A good deed from a local landlord after a fire at a multi-unit building displaced eight of his tenants.
Ryan Rayner is taking his tenants out on Sunday, September 22 for dinner, drinks and to share stories along with returning some rent.
As heard on AM800 news, the fire broke out around 4:30 a.m. on Friday, September 6 at the multi-unit fourplex on Cameron Avenue near Riverside Drive.
It caused about $950,000 in damage and displaced eight people.
Rayner believes it will be good to get everyone together to share stories and return rent.
"We're going to get together at the Mandarin," says Rayner. I'm going to hand out it's about $10,000 in cash that I had to give back to them for September. I'll give them back their September rent and then any rent I'm holding and then we're all going to have an all you can eat and we're going to have some drinks and talk about different stories in the building."
He says he has talked with the tenants.
"All of them have secured housing, temporary housing," he says. "One couple actually bought a house so there's a good news story coming out of that and I have checked in to see if they're ok and found a place to stay."
Rayner says he doesn't want the fire and sitting outside to be the last memory of the building.
"I don't want to remember that night of waking up 4 a.m., driving to the fire, seeing the fire trucks, seeing the building burning, all the tenants huddled outside," says Rayner. "I haven't really been able to start thinking about that and I think it would be just good for everybody if we ended well and started to put a little bit of this behind us."
Rayner says the building is no longer habitable and it will be demolished.
He's currently working with his insurance company and a property restoration company.
Rayner says some tenants were able to access their units to gather some of their belongings.