, the fire department inspected the home based on a tip and found 16 violations. McGregor and Turbide are on the hook for $800,000.
I discovered a fourth Gubb-operated rooming house—a five-bedroom semi at 875 Bathurst. He rented it from a man named Jack Fong (who refused to speak to me), then sublet it to more than 10 people. Gubb faces charges for eight fire code violations at that property.
While the Landlord and Tenant Board is largely toothless, Toronto Fire Services can be aggressive. To date, they have registered 44 fire code violations against Gubb for 47 Lakeview, 17 Huron, 995 Bathurst and 875 Bathurst. Each charge comes with a maximum sentence of one year in jail and a $50,000 fine, so technically Gubb faces a maximum of $2.2 million in fines and 44 years of jail time—though both will likely be reduced during the court process. Cases like his tend to take more than a year to be resolved, which means there likely won’t be a verdict until 2016. In the meantime, the city is conducting a review of rooming house policy. Licensing and standards staff are hopeful that regulations will be streamlined across the entire city. The findings will go to executive committee in December.
Back in Doha, Dinnick and Verma are trying to put the entire episode behind them. Because they notified Fire Services of Gubb’s actions immediately, the charges against them have been dropped. They returned in July for a visit and inspected the house, which a contractor has restored to its pre-Gubb state. The only remnants: notes on the washing machine saying laundry can only be done once every two weeks, and stickers subdividing the fridge by tenant. Dinnick and Verma found new renters—a family from B.C.—again using Giacomelli (who waived her fee). Verma interviewed them in person, googled them, reviewed their credit checks and spoke with each of their references. She hired a property manager, too. In the end, thanks mostly to April Stewart, they have their house back, the tenants are safe and, sooner or later, Gubb will stand before a judge.
Interesting. Associated with Gubb was Adam Wookey, another fellow who has been involved with synthetic marijuana and illegal party drugs. Birds of a feather flock together i suppose.
They picked the tenant who tried to start a bidding war on the monthly rent. I’d have more sympathy for them if they didn’t make decisions based on their own greed.
Hmmm. Seems odd for you to be attacking the victims here. Here are two people who work for a living, neither of whom appear to be independently wealthy, who invested a lot of money into their property and sought the best rent they could get. There’s no mention of a bidding war. Gubb’s application seemed good (they didn’t know that the realtor they paid $4000 didn’t do any background checks) and according to the article, it was Gubb who upped the price to secure the space. Somewhat sanctimonious for you to be accusing the owners of “greed”.
i think what they meant was that they had another vetted potential tenant (still dont know how they would have turned out in the end though) but the additional price maybe was enough of a distraction that they pursued the wrong lead for an extra $500 a month that Gubb offered to sweeten the deal.
There was more reward for this fellow but they took on more risk as well. In the end, had real estate agent actually vetted Gubb properly (ie at all instead of looking at his Range rover) they’d have tuned up something on google.
I guess this is why the chestnut park agents offered to waive their 4K fee and find the next tenants for free.
That’s not what the article says. Where does it say they were “distracted” by the additional $400/month (not $500)? I don’t see anything in the article which says the owners only cared about the extra money. Where does it say that the other potential tenant was vetted? We don’t know anything about that other applicant. All the article says is that the owners were won over by Gubb’s story about having his family under one roof, he seemed like a good tenant (job, savings, family – they didn’t know that their realtor never looked into any of this), and he offered more money to seal the deal (a very common practice in Toronto).
How did they know there was more risk with Gubb than the other possible tenant? What facts in the article are you relying on for that conclusion? All we know is that he seemed like a low risk tenant (again – job, savings, family) and they didn’t know that the realtor wasn’t doing her job.
Unclear where people are getting this whole story of “greed” and “more reward/more risk”. People seem to be going out of their way here to find fault with the owners, even if it means making assumptions about facts that are not in the article.
I accused them of being clouded by greed because the article stated he was selected as the tenant based on offering to up the monthly rent.
The actual quote from the article: “Another potential tenant showed interest in the property, but Gubb won them over with a sob story: he was trying to get his family, once estranged but newly reunited, under one roof. He upped his rent offer to $4,000 to seal the deal, and it worked.”
You’re misreading the article. Where does it say they selected him solely on the basis of his offer of extra money? Certainly not in the quote you provided. What the article *does* say is is that Gubb seemed like a good tenant (once again – job, savings, family), the owners were won over by his story of having his family under one roof, and he offered additional money to seal the deal (which, by the way, is incredibly common in Toronto). It doesn’t say anywhere that they were “clouded by greed” or that they made their decision solely on the basis of an additional $400. They appear to have picked the best tenant at the best price, which no surprise, is what any owner would have done. That is not greed. But thanks for coming by with your unsubstantiated accusations. Funny that you would read this article and your main complaint wouldn’t be about Gubb’s behaviour, but rather would be about assumptions you’ve made about Dinnick and Verma.
“still dont know how they woudl have turned out …” ref’d the poss’ty that the other tenants could not be ideal… or could have been great; not the main point.
The point, again, was that google google google can tell you a lot about a tenant,
It would have pointed out his priors
it would have pointed out his job didnt exist
the phone number that was disconnected would be a hint
and the other reference that said they werent on good terms would have been another hint.
Either the realtor knew these issues and figured the additional money was worth the risk, or more likely, they didnt check
Think of it this way: knowing all the risks and how hard it is to evict tenants in the city of toronto and Ontario, and knowing that people evict seniors when they can pay, what other motivation could a realtor have to push someone other than they offered more money?
this is what comes up from a quick google of Jesse Gubb:
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/04/12/adam-wookey-has-a-history-in-the-justice-system
“Those charges early in Wookey’s adult life stemmed from Halloween night in 2002 when his roommate Jesse Gubb fired a paintball gun at passing motorists from the window of their Queen St. E. apartment.
The teens had run off by the time ETF officers responded, but they left behind two high-powered rifles, a sawed-off shotgun with the serial number removed and $11,000 worth of cocaine and marijuana, some of it stuffed in a gym bag from prestigious Trinity College.”
Mischief charges, possession of $11,000 COCAINE and a dabble of pot? I wouldn’t let this guy near my family, let alone let them into a home i owned.
i think the realtor saying “we were won over by their story” probably sounds better than admitting “he offered more money”.
he didnt have a job (the one he gave was a fraud)
Even though offering more money is supposed to be common, most of my friends who own rental properties refuse to accept those offers; too often they are from people who have bad references or were evicted and on record. Not worth the extra cash
You are misreading the story. Regardless being greedy is not against the law and it does not also others to break agreements. There is one main cause here; a scammer.
Sure the other tenant might not have been ideal, but you’re the one that said that he was vetted. Not sure where you got that from. You’ve made this odd accusation that the owners somehow made this “high reward, high risk” choice, but none of the facts in the article support you on that.
Yes, Google can tell you a lot. But they actually paid a realtor $4000 to do actual background checks.
Not sure what you’re getting at with the rest of your post, other than Gubb was bad and the realtor didn’t do her job. Which no one disputes. I was only taking issue with your claim that somehow the owners were at fault here, which you were basing on assumptions.
Gubb is a leach; that is no doubt; my opinion differs from Anne in that i blame Sarah Gia from Chestnut Park for this fiasco but not doing her due diligence; she could have found Gubbs conviction with a quick search, and given that she was paid handsomely – $4K – she had the time to do that, but didnt and a lot of woe happened because of this. The owners are not at fault, because they went on the advice of the realtor who represented Gubb, and was from a reputable firm.
I agree with you about the owners being not responsible
Sounds better? You’re making stuff up, and jumping to conclusions, because it “sounds better”?
That’s lovely about your friends, who oddly seem to behave differently than every other landlord in the city, but you also seem to be missing the point that the owners paid a realtor here a lot of money to do background checks. We don’t know if they had other prospective tenants who seemed to check as many boxes on their list. You’re just jumping to a bunch of conclusions in some bizarre attempt to somehow blame people for this awful thing that happened to them.
Okay, then your previous posts are very confusing, because you seem to be saying the opposite.
I agree that the realtor, had she done her job, could have avoided this whole debacle and saved the owners a lot of grief. They paid her a lot of money, as it’s hard to vet tenants in Toronto from the Middle East, but she failed them completely.
Lol, i think we’re on the same page, just misrcommunication – im blaming the realtor on this, not the owner. and of course, Gubb above all.
btw the way a realtor works for OREA rental agreements is that before they event bring another tenant to the client’s notice is that they have checked them. So yes, they are vetted. You have to put in your application and background and sign an OREA agreement form which is then checked before presented to the client as an option;
Again, the realtor is the one who plugs the high risk gives high reward, this is economics, and she was the one who probably pushed this guy over the other person who probably went with the posting. Realtors in toronto i find are terrible and greedy.
I’m not making anything up – few people would admit that they are greedy, least of all realtor.
Perhaps the landlords you know accept pot sweeteners, most better rental agencies don’t, and OREA is not supposed to as it violates the code of ethics for a realtor.
I’m not sure why you are defending the realtor in this, its their job and they behave unethically and not in the best interest of their client. If you feel that the realtor was somehow not to blame, im afraid we’re not going to come to a consencus.
Professionals – engineers, lawyers, doctors – anyone with a licence and a duty of care must perform their due diligence, otherwise their pay is not justified.
Chestnut Park is entirely 100% to blame here, not the couple. Chestnut Park told them this guy checked out. Chestnut Park put him forward as a recommended tenant. You do understand people offer more than asking to buy/get something every second of the day on planet earth, don’t you?
Isn’t Dinnick the journalist who ripped off a bunch of freelancers and went on a show promoting his company’s success when it was actually going under? I feel like this couple has a lot of media connections to make them the victims of every story…definitely don’t 100 per cent trust their “story” given their track record. #karma
Blah Blah Blah greedy landlord tears are so nourishing.
Edit: Also, incompetent real estate agent. In 20 years she somehow didn’t learn to Google prospective tenants.
You know how this could have all been avoided? Selling your house when you move to goddamn fucking Qatar. I mean, honestly.
Last one: Toronto Life really has found their niche in rich, white people sob stories.
Couldn’t agree more. What about the female roomers who are the REAL victims of the story? What happened to all of them? I feel way sorrier for them than this gross privileged media couple.
and a shitty realtor, that’s a part of it too.
They could have shut the whole thing down before it started with a proper background check. It was weird at all that they pointed out the fellow drove a Range Rover – that could have been bought on credit…
Definitely feel bad for the tenants. Scammers like Gubb prey on greed and incompetence. Mostly greed. I’m sure there was no shortage of legit people they could have rented it to for $3,600.
i dont think i ever mentioned the owner, just the realtor (full disclosure, i hate realtors and lawyers)
Im actually suprised the owners gave them a second chance – i would have sued the company
good point actually…
didnt it say that the editor of TL knew one of the owners?
So how exactly did the insurance inspector miss all the walls subdividing up the main floor?
AlyssaMoh, you seem like you don’t really have any room to make comments since clearly your judgement is clouded (as you’ve stated in every post how much you hate realtors). Have you YOURSELF done any research into this story? Are you just taking it at it’s $4.99 face value? Just seeing if you’ve vetted your story at all or just going on hearsay and leading on with details you don’t have.
Enjoy sitting on Torontolife.com all day! Great place to change the world!
I’m 100% correct in everything i do. That’s what being omnicient means.
Do you know how many people I’ve saved so far with this article alone? Rather than slander your God, follow in my steps. I will show you the way.
What’s your normal account by the way? Your account is so brand shiny new :D
And happily you’ve just destroyed any SHRED of argument you had made above. Absolutely embarrassing. This is why the world is fucked. Thanks for screwing it all up and blaming everyone else.
You are what’s wrong with this world. Change. Just for everyone’s sake, including your own. Now go post 25 selfies of you reading this post and put them on insta or twitter or where ever
For awesomeness, please refer to my previous comments. They’re chocked full of hearty good judgement, a touch of humour and dammning references.
Also, being God, i cannot take a selfie.
LOL the photo of the Dinnicks looks ten years old! That media family definitely has a funny way of representing themselves (and the truth). I am an aspiring journalism student and saw Sonia Verma speak at Humber and she legitimately looked like my mom. TL photo editors need to stop depending on Facebook for pics…https://www.facebook.com/humbercollege/photos/a.10151489514620762.1073741829.50754130761/10151489514645762/?type=1&theater
Yikes, talk about misrepresentation…
Good God. The Dinnicks might be “journalists” but I sure hope they aren’t working in the investigative field if they can’t bother with Googling a tenant themselves!
i lived at 85 bathurst. had no heat, and jesse LIVED IN THE BASEMENT. so glad i bailed 3 months in holy shit.
Your story, @kayla_blackburn:disqus, and experience is just as important. I feel like only two sides were really told in this story…where is the voice of the third side, the women who are being grossly used and mistreated in a horrendous housing situation? The Dinnicks only care about their property and rent, and Gubb only cares about the money.
LOL yup…not surprised their neighbours didn’t care that much. She has a super ego!
And incompetent “journalists”! Who the heck doesn’t Google???
Gubb. Scumbag.
It was either selling the house now, and buying another house later at a much, much higher price. They would have been out of the country for a few years, so rather than keeping it empty, they offered to rent it out. In addition, they left their furniture behind, so the house was to be rented out FURNISHED, during that time.
Life is so hard. My heart truly goes out to these privileged millionaires.
This story confirms that real estate agents overcharge and do a lousy job. Imagine, take 4k comission and not do any background check. I guess all they did is draft a contract but no due diligence whatsoever.
Here’s NOW’s story about Dinnick and OpenFile. https://nowtoronto.com/news/what-is-wilf-dinnick-doing/
Regardless of the comments below, it is indeed important to find the right tenants AND to visit the property from time to time, that realtor should have been looking after the property. And I hope those scammers go to jail, they not only ripped off the house owners but their young tenants.
Thank you for writing this article. I was one of the girls living at the house on 995 Bathurst St. and am happy to see that justice will be served. I returned home after dinner one night to the girls in the house talking about having to leave. Less that 4 hours later we were all packed and in a moving van in the middle of the night being taken away from our “home”. It was a terrible situation and all of us agree that he is a terrible “man”. From threaten the girls is they wanted to leave their lease to hearing horror stories of how he beat his girlfriend.
I was a tenant for one of Jesse’s houses. I’ve read this entire story and can tell you have gone through it it was 100% true what we went through.
How did the author not mention that? Thought that was very weird. Was this story that poorly researched?
Another thing missed in this story – chestnut park rented him two places concurrently. So, their checks don’t even include looking at their own information?
Impressive….
You’re an aspiring journalism student? Good luck at finding a job after school, leaving comments like that online.
I suppose it has nothing to do with rental; Wookey was charged with mischief and trafficking/possession, but maybe the guy at least paid his rent and didn’t hoard a posse of ladies in his unit
He would take them down. We had to leave between 8 and 5, he’d text us when we could come back. He moved furniture and our belongings into a moving truck, took it somewhere. I lived at 17 Huron for 8 months. I never suspected how bad this all was but I knew he wasn’t up to good stuff. The girls though, were great. It was always a risk to say anything and get us all evicted. In the end, after all the garbage, our lawyer said it wasn’t worth going after him for the breach of lease and headache he put me through. It’s a shame, perhaps suing him would have ended this sooner.
For every homeowner who is victimized by tenants, there are thousands of tenants who are exploited by landlords. But they are not among the target audience of Toronto Life’s advertisers.
Yeah I Totally agree. He made me sign a year “contract” and after having no heat expected me to pay full rent. I also used a crock pot in my room due to the fact that the kitchen was disgusting and the plugs sparked any time you used them. I should have let them catch fire and get us all our money back.
Yeah dude. Because you are really “Ben anonymous”. I think this new writer (cos I googled her) did a helluva better job doing basic research (kijiji, google) than the older journalists who actually live in the house and would rather pay $4000 than do any of the groundwork themselves…
This smells fishy. If Gubb hangs out with Wookey he probably has connections with the Rosedale crowd at Chestnut Park.
http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=1d397bca-46eb-4e51-9a04-8d25ad8020e3
Yikes, that’s horrible. I just wonder what happened to the other women, almost all foreigners, who had a few weeks to get out of the house and probably limited language skills and funds. I just imagine they get taken advantage of because of a desperate living situation. Did they get their last month’s rent back (doubt it)? How are they protected? Of course we get the stale ending of Verma learning her lesson, having the brains to use google and review credit.
Yup, their stories go untold and the people who are friends with the editor get to be the victims. So biased.
If you don’t believe white priviledge exist, refer to this written part:
In 2002, police arrived at his Queen East apartment after responding to
complaints about paintballs being fired at cars. Gubb and his roommate,
Adam Wookey, fled the apartment, but police found 42 grams of cocaine,
more than 100 grams of marijuana, more than $5,000 in cash, two stolen
rifles and a sawed-off shotgun with the serial number burned off. Wookey
pleaded guilty to gun possession and drug trafficking charges, while
Gubb was charged with possession and received a $200 fine.”
This would never be the case if Gubb was black or of any deeper shade of white.
I agree. And who cares about the foreign women who are pushed out of a home with a few weeks to find another place to live…it’s a “happy” ending because the privileged white family gets their home renovated to its original state. Not happy with the way the female foreign roommates are treated, ripped off and really lack a voice.
Sad
Living there was horrible, I lived in the basement with two other girls, it was a hard semester. We didn’t say anything because we didn’t want to get evicted which had happened to other girls who lived in another house that he owned, they all got evicted within 24 hours with no where to go. Because there are no laws that protects us, our financially helps us while we search for another place. Best thing to do is keep quiet and look for another place, when we finally found a new suitable place we wanted to call the police but we had friends that were still living there. My friend however did got to the police but they never took her seriously.
My daughter was one of the young victims of this fraud. If you know any of the young ladies who were also screwed over by this dirt bag please get in touch with them and direct them to leave some contact info at my email address which I will try to post here. tbmpharm at yahoo dot com. I am planning to take legal action against him and maximise his pain while winning compensation for the victims.
Ellie. get in touch with me
Kayla get in touch with me
Kat get in touch with me
Kat get in touch with me (my daughters name too -from 19 Huron St
Don’t try and play daddy savior now Tom, terrible parenting. Get a clue and mix in a normal rent payment and your daughter wouldn’t have to live like a peasant you idiot. Can’t believe you’d let her live an environment like that, sicko.
Well Burt you sanctimonioun shite for brains, I went down to inspect the place one night after my 11 hour shift as a pharmacist in St.Catharines, and I even met this jerk, who at the time seemed like a concerned landlord. I went in to deliver a bicycle and inspect the place, and even struck up a conversation with a couple of the girls already living their. Nothing seemed out of order or amiss, so I wasn’t terribly concerned, and my ex-wife, who had helped her move in was also not concerned. My daughter’s not stupid and when she mentioned a few oddities that occurred, I started getting suspicious. But she’s 27, so I suggested she get in touch with landlord and have him address the leaky pipe. A few months later she was told she would have to relocate and he was a bit vague about the circumstance, but I suspected he might have some outstanding work orders. I suggested she ask him to reimburse her 60 days rent as per the rental agreement as she was being put out with zero notice and would have to seek other accommodations. She only got one months rent back and decided to commute via the GO train. It is only now that we are learning of this individuals true colours, shenanigans and crimes. But thanks for your insight you jerk. Some people like you should keep your mouth shut and let us think you are a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt. In future you might want to consider your thoughts and words more carefully before letting them fly from you loud mouth…and stop being an internet troll.
” deliver a bicycle and inspect the place, and even struck up a conversation with a couple of the girls already living their. ” it’s “there” #shiteforbrains.
Because if something bad happens to a successful person, they can go fuck themselves while wiping their tears with thousand dollar bills, amirite?
More or less.
You call him a terrible parent for not giving his kid free rent money and then when he puts you in your place, you correct his grammar? Weeeeeeeak.
Listen snake in the grass….the rent was duly paid by her and is all traceable. She was raised properly, has a degree and elected to pay her expenses herself. I’m guessing your still masterbating in your mother’s basement. How’s my grammar now ?
Close, but masterbating in a better situation… I am younger than your daughter, own a house paid for on my own, graduated from a private university in the U.S and judging by the living arrangements, obtained a better job than your daughter afterwords. My thing here is you’re right, your daughter isn’t stupid. She took advantage of a low cost shady living situation in an overvalued leasing market. But don’t act like all these girls were totally oblivious to the situation. With rent that cheap in Toronto what did they really expect the accommodations to be like? They saved more money than they could anywhere else by slumming it out and now can move on accordingly.
Tom: You don’t have to defend yourself from inane comments from people like Burt. These are people that have an truly amazing ability at missing the point so consistently. They love to preach their righteousness, moral and intellectual superiority even when they have next to no meaningful information. They lurk in all corners of the web, always ready to “add the 2 cents”, because in the real world, these buggers are cowards. They would never have the balls to call another man a bad father.
This article, regardless of the backstory of the legitimate homeowners, is deeply troubling. I won’t attempt to hypothesize as to the reason behind the absence of more of these victims’ narrative. I’ve worked in a field that brought me face-to-face with the more vulnerable and abused members of our society. And of course, the most vile, exploitative bastards too. I left that career behind because of the emotional toll it was taking on me…I was quite young and did not plan on a career in law enforcement. It just happened to work out that way.
So to all the ‘geniuses’ out there that are implying some sort of journalistic prejudice, did it occur to you that maybe the limited coverage of the victims’ perspective is because there was a limited amount of victims willing to speak to a reporter? Here’s a few reasons: They didn’t want their names used; Didn’t want to be blacklisted by future landlords; Their status in Canada was not normalized; Had limited funds and couldn’t afford another place; Did not want to loose their first/last deposit; Were hiding from a abusive partner; Were pressured by their housemates to keep quiet.. I could go on, but I think the point I am trying to make is that WE DO NOT HAVE ALL THE FACTS. Calling shenanigans on the journalistic quality of this article is a epic example of missing-the-point. You depreciate and denigrate the ordeal that these women were put through. FFS.
And back to Tom: If you are in any way trying to help these women and your daughter, or trying to hold this Glubb fellow more accountable for what he has done, then more power to you! You sir, are a good man and from the sounds of it, a good father too. Best of luck!
How? FB msg?
Well Burt I’m really happy you’ve done so well for yourself having graduated from a private U.S. university and now own your own home. I’m guessing born with a silver spoon sticking out of your ass. I’m also guessing that have zero character next to no morals and would screw your neighbours dog if you thought you could get away with it. Anyone who attacks another fresh out of the gate having not walked in their shoes or spent any time talking with in order to get to know them, is pretty much a smug self centre bastard in my book. You might want to show a bit more compassion in the future as everyone reading your vitriole can read you like a book. I for one have already tracked these two brothers down and plan on taking some action to bring some closure and justice to these victims. You, you go back to your porn
I used to live at 995 Bathurst st.
I used to live at the 995 Bathurst house up until June. He was a scumbagg.
I lived at the 995 Bathurst house and I want to watch thatan burn in hell. He harassed us so much.
First I was living in my mothers basement, then I’m the spoiled rich kid, and now both brothers are involved in your detailed case! You really are the king of guesses. Get some facts straight before you take this any further Sherlock!
I lived in 17 Huron and yes, 100% true! Sketchy reasons for us to leave, rooms got added left and right… It was such a mess!!! I’m glad this whole story got uncovered.
Well jackass,as I said I met him, and while I don’t know what his brother looks like I soon will and I did meet either his brother and his friend that night because there was three of them there. I’m pretty sure we have all figured your act out. And by the way, my nickname starting in high school and right through two University degrees was Spock,. I have two science degrees and gathering facts is my lifes work, even now as a pharmacist. By the way, it was nice of you to admit you lived in your mothers basement and were a spoiled rich kid….admitting you have a problem is half the battle. Now go away
mmeeaa send some contact info to my email tbmpharm at yahoo dot com and join the group, not for hug, I want remediation for all the victims
This Gubb is pretty slick and fooled me too. He knows all the right things to say to seal the deal and win your confidence. In the old days we would call him a flim flam man…great movie by the way starring George C Scott Michael Sarandon. But somewhere along the line justice should be served, not by me but by the authorities, sometimes they just need a bit of help
or use my email tbmpharm at yahoo dot com
True. The story really glosses over the fact of so many women taken advantage of financially and really concentrates on the wealthy home owners plight. It’s a strange world where the troubles of the few rich getting richer or staying rich is a more meaningful story than the people with little being taken advantage of.
Gubbs is greedy and deceitful and shameful to get more money.
The real estate people are greedy and incompetent to get more money.
The owners are just greedy and naive to get more money.
The women, and there seems to be a lot of them in this story, just want a place to stay that’s affordable. And it’s their money that fuels the greed for those above.
Even the writer and editor used the women as a foundation of a “wealthy people having trouble” story and then cast them aside. Shameful journalism…
get in touch with me if you want some justice
Get in touch with me if you want justice
Thanks for your kind words Nick. I used to be a landlord with 4 houses in Hamilton renting to McMaster students. For the most part, they were pretty good, but I di have one tenant from hell and it was virtually impossible to get info on him before it was too late due to privacy laws. He ended up costing me about 15,000 dollars evicting him plus 4 appearances in Landlord Tenant court. Bottom line is there are bad players on both sides of the street. When everybody is open, honest, courteous and respectful, it works well. I’m sixty, I still have 4 condos and lots of toys and work 69 hours a week. This internet troll can go pound salt for all I care. Again thanks for you support. Go Jays
and ps you spelled afterwards wrong…dick head
There’s bad apples in any profession, just as there are stand out stars. But your point is well taken. We all depend on the “professionals” in our lives to execute their duty to their patient, clients, customers, ie whoever hired them, within the ethical mandate granted by their licencing board and demanded by their morals and ethics. The disruptive factor is usually money because in this day and age, that’s how we measure success. I say, get to a comfortable level so you want for nothing, then work on being content and happy and above all else share your toys.
Anyone who drinks their own Koolaid is probably already drowning
Does anyone have an extra room for rent?
There needs be another investigation into Chesnut Park! They rented to him twice? Something is going on there.
That would be “masturbating,” not masterbating, speaking of shite for brains and irony. I guess that school wasn’t so great.
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Uh, nobody used the word “genius” when they made the valid point about the other victims’ voices in the article…the article is biased because the “victors” of the story are a family that the editor of Toronto Life knows. The story ends with a clean, tidy ending where Dinnick and Verma actually learn a lesson and do some research on their own. Of course migrant women who lived in these houses are going to be difficult to track down but assuming they do not want to speak based on the list you have outlined and difficult circumstances does not mean they want to be voiceless in the article. If they are given protection and some anonymity by the journalist they would have played a more important role in the feature but once again, they are marginalized.
I bet you carry around a ruler to measure who’s dick is the biggest just in case eh buddy lol
I was a tenant at one of his houses too. not one of the ones listed but at one on Eglinton and Henning Ave. was a terrible first experience in Toronto. moved out a month later. would have moved earlier of I was able
I got told not to tell the other girls in my house about the fact that I found bedbugs in my room during the first week. I made sure to catch one in a bag to prove to Jesse that they were there. he got someone in to fumigate MY ROOM ONLY and told the girl who moved into the room beside mine that it smelled bad due to cleaning. When I left I left notes for the girls I didn’t see much under their doors letting them know about the bedbugs and how it was handled. some were very glad they were told and left soon after.
The “house manager” found a note I left and sent a very scathing email/text about how I was a horrible person. I hope Jesse gets what he deserves. none of the girls deserved to be treated or living like they did!
If I were a previous tenant of this douchebag, I would check my Equifax credit file, get my cards changed, my bank account changed, PIN/debit..everything. This guy sounds like the kind of person would kick it up a notch and sell people’s credit/personal information to scammers. Funny how TPS hasn’t taken an interest. But if he was b….
That’s actually a great point; There are a lot of people out there who are interested in doing a good job.
Measuring success by the number of figures on your paycheck is something our culture needs to shake.
You notice that they say that he provided bank statements and a clean credit check. The only thing that didn’t pan out was his company (not renting to him based on the fact that he has a previous conviction would violate his rights) and had if he had put together a web site these people would still be scammed.
I really hope Chestnut Park and Porter pull their advertising from this magazine. There was absolutely no need to mention the agent in this story never mind mention her several times.
While these people were conned so was the agent because that’s what con-artists do. The agent refunded her commission as well as worked for free the next time they rented out the house (they seem to be happy with the current renters provided by the agent) as well as attended the tribunal. The homeowners hold no ill will towards the agent so why draw an inference that the agent or Chestnut Park was somehow at fault?
Hey Mike,
Please preface your comment by disclosing your association with Chestnut Park…are you working with them? Yours is a shitty, transparently biased comment. In any case, this article an great example of grassroots expository journalism, and it is what underpins democratic society. Advertisers may get upset and they are welcome to pull out (that’s because news media should not be influenced based on the clout of potential and existing advertisers). Equally, the public has a right to know that a purveyor of services – such as Chestnut Park – failed in a monumental way in providing those services – and chose accordingly whether to hire them based on this story. Let it be a learning opportunity for Chestnut, not something to chide Toronto Life for covering. So sorry darling agent, but when your professional shortcomings are newsworthy, they’re going to be picked up by news media.
Tom, what are you doing to help the girls who lived in these places? I lived in one too… not any of the 3 that were mentioned in the article. I considered the Bathurst one but one at Yonge and Eglinton was more convenient.
Jane,
No affiliation other than the fact that as a purchaser I’ve toured houses listed by Sarah, she is a wonderful woman. I have also known people who have in the past listed their house with her and speak glowingly about her service.
If you’re going to take issue with my comment then I will take the liberty with your comment, not to defend the practice of Grubb but why hasn’t the author addressed the issue that lead to his ability to exploit these women? Has that issue been address now that he as gone or will someone fill his role? But wait, we’re talking about the people in the story, the absentee landlords, who are the real victims. So let’s talk about the buildings owned by companies based in Cyprus that are falling apart while the poor struggle to raise their family. Oh, we don’t want to talk about that, not while there are unsuspecting white landlords out there (who apparently have left writers without payment of their services) being unsuspectingly duped out of… wait… nothing.
Does this “expository journalism” mention the fact that there is a story out there from Now Magazine talking about the landlord has unpaid writers from their business (opensource.org) while he moved off to Qatar? We okay to mention one fraud while ignoring another? Did the two investigatory journalist bother to run the names of the person they trusted with their largest asset, through any of their resources (including Google)?
No, let’s blame someone else for it.
Also, love the fact that you signed up for Discuss and built a whole profile just to answer my comment. I’ve never thought of myself as that compelling prior to this, thank you.
Oh also, I think it’s funny how the story talks about a simple Google search that was failed to be preformed by the real estate agent but when you do a simple search on the Landlord you get this ad for Chestnut Park.
Apparently someone is happy enough with Chestnut Park’s services despite the setback with Gubb to be willing to trow in a plug for them.
Did this “expository journalism” mention that little fact?
http://www.chestnutpark.com/blog/2011/11/chestnut-park-real-estate-talks-to-wilf-dinnick-about-his-neighbourhood-dundas-and-ossington/
https://nowtoronto.com/news/what-is-wilf-dinnick-doing/
Wrong horse on this one.
Hey Sam, I have tracked the two brothers down and my plan is to get a group of victims together, to seek compensation or organize a class action lawsuit. I work 6 days a week in St.Catharines so I will have to wait until my day off to focus on the issue. The first step is to find the culprits-done. The second is to organize the victims. The third is to determine the best route to compensation.
You can reach me at tbmpharm at yahoo dot com
I am trying to organize the victims into a group and then go after the two brothers for compensation. You can reach me at tbmpharm at yahoo dot com
Wow. How could TL not include that Wilf Dinnick made a video advertisement (was it paid? did he make it because he was friends with someone at Chestnut Park?) for the company? Shame. Well, I’m sure since he isn’t getting the publicity he wants, we’ll hear from him! Just like how he suddenly contacted Now when the article was published.
Great story, told well. How the writer “used” the women, when it was the writer’s work that exposed this fraud and helped them out of this situation, is ludicrous.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with him making the video for whatever reason he had to make it. I think the issue is the story besmirches a person and a business who fell victim to this con as well. There was no reason to include Chestnut Park in the story and try to infer that they some how held responsibility for this being allowed to happen.
How can someone remove multiple walls and put them back up between 8 – 5?
Tenants have all the rights and they know it, that’s why scumbags like this are everywhere. Gubbs is not the only one out there doing this, and likely won’t be the last.
I lived at 17 Huron, we only had one wall. It divided the kitchen from a breakfast nook. It was just drywall. I don’t know abt the other houses, I didn’t live there.
why do you even care? If you doubt this is real, why even comment? It’s pretty obvious that several girls have also posted on here.
How were the tenants victimized? No one put a gun to their head forcing them to stay. When they saw the conditions they could have left immediately or filed a complaint with the landlord and tenant tribunal…and they would have won. What stopped them? These tenants had lots of recourse but exercised none of it, because they wanted the cheap rent. You get what you pay for and if you rent a place in downtown Toronto for 500.00 a month you have to know that this is not up to standard conditions.
I’m sorry for what you daughter experienced. But, out of curiosity, how was she a victim? No one forced her to stay there. And she could have filed a complaint with the landlord and tenant tribunal and should have, but she didn’t. If you accept the status quo then you are condoning what is going on. She also should have known that there is no legitimate accommodation in downtown for 500.00 a month…that should have been the first clue. Those women need to accept responsibility for the role they played is allowing this to continue, had they done something, gone to authorities this Gubbs would never have been able to get away with this for so long. When good people do nothing, that is as bad as when bad people do evil.
Oh give me a freaking break. Do you troll the internet all day looking for stories where you can twist the truth to make it look like a racist issue. Get over yourself. This story has nothing to do with race….only someone like you would try to squeeze that out of it.
It’s about full disclosure and a previous relationship (a good one) with the company. I don’t think there is anything wrong with promoting a business with a video but previous good experiences with the company should have been included in the article…did they use this real estate company to purchase their house?
When you sign a contract or go into a lease, you don’t expect the room you leased to be different from the agreement. You also expect it to be within the safety code regulations. You also expect that the terms that apply to you ie 60 days notice also apply to the landlord. To go through the proper channels of the landlord tenant review process takes money and time, I know,it took me 8 months and over 15,000 dollars to get rid of a tenant who used every dodge in the book to squat in my house while I tried to sell it, and eventually required a Sheriff to evict him and his belongings, the fifth eviction he did on this tenant from hell.
But why would anyone sign a lease without viewing the apartment first? The terms of a legitimate lease generally favours the tenant more than the landlord. It’s very easy to know what the legitimate terms of a lease are these days, there’s tons of sample leases online and tons of info on the internet for free about a tenants rights, etc. And young people these days spend tons of time online for everything else under the sun, why not spend a little time researching to understand how to read and understand the terms of a legitimate lease, and spend time understanding the landlord and tenants laws, etc. Most of that info is available for free. I’m not trying to be hard on these young women, I just don’t like the idea that everyone these days seems to want to jump on the victim bandwagon, and in this case these young women could have played a vital role in stopping this before it went too far. And they could have done a lot to help themselves. If this were my daughter I would sympathize and help her as much as I could BUT I;d be having a serious conversation with her about accepting responsibility for the role she played in this ordeal and about not readily accepting the victim role but rather accepting that she made a mistake, didn’t handle things properly and learn a series of lessons from it and move on.
Hey Mike,
Didn’t mean to offend (and thank you for response – it was really thoughtful and well-intended)…and i probably came off as an arse in my original rs
Well I wasn’t there when she signed the lease, my ex wife was. You would have ask her that question. I noticed some things when I delivered a bike. Regardless f that there it became obvious that there was something going on beyond the normal situation and when she was given a ten day notice to leave I suspect it was because the authorities were closing in. I’m not sure why your so willing to give these scoundrels so much latitude who appear to have been counting on no one putting the whole picture together. What interest do you have here?
Jane, no offense taken. This is what’s great about these stories, writer fails to do a complete job, internet takes over. My issue is with the fact that if someone “Googles” the agent this crap story shows up about them. I think it’s unfair.The story is as it stands but I feel that it wrongly paints the agent. We don’t know the process she used, she refused comment for the story but that doesn’t make her guilty of wrong doing.
probably but you make it seem that the home owners (landlords) have something to hide. I’m just trying to say that the agent seems to have done what she was hired to do, then sensing a mistake, refunded her payment (maybe still had to pay the broker) and then worked for free on the next assignment (again full payment to the broker would be required) with all that happening she still did work for the landlords and didn’t charge them (though the broker would still require payment)
Disclosure, I have met Sarah at one of her listings, it was a high seven figures in Rosedale. I did not buy that house through no fault of the selling agent.
Hi, we are 3 students that were living at 995 as well.
My point was that it creates a biased piece when relationships aren’t fully disclosed. I was shocked by that video you posted because the article never mentioned how happy Dinnick was with the real estate company prior to the Gubb situation. It appeared that the family just picked the real estate company based on the fact that it handles expensive real estate. It made the company look like a random bad apple, further villainizing it, rather than showing Dinnick used their services prior and even endorsed them.
You can reach me at my email address tbmpharm at yahoo.dot com
Where the third paragraph says “claiming to be a tenant”, shouldn’t that be ‘claiming to be a landlord’?
I don’t think you’ve read my responses carefully. I have not given these scoundrels any latitude at all, quite the opposite, I’m disappointed at the women for not helping to bring this man down sooner, and they could have. But they closed their eyes to what was going on around them in exchange for cheap rent, and now they turn around and call themselves victims. Even if you’re careless by not paying enough attention to the lease, etc and you get into a place like that and then realize things weren’t legit, why would you continue to stay there and close your eyes to it while it the criminal continued to con another woman and another woman and another woman. How can these women call themselves victims when they were the very ones who could have stopped him, all they had to do as soon they realized things weren’t what they thought it would be, was to demand their money back and leave or go to the authorities, etc. But in exchange for cheap rent they kept quiet, while it continued to happened to more woman. That is as bad as what the monster did. I could never in a million years ever sit back and do nothing, say nothing while a con man continues to screw women over right in front of my eyes, I’d be telling these other women to run now, don’t sign the lease, don’t give him money, go now. But these women wanted the cheap rent and they were willing to close their eyes to what was going on around them in exchange for the cheap rent. That is just as wrong as what the con man did. He would never have gotten away with his scheme for as long as he did if these women had stood up and spoke out. And now they are calling themselves victims. They are not victims, they condoned what he did by not taking action. I have no interest here whatsoever, except to say that I can’t understand how good people can do nothing while others get hurt and conned in front of their eyes and they don’t speak up, how is that possible. And then to turn around and call yourself a victim. It’s ridiculous. It sounds to me like their just trying to cash in on this, instead of accepting personal responsibility for the role they played in allowing this to happen. Everybody today uses social media, etc to try to cash in on everything that happens and people just seem to enjoy playing the victim card, instead of saying, “I could have done something, but I didn’t, I am ashamed of myself and I will never sit by like that again, from now on I will be a person who stands up and speaks out when I see wrong being done in front of me.
What I don’t understand is why other clueless homeowners are being charged while the Dinnick’s aren’t. Seems like wealthy and connected people’s privilege. Per the landlord and tenant act, you must give your tenant ( in this case Grubb) 2 months notice. Isn’t that what McGregor and Turbide did? They were following the law….no?
Not everyone is rich, has journalistic resources, or has access to fancy lawyers who know how to unleash tenant bulldogs like Stewart.
If I was a law abiding landlord and got notice from the city that my property was violating some codes, I would either try to work with the tenant to rectify it or give them 2 months notice. I would not know of anything else to do.
Given Toronto’s shortage on affordable housing, these are lessons that the city needs to learn in order to fill a need that is being exploited. We can punish as many duped homeowners or scumbag fraudsters like Grubb, but as long as this problem exists, the rooming house situation will only get worse.
Further, the father who claims to have gone to visit his daughter in one of the rooming houses and deemed it fine but now finds it unacceptable when he sees an opportunity to sue….. Did you not see the million mattresses on the floors? Did you not see multiple beds in your daughter’s room? How did you THEN deem the living situation acceptable that all of a sudden now, in hindsight is so horrific? Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
Dinnick is scuzzy too.
Dinnick is pretty scuzzy too.
Well Mindy, because I am not familiar with all the details of every story, I am not willing to judge anyone, except the Gubbs. $500 rent for a bedroom only and shared privileges for everything else when there are 6 other girls in a house is not cheap rent by any market standards. And I’m guessing that’s what most of the girls thought they were getting. Little did they know that Gubb was not the owner he pretended to be and 5 or 6 roomies was not the truth. It’s rather easy to sit back as the after the fact armchair quarter back and say what you might have done or what they should have done, but until you have to make that decision and risk everything to act, well, it’s a bit tougher. The same could be said of prostitution and worse the enrollment of young foreigner’s into the exploitive prostitution game that we keep reading about. They don’t or can’t return to China etc. because they now have to pay off a debt, their passport are held from them and the threat of deportation is held against them along with physical harm and often coerced drug use. The important thing to do at this time however is not to blame the affected but ensure that an example is set of these fellows through the judicial process that will act as both a deterrent to others and them while compensating any injured parties. (gee my lawyers would be proud of me). In my daughters case she was taken in by the pleasant ads and pics and even the inspection. Most of your statements seem to blame these young female women, many of whom , when they complained, were given an eviction notice. To go through the complaint process is time consuming ans moderately expensive, and most of these girls are busy with studies while holding down part time work, and some of them don’t speak english well and aren’t aware of their rights. Try not to be so dismissive, and I hope you never find yourself on the wrong end of a nasty dispute with anyone like this, but if you do, your heart may grow another two sizes and you will learn from experience and perspective.
The real scumbags in this story are: Wilf Dinnick, Sonia Verma, Sarah Giacomelli & Chestnut Park. They were too lazy to perform any background checks. All they cared about was money. The real victims here are the young female tenants who were too afraid to say anything about this mess.
FACT: Wilf Dinnick, Sonia Verma (and all of the homeowners at 17 Huron, 875 & 995 Bathurst) KNEW that Gubb was up to no good, so they demanded an increase in rent to $2000 more… and Gubb accepted. That’s why he did what he did for so long.
Once TorontoLife got hold of the story, they got in touch with Wilf Dinnick and Sonia Vermais, the couple got spooked and had to give up their scam & play innocent.
Moral to this story.. Don’t kid yourself. Everyone’s in on it.
Yes, $500 is cheap. Where are you from, Thunder Bay?
Exactly.
Everyone who moves to Toronto from whatever middle of nowhere town they came from to tend bar at the local dive seems to think they deserve to live in a plush King West condo, crying over how expensive Toronto is. The entitlement is unreal.
Foreign women? You mean middle-to-upper middle class privileged international students who happen to live somewhere other than Canada. Privilege exists outside of North America, you know.
Right? The privilege and entitlement is baffling. These are students on a budget, not civil war refugees.
Why would you say that? I used to live in China town and I owned properties in Hamilton (student housing) and still own condos in St.Catharines and Clearwater, FLA. Again, do the math if you have 5-6 kids in a house at 500 per head you are talking 3000. This guy had 20 kids per house sometimes which is $10,000 on a house that he rented for $3,000 or $3500. This contravenes occupancy by laws and fire codes. What’s wrong with Tunder Bay
Are you kidding me? The majority of bedrooms for rent in Toronto where you shared kitchen/bath, etc go for more than 500.00 a month, so don’t think for a second they were over charged. And that is precisely why they chose to stay quiet and watch the crime continue, because they knew they were getting cheap rent and they didn’t want to lose it, so rather than report the crime, as they should have, they chose to close a blind eye.
Yes he contravened all the laws, BUT these students failed as badly as he did because they could have stopped it and didn’t, they closed their eyes to it and watched him con more young women into the game….what kind of conscience do you have to be able to do that. They were getting something out of it, and that was the cheap rent…if they had been paying market rent they would have blown the whistle in seconds.
I can say with 100% certainity what I would have done in that situation and it would have been one of two things:
1. Either stand up, speak out, go to the authorities and stop him from doing it to anyone else, or:
2. Shut up, keep quiet, and say/do nothing so I could keep the cheap rent that I was getting.
Absolutely nowhere in this story does it say anything about these young women being forced to stay, being held hostage, or being blackmailed, or being threatened into silence, etc. You make it sound like they had guns to their heads and they didn’t, they were free to go at anytime, but chose to enable his con business by staying. Any good father would not be condoning this, they’d be teaching their kids that they have to accept responsibility for their actions and live with the consequences of their choices, and that they need to be good citizens and stand up, speak out when they see crimes happening, not stay silent because it’s in their own best interest. You are not teaching your kid good character or ethics with your attitude on this, you are teaching them to cash in whenever they can, close their eyes to crime if they can benefit from it, and never mind about who else gets hurt in the process (ie: all the other young women who came after).
no you should have gone to the authorities, that was your duty as a good citizen, not stand by and watch a crime happen and others get hurt, you had a chance to do the right thing, and you didn’t.
Shut up and stop victim shaming, Mindy.
Sorry Mindy, you really seem to have a hate on for these women. I only posted what I posted originally in order to seek out some justice with for some of the individuals that were legitimately hurt by this situation. It appears to me you just want to continue venting at my expense. You are clearly more morally superior to the rest of us and more intelligent, so I wish you good luck with your career and adieu. No further response is required of you, because you seem to enjoy flogging a dead horse.
Mindy is just an unsympathetic person. Ignore the people who shame victims! You are a good dad!
PS A lot of the migrant women feel that they don’t have the same rights and protection as other Canadian “citizens”. And not all are privileged like you imply.
Thanks, not perfect, but I do have three wonderful children, smart, caring, concerned about the world and their fellow inhabitants, hell they don’t even litter. Just trying to get some closure for some of these young ladies who are in the same position as my youngest daughter(27). Not looking to be famous-just hate to see one of the baddies of the world profit at the expense of the good people. ps I give blood too-now up to 79 donations.
If that’s the position you see all migrant women in, no wonder why you are so ignorant.
Could have, should have, would have is always such a great perspective.
There doesn’t seem to be any method to the sorting of the comments…. They are all over the place by date and time. Geez.
How do you know that they knew?
I lived at 995 Bathurst in March 2014. It’s completely true. Jesse had between 20 and 25 girls living there for the 2 months I was living there.
He didn’t HAVE them living there like people have sex workers or people in sweat shops. You guys chose to live there. You had yourselves living there. I get that it sucked and maybe it was a mistake that you learned from but c’com, You had free will.
My post was in response to Clara who said she didn’t fully believe the story. I was simply stating that the information presented was true to my knowledge based on my living standards when I lived in one of his places. If you have an issue with my verb choice, present me with a better alternative. You are picking out a single word from my post so that you can twist my meaning. I never said it sucked or that it was mistake, and I never made any claims against my free will. I used the verb ‘had’ because it suited what I was trying to convey and it is succinct. Now, leave me be.
Hm, I think you are confusing me with another person :/ I never stated I didn’t fully believe the story. I feel like the entire story wasn’t told about Dinnick/Verma and the real victims are the women who were conned into signing contracts to stay in these awful houses and who didn’t really get much of a voice in the article.
I was his tenant. It’s all true and more.
I totally believe you!
Dude, this is a public forum…. It is your choice whether you we left alone ….. Choose to come back to it and read what people’s opinions are…. Or don’t. Again, you have free will.
Here, I’ll settle this.
Burt, you’re a dumba$$ who makes stuff up.
Tom, carry on trying to get some revenge on this slumlord. Bankrupt him and make it hurt.
You won’t get any closure. You will spend years fighting this and even if on the remote chance you did win there would be nothing but a piece of paper saying you won.
A basic premise in Canadian litigation is that as a “victim” you must do all that you can to limit your losses. In this case, the women should have known that the rooming houses were not proper and willingly signed up for it and accepted it.
You could take it to the Landlord Tenant Board but you only have a year to do so. Problem with that is that the girls got exactly what they signed up for. If they were to convince the LTB that they were wronged the only thing the LTB could do is terminate the lease.
You need to take this as an important life lesson for your daughter and her fiends and move on.
If your daughter wanted a $1,200 Prada handbag but couldn’t afford it so bought one that looked exactly like it from a guy at a flea market and the bottom fell out of it; she couldn’t reasonably expect Prada to repair it or give her a new one. Exact same situation here.
Your daughter and her friends rented a room at a rate well below what the market was asking. In doing so they knew that they were getting a room in a house and paying less than what it would cost to rent an apartment. The legal status of the ownership had no bearing on your daughter that was between her landlord and the home’s owner. The fact that it was illegal only means that your daughter’s recourse was to terminate the tenancy or have the unit brought up to code.
“…surrounded by neighbours who quickly became close friends”
One thing I find curious about this story is the neighbours.
Did none of them notice that there were dozens of single people coming and going from the house? If not, why not? If yes, why didn’t these “close friends” contact the homeowners to let them know what was happening?
An illegal rooming house is not only bad for the homeowner, but it’s also often a big nuisance or worse for the neighbourhood. So this really begs the question whether neighbours didn’t notice or simply turned a blind eye, neither of which really reflects well on them.
Typically, when an owner decides to rent their home out, they’d ask neighbours who they know to informally keep an eye on it. All the more so, if the neighbours are “close friends”.
It’s a real shame – and glaring oversight really – for the author not to have interviewed neighbours.
Am not trying to cast these particular neighbours in a bad light, but it does raise important, broader questions as to what community means in this day and age, and whether we have become less interested in looking out for our neighbours (even if it’s to our benefit to do so).
“The Gubbs were a family of four: Jesse, his girlfriend, Haruka, his brother, Troy, and his father, John.”
This is quite interesting as this scenario is quite similar to my own situation of having a tenant start an illegal rooming house.
In our case, it was also a tenant claiming to represent a sibling and elderly parents.
Could just be a coincidence, but am wondering if this extended, adult family may not be a typical approach by scammers.
For one thing, it provides cover for any reports back to the homeowner by neighbours of various adults coming and going.
I would have liked to hear more from the young women involved. Contrary to what is written, they received very little information or notice. Many of them are international students who had no idea what had transpired other than that they were all being evicted with zero help. I’m glad this piece was written but I think it’s a tragedy for the renters who are being squeezed into these situations not so much the homeowners who are doing just fine.
Yeah, it’s up to some new girl to the city who probably barely speaks english and has no friends. Yeah, let’s blame them. #idiot
Hi I was a tenant at 875 Bathurst st. for 5 months and I was leaving with 13 women more. Jesse always was a asshole!! the story is a 100% true!!!
I was a recent tenant in the townhouse with the black front door, I lived with 10 other girls in there operated by dry wall taped and paint over. Two roommates coming from France another Brazil, and others being from out of the city. We are all students attending U of T, OCADU, Ryerson. Jesse manipulated all the girls living in the house, barging into the townhouse without warning, harassing all of us verbally and blowing off any issue that occurred.
I lived there from September 2013-December 2013, as we were all told to leave the premises and were being kicked out.
In regards to everyone commenting on here that the girls should have gone to the authorities and contacted Tenant Board. WE DID!!! And it is much more complicated than you realize. Legally we were not real tenants under the tenancy act as Jesse was NOT the real owner and we were only OCCUPANTS which means we had no rights. We contacted police and lawyers etc. Jesse was the tenant and The Dinnicks were the Owners. Do NOT assume you know what you are talking about.
I lived at 17 huron. There were about 14 of us living there, i paid 700 and had my own “room” which was made out of drywall. I needed to find a place in about a week since my place before became infested with mice. My options were limited.
It was always temporary for me but When i realised how messed up everything in the house was i made plans to move elsewhere immediately. I would have reported him but there were several other girls that i would have been leaving homeless if i did this. It’s hard to find affordable living in t.o. And the majority of the girls were 18 or not from canada. They werent planning on having to move more than once within their school year / stay. They were also concerned with not getting their last month’s deposit back.
Before anyone could report him, he ended up evicting everyone on a whim and restoring the place back to normal (perhaps this is when the owners arrived in the city?)
Stop trolling the TL comment section with your negativity. It’s weird.
I was a tenant in one of this houses.. honestly terrible experience my “room” in the basement didnt have properly walls and also i had a roomie with a baby and no hydro we paid 550 each. After moved from that miserable house where i use to live with other 9 girls, i called haruka because i wanted my 40dollars back for the keys deposit and jesse answered her phone and he told me in a bad mood that he w0nt give that money because i didnt clean my “room” and i had to give him 50 dollars more.. are you kidding me jesse??
I couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve said, well put.
Exactly.
What’s far more weird is the fact that you see yourself as a victim when you were actually a participant in a crime and you feel no sense of responsibility for that. How’s that for uneducated, unethical thinking.
It’s easy for people to close their eyes to the wrong that goes on around them when it’s in their own best interest but when there’s no longer anything in it for them then they cry victim, as a way of avoiding any responsibility for not having done the right thing – which was to blow the whistle.
I’m sorry to say this but this is a very well known problem in Toronto: Realtors sign leases and attempt to do property management. In Vancouver this is handled by professional property management firms which only specialize in Leasing and Management services and nothing else. In full disclosure, I’m the CEO of Toronto Luxury Rentals- a sister company to Vancouver Luxury Rentals and as a Broker and Realtor I KNOW the issue from the inside. Realtors are sales people. They are programmed to sell, do deals and move onto the next deal. Leasing a home is more than taking photos, making parties agreeing on the price and signing a contract. Leasing and Management requires an ongoing responsibility which only comes with the right administrators who-trust me- are not the same people as sales professionals. Therefore having a sales person “care” about your home after the commission check is collected is not a reality. This is simply the “nature of things”. Therefore it is important to find a property management company which in addition to employing great sales people “selling” the benefits of your rental home, also employ strong and caring administrative staff (managers) who are capable of maintaining or managing the process. Check ups, constant communication with the tenant, inspection reports, repairs, itd. All these things allow for control over the rental as well as maintain the relationship with the tenant. Even the best of tenants, left to themselves by overseas owners will cut corners eventually. I’m speaking from experience. torontoluxuryrentals.com is where you will find more info on the importance of working with a qualified property management firm. Property Management is not yet as popular in Toronto as it is in Vancouver. It has to do with high fees charged by Realtors here. One month’s rent is a steep price for just finding a tenant. Such prohibitive leasing costs leave many home owners to do the job themselves. A fair price is about half month’s rent and our Vancouver branch has done very well with such pricing plan. Now we adopted Vancouver pricing in Toronto and we slowly see the industry growing. We hope this will help landlords such as in this story…
500$ a month for a SHARED ROOM. 8 girls in a house, all of us paying between 550 and 800$ a month TO SHARE A BEDROOM. with another girl who is paying EQUAL to you. I hardly would describe this as cheap. Having LIVED in one of these houses for a school year, I can tell you first hand how HARD it is to give it up. You want to say something, but then the other girls, many who don’t speak english, will be on the street also. You want to save up money? That’s great, so you need money for current rent, money for tuition, money for bills, money for transit passes, and money on top towards first and last at a new place, probably farther away from where you need to be. It isn’t black and white, and in the end those of use who went to our parents’ lawyers for help were told it wasn’t worth anything. I have moved down the street from where I was, and i pay 800$ a month for my own room now, which is essentially the same size as the space I had in my room with TWO other girls at 17 Huron. Only there, sure yeah, I was paying *only* 600$.