Floral tributes are shown outside a condo building in Vaughan, Ont., where five people were killed by a 73-year-old man.Fakiha Baig/The Canadian Press
A mass shooting in the Toronto area that targeted current and former members of a volunteer condominium board has underscored the legal challenges presented by problem condo owners, and forced some property managers to re-evaluate basic building security.
“It’s a lot more real than any of us thought it would be,” said Robert Klopot, president and chief executive of The Forest Hill Group, a property management company that provides staff to 90 buildings, including condos, in the Toronto area. “I think it changes the landscape for sure.”
Police say Francesco Villi, who lived at the Bellaria Residences II complex in Vaughan, Ont., killed five of his neighbours last Sunday evening and seriously wounded another before being shot dead by police. The next day, a court was set to hear the condominium board’s argument that he be forced to sell his apartment and move out of the building. A judge stayed the hearing after learning Mr. Villi had died.
The court action followed years of acrimonious disputes, lawsuits and countersuits related to Mr. Villi’s harassing statements and other threatening behaviour.
An Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling in 2010, unrelated to Mr. Villi, said harassing behaviour can put a resident in breach of the province’s Condominium Act, meaning they can be ordered to sell their unit. Since that precedent-setting ruling, there have been a handful of similar cases each year, said Rod Escayola, a partner with the law firm Gowling WLG.
“There’s tons of those cases ongoing across Ontario. Some owners are facing arrears they haven’t paid, others are involved in something more similar” to Mr. Villi’s case, Mr. Escayola said. “I’ve got a file where someone was having road rage in the parking lot.”
Mr. Villi was prone to profane outbursts, according to residents in the building, and posted many videos of himself online in which he made increasingly odd statements about demons and murderers.
Brian Horlick, a specialist in condo law and partner with Horlick Levitt Di Lella LLP, said the behaviour in those videos was familiar.
“It’s more frequent than you’d like. There are those owners out there,” Mr. Horlick said. “I’ve been pushed out of meetings, people have thrown a punch. I’m not going to change the way I practise law. I will not have it in the back of my mind.”
Some in the industry, however, believe the current legal system for managing conflict can make things worse.
“Neither property managers, nor board directors, nor condo lawyers have the soft skills and professional training required to deal with extreme hostile behaviours of agitated residents in troubled condominium communities,” said William Stratas, managing director of Eagle Audit Advantage Inc.
Ontario condo boards are made up of volunteers chosen by residents, who serve unpaid and are often inexperienced.
Mr. Stratas’s consulting services are often called upon when a condo board has reached a crisis point. He warned that there are many dysfunctional boards too willing to respond with punitive measures to any problem. “Combined with the tendency of some condo lawyers to adopt hard-line positions as instructed by those autocratic boards, this creates abrasive, hostile environments that tend to favour confrontation over resolution,” he said.
Mr. Stratas suggested that condo boards call upon third-party de-escalation services – similar to the Toronto Police Service’s Mobile Crisis Intervention Team – for disputes that appear to arise from mental illness.
Del Property Management Inc., which provides services to more than 80,000 condo units in Ontario, sent out a policy memo on Tuesday with a new set of techniques for dealing with threatening or abusive residents. It stresses that both board members and staff should “lend an empathetic ear and listen to the complainant’s concerns,” and if that fails “invite the complainant to a meeting with a third-party professional.”
Dean McCabe, president of the Meritus Group, a property management company with 55 building clients in the Toronto area, recalled a recent incident that required such a response. “We had a situation last year where a resident came down with a baseball bat … there was a window replacement project and the gentlemen felt his fees were too high,” he said. The bat situation was de-escalated by the on-site manager, but Mr. McCabe is advising his staff to be more vigilant after last Sunday’s shooting.
“The first thing we did, we had a huddle to remind everybody if you feel harassed or threatened in any shape or form, call 911. Don’t be afraid to do that,” Mr. McCabe said.
Mr. Klopot said he has already been in contact with boards looking to upgrade their buildings’ physical security. “We’ll never have a board meeting again without having a room with a locked door,” he said.
Heightened security awareness may also mean that condo residents will have to get used to active shooter drills and other security training.
“Places of employment, schools and malls have learned to put in place various risk assessment and protocols to deal with various situations of risk,” Mr. Escayola said. “When I say it’s kind of inevitable, I don’t like saying that – but you don’t know where is the next ticking time bomb.”