Illegal $80K addition costs taxpayers $500K, family paid $200K legal fees in 6 years

[elmst200]

The family would like to dish out 3 times more money than to demolish an illegal addition. And it has costed the taxpayers $500K. The irony is the owner of the house is the daughter, who is a lawyer. The family is still fighting after 6 years; this time citing medical (psychiatric) conditions of the elderly couple.

The Star's July 27 report

Battle with Brunswick Ave. family cost city about $500,000, councillor says
Published on Thursday July 26, 2012


CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR An $80,000 addition built onto the Tseng family home without a permit and in contravention of other rules has been the focus of a drawn-out legal battle that a councillor revealed has cost the city about $500,000.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/arti...ouncillor-says
Daniel Dale
Urban Affairs Reporter

Councillor Adam Vaughan says the city has been forced to spend about $500,000 battling with a Brunswick Ave. family that fought unsuccessfully for six years to get belated approval for an $80,000 home addition built without a permit.

The addition was rejected Wednesday by the committee of adjustment, for the second time. The Tsengs now have five months to demolish the addition unless they file another appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board.

The Tsengs’ chances appear slim: the OMB rejected their first appeal in 2008. If they lose again, they can again try to appeal to the courts, but they lost there the first time as well. They have also made a plea to the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

The family has spent at least $250,000. Councillor Adam Vaughan, who opposes the addition, said city officials told him Thursday that the process has cost taxpayers about twice that. Officials could not be reached for comment.

Retired realtor Shih Tseng, 76, who said he has had two strokes, lives in the home with his wife Yang Tseng, a 70-year-old with serious mobility problems who also suffers from mental illness. The property is owned by their daughter Pauline Tseng, a lawyer who does not want her parents to have to move.

Shih Tseng said he is not yet sure if they will return to the OMB. He said he no longer has faith that the system will be “fair.”

“Nobody can help. This is only a joke. The meeting, the hearing yesterday, is a joke,” he said.

Vaughan had thought Wednesday’s hearing was the Tsengs’ last hope. But a January court judgment gives them the right to go back to the OMB and then to seek leave to appeal to the courts.

“If there was even one judgment that had gone against the city, you might be able to justify pursuing this course of action,” Vaughan said. “But the fact that every single tribunal, every single court of law, has supported the city’s position on this — I think it’s fairly clear where the law stands. So it’s time to resolve this.”

The Star's July 25, 2012 report

Elderly couple’s illegal $80,000 addition likely to be demolished
Published on Wednesday July 25, 2012

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/arti...-be-demolished




The Tseng family's $80,000 home addition was built without permits and in violation of size limits. They have spent $200,000 and hired star lawyer Clayton Ruby to try to save it, but after six years it seems likely to be demolished.

Daniel Dale
Urban Affairs Reporter

After a six-year battle that included appeals to the courts, the Ontario Municipal Board and even the United Nations, an elderly Brunswick Ave. couple will probably now be forced to demolish a two-storey backyard addition built without a permit.

A committee-of-adjustment panel voted Wednesday to reject the couple’s last-ditch plea to retroactively legalize the $80,000 structure. It was unswayed by renowned lawyer Clayton Ruby, who argued that dismissing the request would amount to discrimination against the disabled — and noted that other members of 70-year-old Yang Tseng’s family have committed suicide.

“No justice,” Shih Tseng, her 76-year-old husband, said in an interview after the decision. “My lawyer mentioned my wife’s family had suicide history. They don’t care. They don’t care. They totally disregard our health.”

Councillor Adam Vaughan, who opposed the addition along with a group of local residents, said Ruby’s human rights arguments were irrelevant to the question at hand.

“This is not a human rights issue. It’s a planning issue. The addition was too big, and it was built without permission,” Vaughan said in an interview.

“It’s unfortunate. But the lesson here is a very clear one: Do not build without permission, because there are consequences. And the consequences become very expensive if you choose to fight rather than cooperate.”

Rory “Gus” Sinclair, a former Harbord Village Residents’ Association president who spoke against the proposal, said the Tsengs are now supposed to have 30 days to demolish the addition. A city spokesperson was not able to confirm.

The property is owned by the couple’s daughter, lawyer Pauline Tseng, who was heavily involved in the legal battle. As of last spring, when the Star first wrote about the case, the family had spent more than $200,000 on lawyers and other professionals in an attempt to save the addition.

The Tsengs’ two other children bought them the home near Kensington Market for $718,000 in 2006. They soon tore down the existing addition, a rotting wooden structure, and hired a contractor to build a new brick addition of about half a metre longer.

They did not get a permit. And their addition extended about 10 metres farther than allowed under today’s rules.

“At that time, we don’t know permits. When we found out, we tried,” Shih Tseng said.

Ruby cited a psychiatrist’s belief that Yang Tseng’s “significant psychiatric disorder” is directly attributable to the battle over her home and that demolishing the addition would cause an “adverse and serious impact” on her health.

Both Yang Tseng and Shih Tseng have been diagnosed with depression. Shih Tseng said he has heart problems and has had two strokes; Yang Tseng suffers from osteoporosis, anxiety, sleep apnea, and a Parkinson’s-like brain disorder that causes balance problems.

The Tsengs live on the bottom floor of the addition and the original house, Shih Tseng said. Because of his wife’s difficulties sleeping and walking up and down stairs, they could not live in the original house itself, he said.

“The whole purpose of this addition is to get her living on one floor. And because of the psychiatric problems, there was huge fear and terror of moving from this house,” Ruby told the committee. “The daughter owns it; she wants them to remain there for the few years they have left. And the demolition, really, under the circumstances, is going to produce a very serious adverse effect on these two people who find themselves disabled.”

Sinclair told the committee: “I am so sad and sorry, I mean this sincerely, for the plight of the Tseng family — the elders. It is no fun to be in that condition; it is no fun growing old. But that is not, ladies and gentlemen, a consideration about land use. Sorry, it just isn’t. It can’t be.”

[elmst200]

The Star's May 18, 2011 report

Elderly couple ‘living in fear’ over court order to demolish home addition
Published Sunday May 08, 2011

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/...-addition?bn=1






DALE BRAZAO/TORONTO STAR
Dale Brazao
Staff Reporter

A two-storey backyard addition built without permits has cost an elderly couple more than $200,000 in legal and other fees, their health and now possible eviction and demolition of the offending structure.

During a five-year fight with city hall, Shih Tseng, 74, has suffered a heart attack and a stroke. His wife, Yang Tseng, 68, who has osteoporosis and mobility problems, is under a doctor's care for severe stress.

The couple's contractor built the brick addition 45 centimetres deeper into the backyard than the former termite-infested, rotting wooden structure, which was built before new bylaws were enacted.

The Tsengs didn't obtain permits, and the city says the new structure makes the total allowable depth of the house almost twice as long as what is allowed under today's rules.

The family's anxiety is about to grow exponentially.

The city has applied for a court order to demolish — at the Tsengs' expense — the $80,000 addition on their semi-detached Victorian-style home on Brunswick Ave., just north of College St. near Kensington Market.

“We are living in fear,” Shih Tseng said of the endless fight to legalize and maintain the addition, which now includes a desperate last-minute appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva to stop the demolition.

“We can't sleep, we can't eat,” said a tearful Shih Tseng. He and his wife live on the ground floor and rent two upstairs apartments to university students.

“The stress is killing us,” Shih Tseng continued. “We feel terrorized.”

Inspectors have been to the house at least 26 times, he said. Two senior lawyers have “prosecuted them” in court for more than 16 months, leaving the family questioning the “excessive zeal” with which the city is pursuing this particular case.

According to their daughter, Pauline Tseng, the family has paid more than $200,000 in professional fees to local zoning lawyers, planners, architects, engineers and surveyors from Sept. 2006 to March 2011 to try and save the 14- by 12-foot addition.

“We believe the city's endless litigation against us is unprecedented for the minor nature of the infraction involved,” said Pauline Tseng, a New York-based lawyer who holds a certificate in conflict resolution from Harvard University. “Defence counsel told us the severity of the offence (construction without a building permit) is like a parking ticket.”

The ordeal began in May 2006 when the couple's two other children, Peter and Vanessa, purchased the large red brick house as a retirement home for their parents.

Since there were multiple offers the family submitted a “clean offer,” meaning it didn't have the contingency clause for a home inspection. The house sold for $718,000.

The sellers did not disclose previous fire damage to the home. After the closing, a home inspector and an engineer recommended that the rotting two-storey structure at the rear, which was sinking and tearing away from the main house, be torn down and rebuilt on solid footings.

Pauline Tseng said she, her father, brother and sister were out of the country at the time. Their mother was in Toronto, but hardly equipped to oversee any building project, so they handed the keys to a contractor to make the repairs recommended by their architect.

The family argues the addition is only 45 centimetres — a mere foot and a half — deeper than the footprint of the clapboard structure they tore down. And there are other houses on the street that go back farther on the lot than theirs.

The city says what the Tsengs constructed, without any building or electrical permits, “leaves little open space, blocks sunlight and views from adjacent properties.”

The Tsengs point to committee of adjustment documents that show houses nearby on Brunswick received minor variances — one for an addition and another for a staircase — that brought their overall depth to twice what is allowed under current bylaws. Both of those houses are deeper than the addition the Tseng family built.

The attached neighbour to the north of the couple has no objection, neither does the neighbour to the south, the owner of an 11-unit rooming house that received committee of adjustment approval in 1980 to pave over the backyard to allow for six-car parking.

Those arguments have had no effect on a group of 20 neighbours who signed a petition opposing the Tsengs.

“This extension is large and bulky ... and has the potential to limit the backyard enjoyment of existing neighbours and all future neighbours since it permanently changes the character of these backyards,” the petition reads. “The addition ... sets a dangerous precedent for backyard overdevelopment.”

The Tsengs countered with a petition with 39 names in support. But Ingrid McKhool, co-owner of a nearby home on Brunswick, said the Tsengs were not completely truthful when they canvassed neighbours.

“She (Pauline Tseng) misrepresented herself. She didn't disclose that the addition had already been built, that it was illegally constructed or that it was longer than the one that was previously there,” said McKhool, adding she was glad when the committee of adjustment ruled the variance was not minor, and not in keeping with the character of the area.

Councillor Adam Vaughan (Trinity-Spadina) also sided with the Harbord Village Residents Association's position that the addition must come down.

“There are consequences to building first and getting permits later,” said Vaughan. “This addition is too deep, too high, and too wide,” he said.

Vaughan compared the Tsengs' predicament to someone who decides to do their own income tax, takes shortcuts, is whacked by the auditor, then blames the taxman for his problems. He says he has a hard time believing that the Tsengs, with a lawyer in the family, didn't know a building permit is needed to construct an addition of that size.

The family appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board. Their hired planner was on vacation the day of the hearing, but the city's planner was there. In a scathing report, the board questioned whether the Tsengs are “intent on continuing a pattern of behaviours which results in a waste of time and resources of the board and the city.”

Pauline Tseng, acting for her parents, sought to appeal the OMB decision in Divisional Court, and then to the Ontario Court of Appeal. She lost both times while the city was awarded $17,500 in costs.

Meanwhile, Toronto began prosecuting the Tsengs under the Ontario Building Code Act for failure to comply with the order to obtain a building permit. After six court dates were adjourned (most requested by the city, the family claims), all charges were withdrawn.

“We thought it was over,” Pauline Tseng said. Days later, they received notice the city was going back to court seeking an order to evict the tenants and demolish the addition.

Star

The family would like to dish out 3 times more money than to demolish an illegal addition. The irony is the owner of the house is the daughter, who is a lawyer. The family is still fighting after 6 years; this time citing medical (phychiatric) conditions of the elderly couple.

The Star's July 25, 2012 report

[JAC]

Good.

[Xiaohaibao]

Sorry but the law is the law, exceptions can't be made otherwise everyone will think of a reason they deserve an exception.

“At that time, we don’t know permits. When we found out, we tried,” Shih Tseng said.

So their daughter is a lawyer and didn't tell them they need a permit? They should blame their lawyer daughter who should of advised them better.

[elmst200]

the owner of the house is the lawyer daughter. The lawyer didn't know building an addition needs a permit.

Sorry but the law is the law, exceptions can't be made otherwise everyone will think of a reason they deserve an exception.


So their daughter is a lawyer and didn't tell them they need a permit? They should blame their lawyer daughter who should of advised them better.

[arclite]

The lawyer didn't know building an addition needs a permit.

[wilsonlam97]

I don't know what to say.


"Sorry its the law?"

[dragon_drift]

She's a lawyer? What a fail.

[t3359]

Oh boy... Can't believe they were trying the human rights and discrimination card on this one.

bjl

[gizmo8]

BS...I seen rich developers getting permits for renovations that was some how passed by the OMB because of their ability to afford good lawyers that knows how to play the system while a poor couple who trusted the builder to get proper permits is forced out of their house because of small variances...the house looks pretty nice and not a eyesore...the neighbors are a holes for forcing this issue....

[ovechkin1]

the owner of the house is the lawyer daughter. The lawyer didn't know building an addition needs a permit.

could of saved on some legal fees by using her.

[manixc]

maybe they should sue the contractor?

Seriously, if they spend $200k on lawyer, maybe they could have used that money to tear down the illegal building, apply for a proper permit and build a legal building.

Also, why didn't they use their daughter?

[Mars2012]

I can't see how a legitimate contractor would have built the addition without a permit.

What a crazy story about some crazy people. I used to sing that Rolling Stones song to my daughter when she was little..."You can't always get what you want...." Drove her nuts, but it's a lesson everyone needs to learn sometime.

[jaysfan4life]

You need a Permit for additions... No discrimation the law is the law

[sylpherware]

How the f did they put "depression" and "suicidal" up as defense?? If they were physically disabled and the new addition is to help them get around better, then I'd petition for leniency in this case.
Sorry, but "I may kill myself if it doesn't go my way" is a facepalm, not a defense.