Appalled neighbours say a three-alarm blaze in Kensington Market on Thursday killed and injured some of the city’s most vulnerable residents: recent immigrants, single and low-income tenants.

The fire that engulfed a building Councillor Adam Vaughan says may have been an illegal rooming house killed two men and sent 10 other people to hospital.

“This is a real tragedy in our neighbourhood, and right across the city,” said Zoe Dodd, who has lived in a nearby apartment for almost 10 years and used to wave hello from her balcony to the tenants now displaced.

She was doubtful the building was up to code, recalling a 2007 rooming-house fire that engulfed apartments above a row of businesses on Spadina Ave. at Baldwin St., trapping people inside and on the roof. Last year, a man and woman were hospitalized after a similar fire in Parkdale, and a fire at a rooming house known as the Rupert Hotel killed 10 in 1989.

“We need affordable, adequate housing so people don’t need to live like this. It’s absolutely appalling that people are forced to live in these conditions. No one should have to live in these rooms, but this is all people can afford in this city,” said a tearful and shaken Dodd.

Neighbours say the units were mostly home to single, adult men from China and Vietnam.

Kenny Du, who works in Chinatown, once lived on the second floor of the rooming house and still visits often to play cards with friends. Many of the residents are on some form of social assistance and the rooms cost between $400 and $500 per month, said Du, who was still not sure which of his friends had died.

There are at least 12 tenants on the second floor and four units on the third floor, with only one exit at the front door, he said.

“It’s kind of unsafe,” Du said. “What if the fire was right at the door? You’d have no way to get out but to jump (out of) the window.”

There are no licences or approvals to operate a rooming house at 6 St. Andrew St., according to the city.

It’s believed there at least a dozen tenants living on the second floor of a semi-detached house at that address, with a Korean restaurant on the main floor. Ten people were rescued from the blaze, including an unconscious woman and two children, aged 1 and 4, believed to live in the third-floor unit.

The two men, whose names have not been released, were pronounced dead in hospital. The others suffered minor smoke inhalation. Police pulled the woman and a child from one of the units shortly before firefighters arrived around 2 a.m. Thursday.

“We have a significant problem with illegal rooming houses,” Councillor Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina) told reporters, calling them “warehouses that store people.”

Vaughan is calling for a bylaw that would require all rooming houses to be licensed and inspected by city officials, “to regulate projects like this where you get 15, 20 people living above a store. It’s unacceptable and it’s profoundly dangerous.

“It’s frightening the conditions that people live in, but it’s also a huge health and safety risk for the people next door. We need (Municipal Licensing and Standards) and city council to step up on rooming houses … it’s not just a downtown problem, there are illegal rooming houses right across the city.

“There was a baby living in that house, for God’s sake,” he said later at City Hall.

Under city rules, a “rooming house” is a dwelling shared by at least three unrelated people living in separate rooms but sharing house facilities. Operating one requires a licence, according to a recent staff report.

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In 2013, council voted not to adopt a staff recommendation to extend zoning and licensing to rooming houses in certain high-density areas of Toronto.

Property records show 6 St. Andrew St. is owned by Buu Vuong and Diep Khanh Ly. A woman who identified herself as the daughter of the owners said her parents were in their 80s and did not speak English. They had not yet visited the scene of the fire, Tiffany Vuong said Thursday afternoon.

As for whether there were too many people living in the residence, she said only one person occupied each room, but she wasn’t sure how many rooms there were in total.

The cause of fire is under investigation by the fire marshal’s office, which will also determine whether smoke detectors and fire alarms were in place, and the number of exits.