It's been nine months since a fire ripped through Westcourt Place in downtown Windsor, Ont. and displaced tenants are still in limbo.
Jesse Taylor-Vigneux expressed his frustration on The Dan MacDonald Show Wednesday. The 27-year-old has been living with a friend in Remington Park and is paying hundreds of dollars each month to get to work downtown due to the pandemic.
"When are they going to get in there to replace drywall, replace appliances and everything else that needs to done," he says. "A lot of us just want to get back to normal."
He says the building manager has been polite and supportive, but doesn't have any answers.
"She doesn't have that much information to go on either from what I can tell. The lawyers only tell her so much and the owners will only tell her so much," says Vigneux. "If she is withholding information is there a way that we can some of that information."
Some tenants have broken their lease and found new homes, but Vigneux doesn't drive and needs to live close to work.
He says he can't afford to pay more than his current lease agreement.
"With the housing market the way it is a one bedroom apartment in downtown Windsor, Ont. costs anywhere from $1,500 without utilities all the way up to $2,000 or $2,200," he added.
Sharon Strosberg is a partner at Strosberg Sasso Sutts.
She's taking the lead on the class action case and says the focus is on getting compensation for everyone who is displaced.
"We're dealing with the issue of who's responsible for that fire and once the court determines who's responsible, what are the damages," she says.
Both sides have begun their investigations, according to Strosberg.
"Preliminary reports about the cause of the fire as are the defendants and we're also getting some testing done on the vehicles that were involved in the fire and the electrical wiring," she says. "We're still waiting on the outcome of some of those tests."
Strosberg says she simply doesn't have answers as to when displaced tenants can return to their homes.
"In due course we will get that information, but I'm really not privy to the day to day goings on there and exactly who's in there and what's getting fixed," she says.
She says the case was originally set to go before the courts on Aug 23, but backlog of cases due to COVID-19 will push that back until at least January of 2021.