Andrew_Pakula
11-07-2008, 10:32 AM
Almost a year ago I bought a house and moved out of a house that I had rented for a few years. The house I had rented was a small older house in Toronto. The landlord was some Italian guy that never did any maintenance on the place, he just collected the checks and basically sort of let the place go. A few months before we moved away we started getting collection guys and bailiff's coming to our door looking for our landlord. Apparently he hadn't paid any of his property taxes for a few years and I think he also defaulted on a few mortgages he had on some other properties so there was people trying to track him down. Due to this I basically stopped paying him and skipped out on paying him rent for almost 3 months.
Once we left the house it basically set vacant / abandoned for almost a year now. He did not try to rent it again nor did he try to sell the property. I drove by the old place a few times through out the year just checking to see if there was any mail for me that got sent to the old address still. Each time I visited the place it looked exactly the same way I had left it many months ago only now the place definitely looked abandoned as the grass was like 5 feet high.
Then this past weekend I was having a beer and playing pool at a bar near my new place and the waitress who was also from my old neighborhood asked me if I had heard about the fire in that area. She did not know what burned down but said a building had burned down there and it was on the local news. I took a look online for an article but couldn't find anything.
So after the Pumpkins show in Toronto on Monday out of curiosity I decided to swing by the area just to see what burned down. Nothing obvious at first as I drove down the main streets in the area so I decided to drive by the old house.
Sure enough the old house that I had rented was partially burned down. All the windows were boarded up now and there was a tarp over the entire roof as it looked like it had partially collapsed.
I found out later this week from my old neighbor that it was definitely arson, he told me that just by chance he had woke up to take a piss around 4am and just happened to glance outside and noticed light coming from one of the windows next door. Knowing that nobody was supposed to be there it was obviously suspicious, sure enough it was a fire and he called 911.
When the fire department was done putting out the fire they said the walls were all spray painted inside and there was evidence someone may have been squatting in there. I can't really say I am surprised, given the problems my landlord appeared to be having I had a feeling something bad was going to happen to that place.
Once we left the house it basically set vacant / abandoned for almost a year now. He did not try to rent it again nor did he try to sell the property. I drove by the old place a few times through out the year just checking to see if there was any mail for me that got sent to the old address still. Each time I visited the place it looked exactly the same way I had left it many months ago only now the place definitely looked abandoned as the grass was like 5 feet high.
Then this past weekend I was having a beer and playing pool at a bar near my new place and the waitress who was also from my old neighborhood asked me if I had heard about the fire in that area. She did not know what burned down but said a building had burned down there and it was on the local news. I took a look online for an article but couldn't find anything.
So after the Pumpkins show in Toronto on Monday out of curiosity I decided to swing by the area just to see what burned down. Nothing obvious at first as I drove down the main streets in the area so I decided to drive by the old house.
Sure enough the old house that I had rented was partially burned down. All the windows were boarded up now and there was a tarp over the entire roof as it looked like it had partially collapsed.
I found out later this week from my old neighbor that it was definitely arson, he told me that just by chance he had woke up to take a piss around 4am and just happened to glance outside and noticed light coming from one of the windows next door. Knowing that nobody was supposed to be there it was obviously suspicious, sure enough it was a fire and he called 911.
When the fire department was done putting out the fire they said the walls were all spray painted inside and there was evidence someone may have been squatting in there. I can't really say I am surprised, given the problems my landlord appeared to be having I had a feeling something bad was going to happen to that place.