About This Abandoned Halfway House and Group Home
In 2022, this facility was entirely evacuated and closed down due to increasingly unsafe conditions and unacceptable health concerns.
At the time of the evacuation, roughly 35 people were living in the residential care facility.
Two days before the facility was evacuated, staff from another facility arrived at
the home, they found one of the residents tied to a radiator with a knitted blanket
Join me as I explore this condemned facility that has been used as a half way house and a group home.
Short Raw Video
Long Form Video
The Exterior
The family that owned and operated this facility also owned a condemned retirement residence that was one of the worst covid-19 outbreaks in the province with 64 residents and 22 staff members infected and 16 deaths.
At the time of closing, the facility was being used as a residential care facility, which provides housing for people with disabilities and low incomes, it had also once been a half way house.
The facility was well known to be a nuisance to city counselors, a result of constant complaints from neighbors about the terrible conditions in and around the building.
Some of the issues that have been documented here in recent months include
- A resident was found tied to a radiator with a knitted blanket.
- Padlocked fire escapes.
- Rodent feces in several places in the kitchen as well as a cockroach infestation.
- No functioning washrooms for more than 30 residents
Documents obtained paint a horrifying picture of neglect, disrepair and disfunction.
Further concerns include serious infractions such as 18 broken windows, no functioning smoke detectors or carbon monoxide detectors, not enough beds in the home to provide each of the residents with a bed of their own, a medication room that had been broken into and and drugs, including narcotics, that had been removed.
Two days before the facility was evacuated, staff from another facility arrived at
the home, they found one of the residents tied to a radiator with a knitted blanket. Staff said the resident had been tied up by one of the other residents at the home because he was wandering around all the time.
Prior to its use as a group home, it had a long history serving the corrections community with a successful track record of supporting the community and reintegrating men into society.
In 2013 police were called to the group home after a fight had broken out between two residents, a 44 year old man was sent to the hospital in a semi-conscious state, he died a few days later. The 33 year old resident who killed the man was charged with second degree murder.
This was a second fatal altercation at the facility in three years. In November 2010, a 50-year-old resident of the lodge was charged with manslaughter after a 62-year-old housemate died of medical complications following surgery for a broken hip sustained during a fight. A trial found the resident not guilty.
The location is now condemned, boarded off and closed to the public, there is a development proposal for a high rise building on the site that will incorporate the original building into the new complex.
