Only six weeks after a house collapsed in Scarborough, the city has ordered it demolished. Yet the two houses at 2274 Weston Road have been collapsing for more than a decade and nothing has been done.
According to The Star, “Demolition is ordered only when a home is ‘structurally unsafe and it is unreasonable to carry out repairs to resolve the safety condition,’ said [a city spokesperson] in an email.
At least one of the abandoned houses on Weston Road is certainly structurally unsafe—its roof has completely collapsed. The other building is in slightly better condition, but looks very bad.
These two abandoned houses make me angry. To start with, they’re unsafe. They’re firetraps and accessible to pests, children, and the ill-intended.
But even if nothing bad were to come of them, they would bother me because they show that someone—or many people—don’t care about our town, its beauty, and the people who live here.
And, of course, they’re on a busy street. Everyone knows.
Frances Nunziata’s office told me that the owner ” would be submitting a permit for demolition in the coming weeks.”
We’ll see.
