There is now a padlock on the front door of 14 Blevins Place, the empty 14-storey Regent Park building originally slated for demolition on Oct. 6.

Empty that is, except for Candice McGowan and her two teenage children, who more than a week later continue to live in their ground-floor apartment with a separate entrance, holding up the demolition as her lawyer and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation continue to discuss temporarily moving the family elsewhere.

The issue, as previously reported by the Star, is that McGowan is not a “tenant in good standing” and has been battling eviction by the TCHC since February 2013 for allegedly having “multiple loaded handguns” in her apartment, owing rent and misstating her income.

McGowan claims there is no basis for the eviction, and that she had no knowledge of guns in the apartment. On Tuesday, McGowan told the Star that the next hearing date at the Landlord and Tenant Board has been scheduled for Dec. 3.

In the meantime, the TCHC confirmed that they are continuing to have discussions with McGowan’s legal counsel about providing McGowan and her children with temporary housing.

The TCHC has stated that it will cost $10,000 per day to have demolition equipment and contractors sitting idle.

“Our contractors are still proceeding with work on other buildings nearby,” TCHC spokesperson Sara Goldvine said Tuesday.

It is unclear how long it will be before that $10,000 price tag kicks in.

Meanwhile McGowan, who is currently unemployed and says she and her children have nowhere else to go, says she is becoming increasingly anxious about living in the vacated building.

She has her own washer and dryer, but the laundry room she would otherwise rely on is now inaccessible, she says.

She says she was told that the building’s water heater would soon be taken out as well. “Do we start packing?” she said Tuesday.

“I don’t want to start packing unless we have to leave…but I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

TCHC spokesperson Sara Goldvine has earlier said the TCHC was concerned relocating McGowan in the midst of her eviction proceedings would mean a risk that they would have to start new proceedings.

However, they are “prepared to move Ms. McGowan immediately if she will agree that the proceedings currently at the Landlord and Tenant Board will move transfer with her.”

McGowan’s pro bono lawyer Susan von Achten says she has made this exact offer to the TCHC several times over the past year. She maintains the TCHC could have agreed to move McGowan before Oct. 6 and avoided any delay to the demolition.

“Instead of doing the simple, sensible thing I suggested earlier, it came down to they’d rather spend $10,000 a day.”

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Von Achten said she could not comment on the current negotiations and on why a temporary resolution has not been found.

According to a letter sent to McGowan and her lawyer last week, the TCHC has retained Bay. St. law firm Aird & Berlis to take over the eviction proceedings from their in-house counsel.