From the sidewalk, very little about the lowrise brick building at 795 College St. appears to have changed.

Inside, however, the spacious and once extremely affordable apartments have undergone extensive renovations to become luxury rentals, with the three-bedroom units advertised online for at least $4,000 a month.

The building is also missing the original renters, who tried and failed to stop their evictions at the Landlord and Tenant Board.

What happened at 795 College St. is a story of tenants in a rapidly gentrifying city, who were forced out of their homes because rental housing law allows landlords to remove tenants during renovations but doesn’t have the power to ensure they get back in, based on a recent ruling.

The term “renovictions” is used to describe when a landlord pushes people out for renovations and counts on them not coming back so they can dramatically raise the rent and find new tenants. But it is a tenant’s legal right to come back once work is done and without a substantial increase in rent.

Five former renters at 795 College St. said that is what happened to them after their building was bought for just over $1.5 million in 2014. Two years later they were ordered out. The tenants claim they clearly stated their intention to move back in, but the property owner gutted their apartments and found new people willing to pay three times the rent, ignoring their rights.

But here’s the hitch. The new occupants of 795 College St. are entitled to protection under the Residential Tenancies Act and can’t be ordered out, a board adjudicator determined in March.

“I thought the whole point of the Landlord and Tenant Board was to protect people in these situations and I am aghast at how flimsy that was, how empty that promise was,” said Aurora Browne, 45, who lived with partner Kris Siddiqi, 37, in the building for close to 10 years. “It seems as if the Landlord and Tenant Board has absolutely no spine and it is open season on tenants.”

For the former tenants, the building was more than bricks and mortar. It was where they met business partners and future spouses and raised their kids and were able to pursue their careers because of reasonable rent.

A spokesperson for 795 College Inc., the company that owns the building, declined to comment because the issue is still before the board, but said they are dedicated to preserving rental housing in the urban core.

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Evan Johnsen, an officer and director of 795 College Inc., told one former tenant he isn’t “some horrible archangel landlord person” treating everybody terribly. But after dealing with major structural deficiencies and putting in “brand new stuff” it “doesn’t make sense” to let her return at her original rent, he said. He intended to move his son in. The tenant Johnsen spoke with is not involved in the current case.

“It’s no secret that the rent you were paying there was well below what that space was worth and I’m not going to try and pretend that that’s not part of the story that’s evolving here, because obviously it is,” said Johnsen, according to a transcript of the December 2016 conversation submitted to the board.

“I can’t pay for your heat and your property taxes and a guy to mop the front hall for $1,200. It’s so far beyond, oh Evan wants to make an extra $50 so he can drink more expensive champagne or some s—t like that,” said Johnsen. “This building is a major system catastrophe.”

During the most recent of many board hearings, the tenants’ lawyer Simon Wallace had argued the owners used the new renters as both a “sword and a shield” or knew it was unlikely new tenants could be evicted. He also argued the board had broad powers to uphold the intent of the act, or protect tenant rights.

Lawyers for the building owner had argued it was not within the board’s power to evict.

Board member Roger Rodrigues wrote in his March decision that clearly the people who drafted the legislation were focused on “circumstances when a tenant could be placed back in possession of a unit,” and “there is nothing in the legislation so allowing when the unit has been re-rented to new tenants.”

The building was purchased by 795 College Inc. in 2014. Johnsen and Neil Spiegel are the registered officers and directors of that company. The men are co-founders of Circa, a development company that transforms lowrise buildings and older homes into luxury condominiums, the Star reported in 2016. Johnsen is also identified as president of 795 College Inc., in a 2014 document detailing a $700,000 loan against the building.

The Star spoke with Johnsen in early February. His answers were terse. No, he said, he did not own 795 and no, he was not doing renovations.

“If you have questions regarding 795 College, somebody from that company will call you back.”

But he offered no help in who to speak to. “I’m not under any obligation to tell you anything,” he said.

Danny Roth, with Brandon Communications Inc., then emailed the Star on behalf of 795 College Inc. and said at the time of sale there were 46 city work orders against the property and after the sale city building inspectors deemed it unsafe and in need of significant renovations.

“Despite the scope of the work and resources required to return the building to good standing, we committed to the process, and remain convinced that preserving the building and preserving rental housing in the urban core were the right things to do,” wrote Roth.

“As the process to resolve these matters is still ongoing, and given that we believe that it is through the board and not through the media that individual tenant issues should be resolved, we will have no further comment on the matter at this time.”

City staff told the Star that during renovations the owner’s engineer found that some of the floor joists were not supported and advised the owner multiple times to put in shoring, before the city was forced to issue an order.

Roth also declined to respond to additional questions sent this week about the tenants’s case, Johnsen’s statement, the transcript, the corporate structure of 795 College Inc., the joists and the board decision.

The next hearing should address the tenants’ complaints about the property owner’s tactics leading up to, during and after the eviction, including that they were moved out in “bad faith.”

There is also a dispute over whether the owner violated an order the board made in November forbidding the re-renting or occupation of the apartments until the board hearings wrapped up. The order was issued because somebody was seen moving into Browne and Siddiqi’s old apartment.

All of the units have been leased, the board heard in February. The lawyer for the former tenants has been asking the board since December for permission to move a contempt motion into Divisional Court.

The group say they know they are fortunate to have the time and resources to fight and hope their case results in better protections for tenants, particularly low-income renters.

Councillor Mike Layton said the board needs to be better equipped to take action in cases like this.

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“Nobody wants to see these other people evicted, but at the same time justice needs to be done,” said Layton, who will be putting forward a motion at city council next week, asking the city to call on the province to find a way to fix what has happened.

The Ministry of Housing Rental Housing Enforcement Unit is investigating whether the owner intended to keep the tenants out. Violations of the Residential Tenancies Act could be dealt with in Provincial Offences Court, where individuals can be fined up to $25,000 per count and corporations up to $100,000.

Former tenant Karri North, 47, described the board decision as an “ironclad gift” for landlords, made at the “detriment to our city’s future.”

“It is not like it is this little clause hidden in the (Residential Tenancies Act) said North, a photographer who lived at 795 College with husband Michael O’Connell, a musician. “It says right on the front of the eviction notice, you have the right to reoccupy your unit.”

Located in Toronto’s Little Italy neighbourhood, 795 College St. was home to visual artists, actors — among the evicted are two members of the Baroness von Sketch Show on CBC — and musicians, paying about $1,240 a month.

It was an old building and if a fuse or toilet needed changing they sometimes handled it themselves, but stressed it was comfortable, safe and well maintained. “We were coming into each others apartments. We were looking after each others kids,” said Siddiqi. “I always equated it to one of the warmest quilts, but held together with twist ties and duct tape.”

In 2016 the tenants were sent forms informing them significant renovations were planned and they could be legally ordered out.

The tenants, in turn, sent letters to 795 College Inc. and the property manager and said they would be pursuing the “right of first refusal,” or a tenant’s right to move back in and to pay close to the same amount of rent.

“To be honest, the whole way through, at every stage, everybody has told us you will have to leave,” said Browne. “We’ve stuck with it regardless.”

The owner offered the tenants $4,800 per unit to leave voluntarily, said Browne. They were later paid the equivalent of three months rent, as required by law.

Throughout the process the tenants went to the board trying unsuccessfully to make the case that the landlord intended to keep them out.

“We were told that we were crystal balling ... that we were imagining things,” said Carolyn Taylor, 45. “The loss of our homes was never treated with any urgency.”

Browne and Siddiqi moved out last April, staying in Toronto.

O’Connell and North were out at the end of May and moved to Meaford.

Taylor was out of town when her possessions were placed in storage and her home stripped down to the studs.

She had been set to move out by midnight on June 30, but days before a friend sent her an advertisement promoting the first of eight units in “an intimate complex that was just renovated to perfection,” with black hardware, designer lighting and heated floors.

“It wasn’t mine, I was still living in mine, but it said first of eight units and there are only eight units in the building,” Taylor told the Star. That same friend toured the building and was told Taylor’s unit would be ready for fall, but there was a waiting list.

She contacted the lawyer for 795 College Inc., informing him she was applying for a stay of her eviction. Johnsen called her back, she said. She also got her own lawyer who sent an application to the board, with the rental ad and a transcript of the conversation between Johnsen and the tenant. A board member had refused to listen to the tape in an earlier hearing, in part because it wasn’t about Taylor, she said.

Taylor had plans to go up north. So with Johnsen notified and a lawyer hired she made the beds, left a note for her house-sitter, put up a tiny sign by her light switch saying “no trespassing,” took her plant and left.

A few days later her lawyer contacted her and told her the stay was issued. The next day, the house-sitter texted her, told her to take a deep breath and sent photographs of her gutted home filled with garbage bags.

Taylor said it took close to two months to track down her possessions and set up a time to crawl through a storage locker.

“It was a humiliating horrible experience to poke through stuff crammed into a storage unit ... They watched and I got to tick things off a list.”

The next hearing has not been scheduled.