Toronto’s first homicide of 2019 is worryingly familiar: On the weekend, with a knife, in a tough TCHC building.
It’s like a horrible version of the board game, Clue.
The city’s first murder victim is Ian Dyer, 36, stabbed to death after a fight in a building near Midland Ave. and Danforth Rd.
According to Toronto Police Det. Paul Worden, who spoke to reporters outside 41 Division in Scarborough, Dyer was killed between 11.30 p.m. and midnight on Jan. 5. Dyer did not live in the building and had been staying with friends; he was alone in the apartment and not doing anything of a criminal nature when he was killed.
The scene of the crime is a 12th floor apartment at 40 Gordonridge Place, a building notorious for crime and decrepitude.
In fact, a handful of TCHC buildings on Gordonridge are infamous enough to have earned a spot in the urban lexicon — they’re called G-Ridge, or Ghetto Ridge.
As Worden said at the press conference Sunday, the building has a troubled past. There was a stabbing murder in the same building last April; there’s a history of shooting and other violent incidents.
“It all starts with drugs,” said Worden, who described the 12th floor at 40 Gordonridge as having heavy drug activity.
As has been written before, Toronto Community Housing buildings hold only 4% of the population but are the source of 25% of violent crimes in the city.
Those statistics usually overshadow the fact that these buildings are home to plenty of law-abiding people.
Worden made reference to the majority of residents in the development, calling them “Good people … who cannot move around freely,” as they live in fear of the criminals in their midst.
Residents of 40 Gordonridge who were interviewed over this latest killing had a litany of complaints about living in fear in rundown buildings; they said neither management nor security seemed particularly concerned about anyone’s well-being. One woman said she’d solved the safety problem for herself by putting double-locks on her door and keeping a length of pipe handy. She also never leaves her apartment at night.
Any comment on the murder?
“This is nothing new,” she said.
One of the big problems faced by the TCHC is a transient population that uses their buildings for crime, drug dealers in particular. Thanks to various rules and regulations, those non-residents can’t be barred from the buildings. At the same time, it’s almost impossible to permanently evict any “bad apple” residents.
That means the TCHC cannot protect the majority of its residents from predatory visitors and tenants unless the Ontario government makes changes to the Trespass to Property Act and the Housing Services Act.
The city awaits those changes, Premier Ford.
Mayor John Tory addressed the city’s first murder of 2019 on Sunday afternoon, listing the steps taken so far: The hiring of 200 police officers last year; the hiring of 100 new special constables for TCHC buildings; some much-needed repairs to run-down buildings (thanks to cooperation among various levels of government) and investments in activities for kids and families.
“All we can do is be patient and steadfast in our determination to make sure we address the root causes, support the police and change some of the laws, including the gun laws,” said Tory. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
The mayor said he was fed up with seeing the same people causing the same problems, over and over again.
“Most of the people who live in TCHC are decent, hard-working people who need a little help for a variety of reasons, yet there’s this small minority who insist on carrying out their illicit activities in these same buildings,” he said.
“We’re seeking increased power from the province to get these people out of the buildings. To me, they forfeit the opportunity to live in Toronto Community Housing if they engage in these kinds of activities.”
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