Tenant waits weeks for building to be deep-cleaned after decomposing body found inside

A Toronto rooming house tenant still can't move back into her home after waiting nearly six weeks for her building to be properly cleaned after her neighbour's decomposing body was found inside. 

Viji Murugaiyah says she began smelling something off in the hallway of her Sherbourne Street home in late May, and asked her landlord to check in on her elderly neighbour after realizing she hadn't seen him recently. 

CBC News first told Murugaiyah's story late last month, just days after she finally called emergency services on June 14. They discovered the man's body inside his room. 

"It was a shock to me, I couldn't stay there, because when they opened the door more smells came out," she told CBC Toronto. "I moved to Scarborough to a friend's house."

Murugaiyah says she's not sure what the 10 or so others who live in the unlicensed rooming house have done, though another of her neighbours did leave her room due to the smell. 

In the weeks since, she says she asked her landlord to hire a specialized forensic cleaning company "10 or 15 times" to decontaminate the building before she moves back in. 

It wasn't until Tuesday, after CBC Toronto had contacted her, that her landlord, Jojo Ye, said she had hired a company to clean up any remaining biohazards in the unit and building. Murugaiyah says she'll believe it when she sees it. 

"I don't trust her," she said. "She has had enough time to clean up this place, but she still didn't do it." 

When contacted by the CBC, the cleaning company would not confirm it had been hired by Ye. 

Ye told the CBC News the clean-up was delayed because a relative of the man who died wanted access to his belongings before they were removed. She said following that, she attempted to hire traditional cleaning companies to do the job.

"When I hire a cleaning service, they reject them," said Ye in a phone interview, referring to Murugaiyah and her legal aid lawyer, Lindsey Tulk.   

"Nobody wants to clean the unit more than me, because I want to rent it out," she continued. 

However, Tulk tells a different story, saying she told Ye's cleaning company a man had died in the room, at which point they quit.

Christian Cadieux, president of a forensic cleaning company called Crime and Trauma Scene Cleaners, says there's a big difference between a company that is prepared to deal with post-mortem bodily fluids and other biohazards and one that isn't.