[murman]

Originally Posted by murman

City... what you're describing is not a real estate problem, but a management problem. To that end, I can't excuse a reno like this. A professional manager would have no problem making a go with this property as a rental structure if it were properly managed.

Ironically, or not, this recent article goes to my point about management style having everything to do with how a building "evolves":


A tale of two towers (and two landlords)
How does one apartment building flourish while its twin becomes a crime haven? Ask the owners
BERT ARCHER The Globe and Mail Saturday February 10, 2007

To Toronto Police, most of the city's trouble spots are neighbourhoods: Jane and Finch, Flemingdon Park, Parkdale. And then there is 1011 Lansdowne, which packs a whole neighbourhood's worth of trouble into one address. At first glance, the state of 1011 Lansdowne doesn't seem unusual. It's a low-rent, badly designed building in a traditionally sketchy part of town, just north of Dupont Street. But then you notice that it is attached to another 23-storey tower: 730 St. Clarens Avenue, nearly its mirror image, was built at the same time by the same owner. Even the number plates on the apartment doors are the same. But it has none of the problems that plague its neighbour. The drastic difference between the two suggests the real issue with troubled buildings: It's not poor people, not immigrants, not gangs -- it's the landlord. "Any building that doesn't have proper management is going to go bad very quickly," says Marco Mastrangelo, the property manager at 730 St. Clarens. He keeps an office in his building and has been coming in daily since he started in 1998, the same year Vincenzo Barrasso bought 1011. In both buildings, the rents start at around $500, and so they attract a similar demographic as tenants. The only difference -- aside from a higher number of bachelor apartments, and single people, in the Lansdowne building -- is ownership. Since the towers were sold in 1998, 1011 has had a couple of different owners, Mr. Barrasso being the latest; 730 St. Clarens has had just one, the Mastrangelo family, who also own the Café Diplomatico on College Street. Mr. Barrasso, who reportedly divides his time between Montreal and Italy, is a mainstay on roll calls of the city's worst landlords, accruing massive amounts of fines, but generally not showing up to face them or explain himself. Phone calls go unreturned; receptionists hang up. And when local police do a sweep of crack houses, the building he owns is first on the list. It has a similar reputation for prostitution, squatting and the disorderly conduct that often follows them. How different is life in the two towers? A police-guided tour through both buildings this week reveals a contrast that could hardly be more stark. As Sergeant Jeff Zammit and Constable Ed McNabb lead the way into 1011, everyone's in bullet-proof vests. On the stairs (the elevators are unreliable), there's a broken makeshift crack pipe, the filled latex evidence of the building's most vibrant industry, and a safe with the door busted off. It smells of human urine. On the eighth floor -- one floor above where Fernanda Brazil fell out her window two years ago trying to escape from police who were searching for squatters -- the smell turns to cat urine, as a cat the size of a raccoon races ferally by. Sgt. Zammit of 14 Division says they got a call just the other night to provide protection to an ambulance that had been called in for an emergency. He says that's not unusual here, where prostitution, drugs, disorderly conduct and trespassing bring the police to the building several times a week. A sign on the stairwell doors warns people not to leave garbage in the halls because "it will cause more roaches." Constable McNabb has already crunched several with his nightstick. Some apartment doors have been removed and are boarded over. One on the second floor is shattered on the floor, the unit vacant, with evidence of squatting and crack cooking. Councillor Adam Giambrone, who represents the area and tried to get 1011 Lansdowne closed as a danger to the public last year, says that the tower has been as much as 80 per cent vacant at times, leading him to question whether it is even a legitimate business operation. But he says that a landlord licensing program that council is considering this week, arising from the new City of Toronto Act, could go a long way towards fixing things. "It will give us the means to go in and do the work ourselves," he says. In the building, Mr. Barrasso's superintendent and property managers refused to comment. But a woman named Elaine, who has lived there for 10 years ("I'm a real bugger for moving") sums 1011 up nicely. "This place is a hellhole," she says. Asked about 730 St. Clarens, about 50 metres away, she says, "Oh, that's beautiful." At the St. Clarens tower, a friendly teenager opens the door to the spotless lobby. "This is a great building," he says. "Really safe." His mother comes hurrying down the hall from the laundry room to catch the elevator. "Oh, it's much better than the other one," she says. The stairwells are clean and scent-free. The second floor smells like curry, the third like vegetable soup, the fourth like lemon. One unit door is decorated with a red ribbon in a bow, another with a tiny straw hat. None of the doors is ajar, and no one's hanging around in the halls. There are new light fixtures on the hallway ceilings, and the floors and walls are immaculate. Both towers were among the crop that was built at an astonishing rate between the 1950s and the 1970s and which have been giving the Toronto police the majority of their headaches ever since. These buildings -- finished in 1976 -- are two of the last of their kind, approved before the "reform councils" under mayors David Crombie and John Sewell capped high-rise development in the city. "The type of building that's there now wouldn't stand a chance of getting approved today," says Ted Tyndorf, the city's chief planner, who says the cheap construction and breaks on mortgages for low-income housing at the time led to hasty and ill-considered design decisions, such as bachelor apartments -- without proper kitchens but with stove burners built into the walls -- of just 200 square feet. But design, as 730 St. Clarens shows, is not destiny. "The tenants are pretty good," says Tony Decunha, one of three superintendents for the building. "We have some who have been here for years, they're a joy to have." Tenants at 1011 say the supers there change every few months. Mr. Decunha has been at St. Clarens for 2½ years; one of his colleagues started in 2001. Mr. Mastrangelo screens every one of the 15 or so tenant applications the building gets every month. He says he has spent "over a million" dollars on the building over the last two or three years, and is converting all the toilets, shower heads and lighting to more efficient models. This summer, he plans to work with local artist Dyan Marie to install some art in front of the building. "I get a lot of joy seeing that I can get a humble family living here and get them something good for themselves," Mr. Mastrangelo says. "I don't like to see them live without pride. "Anybody can make a high-income building good," he says. "But trying to make a low-income building good is something else." "I think it has so much to do with the attitude of the people who run the building," says Sgt. Zammit. "A happy tenant is a paying customer, and if you don't have happy tenants, they're going to stop paying, and then it snowballs."