VANCOUVER -- Teresa Matheson has been wary of the house on the corner of Kaslo and Dundas streets since the tenants moved in last year.
“The first thing I said to (my son) Christopher Carlos was, ‘Cross the street we’re walking on the other side,’” Matheson said.
Other neighbours, who didn’t want to go on camera, some fearing retaliation, described those tenants using terms like “punks,” “troublemakers,” and “man-children,” who turned the two-storey Vancouver Special into an indoor and outdoor skatepark.
Matheson and others say they were never sure how many tenants were officially renting, because there always seemed to be half a dozen cars parked outside.
“It looked really apocalyptic at one point, with the cars and the trash,” she told CTV News Vancouver.
This weekend, what Matheson called a “saga” of regular parties and noise, including an indoor drumming session her nine-year-old son said he could hear from blocks away, came to a climax.
Multiple neighbours who spoke with CTV News said dozens of people gathered at the home, inside and out, for a series of blowout parties that even prompted a response from Vancouver police.
“Officers did speak with the tenants, who were cooperative with police and agreed to end their party,” wrote the Vancouver Police Department’s Const. Tania Visintin. “They are moving out and the house is slated to be torn down.”
In their wake, those tenants appear to have left piles of garbage, broken furniture, a damaged deck railing, and graffiti, including repeated profanity, that covers almost every imaginable exterior surface.
CTV News watched as one neighbour screamed at an insurance adjustor assessing the damage, demanding to know what would be done to cover up messages the neighbour called inappropriate in a neighbourhood full of young families.
Matheson, who called the damage and profanity “shocking,” thinks there might have been a miscommunication between the tenants and landlord.
“It looks like they just kind of understood that they could just bomb it on their way to moving out,” she said. “But they have been rather questionable to begin with.”
The City of Vancouver told CTV News in a statement it’s received 11 complaints about the home since Monday and has been in touch with the owner.
The city also confirmed the house is slated for demolition with a new dwelling to be built, but with a permit-processing backlog due to the pandemic, it could be sometime in mid-June, or potentially even later, before demolition happens.
CTV News reached out to the registered property owners via phone, email, and social media, but has not heard back.
A communications manager with the city said late Wednesday they’d been in touch with the owners, who have committed to painting over the profanity by the end of the weekend, and that an inspector would follow up.
But nine-year-old Christopher Carlos said he had a better, more permanent solution:
“It would be so fun if I could get in a wrecking ball and destroy that, that would be so fun,” he said.
