The owners say Waste Connections of Canada owes them $400,000 in losses
The owners of an apartment building in the center of Ottawa want a major waste company to pay for the damage done to the building when one of the company’s garbage trucks crashed into the first floor almost four years ago.
Duong Hoang is one of four friends who own a 16-unit apartment building on Nelson Street in the Sandy Hill neighborhood. He and his partners are upset that the city and Waste Connections of Canada have not “admitted any fault” for the crash in May 2019.
Hoang said, “We’re just left holding the bag, and that’s not fair.”
The City of Ottawa hired a blue garbage truck, which rolled backwards down the street, broke a power pole, and tore into the building’s brick facade, destroying the wall and exposing a bedroom inside. Not one person was hurt.
Waste Connections did not respond to the CBC’s request for a comment on this story.
Alain Gonthier, general manager of the public works department for the City of Ottawa, said that the city is not part of the settlement talks about the crash.
The co-owner says the building can’t be lived in
Hoang said that an engineer looked at the damage and said that the building couldn’t be used until it was fixed.
The group of landlords did get about $700,000 from their insurance company to cover repair costs and lost rent for the first year of construction, but Hoang said that because of delays caused by the pandemic, they won’t be able to rent out the units again until November 2022.
He said that they got loans, even from family, to pay for living costs. Now, those who lent the money want it back.
The landlords think Waste Connections owes them about $400,000 for the nearly two years they weren’t able to collect rent.
Andrew Hamilton, another co-owner, says that the costs keep going up because interest is added to loans.
“It just changes every month,” Hamilton said. “It’s just been a very hard time for me personally and financially.”
Waste Connections of Canada gave the co-owners about two months’ worth of mortgage payments in 2021, they said, but that was just a small advance until a bigger settlement amount could be agreed upon.
They said that the landlords had made a settlement offer to Waste Connections the year before. Hoang and Hamilton said on Thursday that they are still waiting for the company to respond to the offer.
