Lan Chan had become used to her neighbours throwing garbage onto her property, but it was when someone threw a knife that she got frightened.

Her 20-year-old son was in the back garden of her house on Berkeley St. last year when someone next door tossed an 8-inch blade “just in front of him,” she said.

“Garbage, I can clean it,” said the 60-year-old mother of three. “But if you throw knife, I’m so scared.”

Chan called the police, who retrieved the blade, but there were no further repercussions. It was a terrifying but not wholly unprecedented incident for Chan, who for the past nine years has been living next to a rooming house in Cabbagetown that neighbours say is a hotbed of violence and other disruptive behaviour.

On July 28, Chan and more than a dozen other local residents attended a licensing hearing at city hall to demand that the city revoke the six-unitrooming house’s licence. Many said they had sympathy for the property’s eight residents, some of whom have issues with substance abuse or mental health, but their patience has worn thin.

Among them was Louis-Philippe Rochon, a university professor who bought the property next to the rooming house nine years ago. In an interview with the Star, he said he accepts that living close to people who might use alcohol and drugs is “part of living downtown.”He wasn’t even fazed when he found out one of the rooming house tenants was working as a prostitute, “except she would do her tricks on the balcony of that house, which overlooks our yard.”

Neighbours told the hearing there are frequently rowdy groups of men drinking outside the property and shouting at night. Four years ago, Rochon told the Star he saw one tenant crack a man over the head with a beer bottle and leave him lying in a pool of blood on the front walkway.

Toronto Police Sergeant Sin Chiu told the hearing that there had been 27 calls to the Berkeley house since July 2014, for incidents that involved fights, trespassing and requests for police assistance from paramedics. The cops need to visit so often that the local division has been given the keys.

The city’s municipal licensing and standards inspectors have also been to the house at least three times this year, and found holes in the ceiling, broken door mechanisms, and a mice infestation.

According to city officials, Toronto has 379 licensed rooming houses, defined as any residence operated for profit, inhabited by four or more unrelated people, with shared amenities such as washrooms and kitchens. Units are generally cheaper than regular apartments, and are considered an important form of housing for low-income people.

The rules differ across the city, but to operate a rooming house legally in downtown Toronto a landlord must obtain a licence, which sets out property standards that must be followed. The city is currently undertaking a major review of its rooming house regulations, with the goal of improving living standards for tenants and reducing the impact on surrounding communities.

The Berkeley property has been used as a rooming house since 1959, and has a recent history of problems. In 2012, after residents complained, the city attached 14 additional conditions to the landlord’s licence, including maintaining the property in “a state of quiet enjoyment,” keeping the doors locked at all times, prohibiting loitering, and providing an on-site caretaker.

At last month’s hearing, rooming house licensing commissioner Larry Colle determined there was “credible evidence” that at least 10 of the 14 conditions were not being met. Although he had the power to revoke the licence, Colle deferred his decision until a new hearing in the first week of September. He said that, “in the meantime,” the landlord must “immediately deal with these conditions.”

Explaining his decision, Colle said that repealing the licence might actually make the situation worse. The city has the authority to send fire, health and property inspectors into licensed rooming houses, but at unlicensed properties such interventions might require a court order.

“If you revoke the licence, you have no control over the house any more,” Colle said.

The rooming house’s landlord, Peter Diakogeorgiou, did not attend the hearing, and the Star could not reach him for comment. The property’s handyman, Roger Savoie, came in his place and explained that his boss was 92 years old and too sick to attend.

Savoie conceded there were problems at the rooming house, but protested that the landlord’s hands were tied because it’s “almost impossible” to evict troublesome tenants. He also reported he has already fixed most of the property issues flagged by city inspectors this year. “We always comply with everything,” Savoie said. “We try our best.”

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John Papps was the only rooming house resident who spoke at the hearing. Unlike other tenants, he has a good relationship with many of the neighbours, who often hire him to do odd jobs. He currently pays $700 a month for his apartment and is worried that he won’t be able to afford to live anywhere else if the rooming house shuts down.

“What are you going to do with all the people that still live there?” he asked the commissioner. “Throw them on the streets?”

Toronto rooming houses

227: Licenced rooming houses in old Toronto

88: Applications for licences.

95: Complaints placed through 3-1-1 about rooming houses in Toronto since 2011.

Area with most complaints: Northern part of Ward 18, southern part of Ward 17; 10 complaints.

Ward with the most licenced rooming houses: Ward 14, with 72.

About bachelorettes: Unique to Ward 14 (Parkdale-High Park), bachelorette apartments — or converted houses, the city’s official name for them — are self-contained units that used to be rooming houses. They were renovated in the late 1970s.

While most conformed to approved standards when they were in rooming houses, the conversions were frequently completed without building permits. Construction of new rooming houses was prohibited in South Parkdale in 1978.

There are currently 20 licenced bachelorettes and 19 licence applications.