Tenants displaced from Winnipeg apartment building now living in encampment

‘We don’t know where we’re going to sleep’ Some residents displaced from a Sargent Avenue apartment building due to safety issues now call an encampment home. Jeff Keele reports.

Some tenants displaced from a Sargent Avenue apartment building are now calling a riverbank encampment home after they had to scramble to find new housing.

Residents in the Adanac Apartments were ordered to vacate on Monday due to safety issues.

Terry Johnsen, one of the residents, has set up shelter in a tent on the riverbank. He was forced out of the building two weeks before the order to vacate due to a fire.

“It's everything you can imagine that you don’t want,” Johnsen said. “You're forced from where you know everybody to where you don’t know anybody.”

Johnsen said others from the building have joined him at the encampment near Wellington Crescent and the Maryland Bridge since the vacate order was issued.

He said it’s a difficult situation, especially for women.

“We have to build a makeshift porta potty, which is a five-gallon pail, and give them a bit of privacy,” Johnsen said.

The city said some of the suites had no power or active fire alarm systems, and some residents said doors were without locks.

Councillor Cindy Gilroy (Daniel Mclntyre) said the city has had over 540 calls to the Adanac Apartments building since 2019.

“That’s a lot of emergency calls,” she said.

The province said it has been coordinating with the city to find housing for those impacted. It says it’s aware some of the tenants may be in encampments and is working with community partners to find accommodations and supports.

St. Boniface Street Links director Marion Willis says some of the residents were housed at Adanac through her organization in order to get them off the streets and out of encampments.

She says the province needs to provide service and supports in these buildings to prevent what is happening now.

“A lot of these very old inner-city buildings could come back online as supportive housing units if we could just get government to invest,” she said.

Gilroy agrees, and says building owners also need to step up.

“This isn't the only building we're having issues with, so we need everyone to really come together,” she said.

Johnsen agrees that something needs to be done.

“It's hard for us in the first place to be displaced,” he said. “We don’t know where we’re going to have our next meal. We don’t know if we're going to sleep.”