Landlord says sale of townhouses will help build dreams. For residents facing eviction, it’s a time of turmoil

By selling the Hamilton townhouses it has rented out for decades, local property management firm DiCenzo Management Inc. says it is helping address the city’s ongoing housing crisis.
“At a time when the dream of home ownership is out of reach for people, we hope the sale of these properties at very affordable prices will allow more people to achieve that dream,” says a company press release.
But for someone else to have that dream, 70-year-old disabled Hamilton woman Marni Oram will have to leave her home.
“I don’t know what is going to happen to us,” she said. “Maybe we’re going to be in one of those tents on the street someplace.”
Oram lives in a DiCenzo-owned townhouse on Upper Ottawa Street. Like her neighbours, and tenants at townhouses on Anna Capri Drive and Woodman Drive, she was told DiCenzo plans to put her home up for sale. Once a unit is sold, the current tenants will have to leave.
In letters to residents, as well in an emailed statement to the newspaper, the company says it will not sell all of its townhouses immediately. They will be sold on a unit-by-unit basis over a period of several years, and only to buyers who intend to live in the buildings. Residents like Oram will be given sixty days notice when their unit is sold, and DiCenzo says it will provide tenants with a month’s rent to assist with moving expenses.
Oram has not received notice from DiCenzo, but she is already looking for a new place to live. Advance notice and a month’s rent won’t really help, she said, because of the crushing costs of housing in Hamilton, particularly for those on limited incomes like her.
“Right now I pay around $1,050 because I have lived here so long,” she said. “At this point, it looks like I would be paying $2,000 or more for something else, and we cannot afford that.”
The Hamilton branch of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has organized residents in the DiCenzo buildings to try and pressure the management company to change its direction and not force the residents out. ACORN led a small group of residents in a protest outside DiCenzo’s offices on Wednesday.
In a news release, ACORN said DiCenzo had listed the townhouses as condominiums in order to be able to sell them at a high price and did not inform tenants of the change in designation.
The change means “new purchasers of the townhouses may be able to evict existing tenants from their homes in order to move in themselves, which would not be possible if the units were traditional rentals,” says the ACORN news release. “The financialized motives of DiCenzo become clear … as the listing prices for these townhouse units exceed five hundred thousand dollars.”
Residents, including Oram, say they signed leases stating the units were not condominiums when they moved in. Oram said she was never told her home was registered as a condo and could be sold.
However, in an emailed statement, Anthony DiCenzo, vice president of DiCenzo Management, said the townhouses were “all registered as condominiums in the 80s shortly after their construction in anticipation of their being sold to homeowners. 
“This isn’t a “conversion” or a “renoviction” that you hear so much about in the press these days: these townhomes could have been sold at any time in the past 40 years,” he said.
A company press release said while the units were registered as condos, the housing market in 80s was soft, and it made more sense to offer the units as rentals.
“Recently, the company has decided that the time has come to return to the original intent and sell the units as owner-occupied condominiums,” said the statement. “We recognize that this decision has an impact on the tenants and have made every effort to minimize disruption.”
Neither the press release nor the statement by DiCenzo answered questions by The Spectator about when, or if, tenants were told their units could be sold and why their leases say the units are not condominiums.
The company said in the press release it intends to offer the townhouses at starting prices below $500,000.
Oram said that might help someone who has the kind of money to afford a half-a-million-dollar home. But she is not one of those people.
“Where are we going to go? Honestly, I have been looking at a trailer someplace,” she said. “This has caused such turmoil for us.”