St. John's woman facing prospect of full teardown of garage-turned-home
CBC
A St. John's woman who believed she bought her forever home is facing the possibility of having to tear the property down and start from scratch, but now has the backing of a lawyer who has taken on the case.
Tiffany Elton purchased her first home in July 2020, but soon learned the property had significant issues — the biggest being that the structure had been a fire-damaged commercial garage.
Contractors have provided her with two options to deal with myriad structural and electrical defects outlined by the City of St. John's, after Elton approached the municipality with her concerns.
Both remediation and rebuilding, she said, cost about the same as the purchase price she paid nearly two years ago.
"I need $160,000 and I need to tear down and rebuild the house in 4½ months because the deadline (with the city) is fast approaching," Elton said in a recent interview.
"There seems to be three separate building issues. One being that it was a garage, so it is still structurally a garage. Then there's across the front foundation where the garage door was. Then there's the fire issues."
Elton purchased what she believed was a recently renovated bungalow but soon began unraveling details about the history of 11 Summer St. after rodents found a way into her home.
She discovered the building was a commercial garage that had been converted to a residential home decades before, without the proper permits from the city. The garage had been in a significant fire, and the structure was charred black.
Elton was issued a long list of fine notices by the City of St. John's after she alerted them to the issues. She has until September to rectify all of the defects. If she doesn't, she could have to pay up or get out.
"Sometimes when you notify an authority about an issue, it backfires," said lawyer Joe Thorne, a partner in the St. John's office of Stewart McKelvey.
"Calling in the city was intended to address a certain issue that she had and now the city has gone in and said, 'Well, there's no occupancy permits for this house and you have major structural issues.'"
Thorne took on Elton's case pro bono after seeing her story profiled by CBC Investigates in January.
"Honestly, my heart just went out to her," he said.
"She's really been was a victim of her circumstances, and whether or not someone is legally responsible for that, she is a victim of the process and I really wanted to help out if we could."
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what's believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes.
The Liberal government and the NDP have agreed to introduce a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season, Radio-Canada has learned.
Veterinarians are warning Londoners to make sure their dogs are vaccinated and keeping clean after a deadly virus outbreak was declared in London this week.
Registered nurses rallied in St. John's Wednesday as part of a week-long convention, again calling on the Newfoundland and Labrador government to create permanent solutions to staff shortages and workplace violence.
New poll results released by Narrative Research suggest the Progressive Conservatives are heading into Tuesday's provincial election with a commanding lead over their political rivals.
A measles outbreak in New Brunswick is set to push Canada's annual case count to the highest it's been in five years, highlighting how infectious the disease is and how low vaccination rates have allowed it to take hold, says an immunologist.