WATERLOO - The City of Waterloo may be close to finally closing the book on a trouble-plagued Erb Street apartment complex, but their problems with landlord Terry Good are far from over.

Good still owns at least eight other properties in the city, and almost all of them are abandoned. Many have been boarded up, but they remain an eyesore for neighbours - and in some cases, a magnet for squatters and vandals.

Most of the homes are within a few blocks of Waterloo's City Hall. Good owns rental properties on George, John and Mary streets and Avondale Avenue South - all of them older homes that once had Victorian-era heritage value but have been allowed to crumble after years of neglect.

City officials say they're well aware of the problems with those vacant properties, but they have limited to power to force Good to fix them up.

"Vacant buildings are an issue for municipalities everywhere. There's really no tools for us to deal with them," said Shayne Turner, Waterloo's director of municipal enforcement services.

"If somebody chooses to leave their property vacant, we have regulations to keep the building secured. But in terms of saying, 'No, you must have tenants, or you must tear it down and rebuild, or you must sell it,' our situation is very limited."

Only in extreme cases where a building becomes a public safety issue can it be ordered demolished, he explained. Otherwise, municipalities can only try to enforce basic property standards, like sealing broken windows or removing dead trees.

In the 1970s, Good promoted himself as an advocate for heritage preservation in Waterloo's Mary-Allen neighbourhood. Now, ironically, neighbours worry his properties have been neglected for so long they can't be saved.

Many of the homes were inherited from his late father, Howard Good, who was a real estate salesperson, pastor and guidance counsellor at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate and Eastwood Collegiate in Kitchener. They've long since been paid for.

The past January, a neighbour called the city about flooding at 16 George St., after seeing condensation against the windows of the vacant building. A burst pipe on the third floor forced city workers to shut off water to the property and board up the building.

A few blocks away, residents are wondering about another abandoned Good property. Garbage is piled up around 60 John St. E., the bushes are overgrown and a City of Waterloo notice is posted in the front window.

"I haven't seen tenants there since last summer. They moved out because they couldn't get anything fixed," said Bruce Lennox, who lives across the street.

Nearby, tenants at 226 Mary St. had to break into another unit in the home after gas was shut off to the entire house in the middle of the winter. A second Good home sits abandoned next door; a third is across the street.

Good, who is notoriously difficult to reach, doesn't seem to be too concerned. The few tenants who are left in his properties haven't had their rent cheques cashed in months.

Turner thinks the best hope for these properties is for a new owner to come in and spend the money required to fix them up. Even in their current state, Good is sitting on millions of dollars worth of real estate near uptown Waterloo.

"It's not logical that someone would just walk away from these properties," Turner added.

Not that he's against selling. By the end of the month, his 35-unit complex at 154 Erb St. will have a new owner, Hamilton's Effort Trust. In February, the City of Waterloo ordered all tenants out of the building, after years of neglected maintenance led to mould, and plumbing, flooding, electrical, security and fire safety problems.

In February, that same company bought Good's 12-unit building at 112 Margaret Ave. in Kitchener. It is sinking several hundred thousand dollars into fixing it up.

Stephen Litt, project manager for both buildings, said Effort Trust wants to turn the former low-rent properties into trendy addresses geared toward "young professionals." Rents at both properties will be in the $1,000-a-month range.

"There's many, many decades of deferred maintenance that needs to be addressed. So it's a challenge. But I like old buildings, and I'm happy to see it restored to it previous glory," he said.

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That kind of transformation already played out at another former Good property, 48 Weber St. W. in Kitchener. Toronto's Urbandfund spent about $1.3 million renovating the building, after it was declared unfit for human habitation last summer.

Problems at 112 Margaret Ave. stretched back to 1990s, when tenants said uninvited "crackheads" began flocking to the building. In November 1998, a homeless man squatting in the building's vacant attic was blamed for starting a fire that caused $110,000 in damage.

In recent years, the building has been plagued by a rodent infestation, squatters, plumbing and mould problems. Contractors were busy gutting the building this week - but were avoiding the basement unit still occupied by one tenant.

Leslie Hickey, 50, lives on a disability pension and has been in the basement unit for seven years. She claims a man "pulled up in a Ferrari" back in February and told her she had 24 hours to leave.

Litt disputes this story, and says no one from his group tried to force her out that quickly.

At any rate, Hickey refused to go - even after she says the heat was cut to her apartment. She's stayed warm by relying on a space heater.

"People can say whatever they want about Terry Good, but he never made me spend the winter without heat," Hickey said. "They're trying to bully me to get out, but I've got no other place to go."

Litt says the building's radiant hot water system was "barely operational" when the property was bought, and a boiler mechanic was called as soon as Hickey complained about the heat.

He adds the new owner is trying to be reasonable with Hickey, but with no record of a lease agreement or rent paid, she's essentially squatting and will have to be evicted.

She's been offered $400 to help with moving costs.

"I'm trying to be amicable, but it's simply not possible to get the building up to a safe condition with a tenant living in it," Litt said.

"From our perspective, there's not really a legal tenancy. But we realize they were there, we inherited them, and we're trying to be a good neighbour and help find them something suitable at their price point."

Litt says cases like this show the need for more affordable housing in Waterloo Region.

Hickey says homeless squatters had been coming to places like 112 Margaret Ave. because the closure of the overnight Out of the Cold shelter program left them without a place to sleep.