Copper wire worth $10K stolen from Habitat for Humanity Toronto office

Habitat for Humanity says that $10,000 worth of copper wire was stolen from their office in Toronto. (Habitat for Humanity)

More than $10,000 worth of copper wire was stolen from storage containers at Habitat for Humanity’s North York office, the charity reported on Friday.

The incident happened early morning on Thursday at around 3 a.m. when three people broke into the charity’s storage containers outside its office near Eglington and Bermondsey, Johnny Keogh, Habitat for Humanity’s director of communications, told CTV News Toronto.

“It’s very disheartening. Anyone who has ever had their home or anything taken from them knows what that feeling is. It feels wrong. It feels just so wrong that this has happened to us,” Keogh said.

“That’s electric wire that we need to build affordable homes. You can’t build homes without it and the value of that wire is more than $10,000 so it’s a big hit for us.”

The stolen electrical wire would have been used to help build and restore homes for low-income families in Ontario. The Toronto Police Service says it’s investigating the issue.

Keogh said security camera footage shows a van pull up to the site, and three people who were in disguise exited the vehicle and used tools to break the locks. The incident, he said, happened in less than 20 minutes.

“Building affordable housing is challenging. There are so many things that kind of get in the way to get everything ready,” he said. “This is an impact we don’t need. We are a charity, a nonprofit organization, and this kind of thing hurts our bottom line, and it’s just really disheartening to see.”

Keogh said they are still hopeful the wire may be returned to them. He added a similar incident happened to them recently at a construction site in Oshawa, and so the organization plans to boost their security and monitoring.

Habitat for Humanity’s York Region director of health and safety, Amanda Handscomb, told CTV News Toronto on Friday that she found tools and broken locks on the ground outside their storage containers.

“It’s my job to keep everybody safe, and now there is a financial impact to us, but also the safety and security of our staff. We have many volunteers and staff that come to this building every day and knowing it’s not safe anymore. I’m very disheartened by it,” she said.