Tenzin has a bundle of pink maintenance requests documenting all the complaints he’s made about the drafty doorway leading to his 11th floor balcony at 103 West Lodge Ave., in Parkdale.

The 77-year-old former factory worker from Tibet, who goes by just one name, says the door still hasn’t been fixed — five years since he made his first complaint.

“You feel really disappointed. You pay your rent in a timely fashion and they don’t do the repairs, so you feel powerless,” he told the Star through an interpreter from Parkdale Community and Legal Services, a free legal aid clinic for low-income residents.

He was one of the first tenants to air his grievances with city building inspectors during an audit of his building and the twin 19-storey apartment tower at 105 West Lodge Ave. in February.

The Municipal, Licensing and Standards department recently released the results of the audit. At 103, inspectors found 50 defects in the interior common elements, including cracked ceilings, broken tiles and graffiti. In 105, they identified 69 violations in the interior common areas.

Pat Burke, a district manager with the department, said conditions in 103 were particularly bad. “The stairwells were dirty. There were feces on the wall by the second-floor door. The garbage rooms were filthy: they smelled, they were dirty,” he said.

The property owner, Wynn Residential, has until September to comply with some of the orders.

Burke says the owner has already started to clear up waste and graffiti on the property. If Wynn Residential doesn’t fix these problems by deadline, the city will start prosecution, he added.

The city held the audit of the common areas in apartments after tenants rallied outside the buildings in late February to protest inadequate heating, outstanding repairs and other problems.

Wynn Residential didn’t return the Star’s request for comment on Friday.

Tenants have made more than 150 property standards complaints against the building in the past two years, according to the Toronto’s municipal licensing and standards website.

The day of the audit, Jim Xirogiannis, a property manager at 103 West Lodge Ave., brushed off many tenants’ complaints as unrealistic. “A lot of people want a brand new kitchen or they want a brand new apartment,” he said in an interview. “I mean, we do what we do to make it the best living space possible.

“Most of the tenants, if you ask them, they’re happy. You can’t please everyone all the time,” he said.

The West Lodge towers have a dismal record of maintenance problems spanning four decades and different ownerships.

The Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations has received 5,140 complaints about the buildings via their tenant counselling hotline over the past nine years, said Geordie Dent, executive director of the FMTA. More than 1,000 of those complaints have been related to repairs.

Ironically, the buildings opened in the mid-1960s as luxury apartments.

In the 1970s, under the ownership of retail and furniture mogul Phil Wynn, tenants complained of steady deterioration including a lack of hot water, broken elevators and cockroaches.

He sold the buildings in 1979, but work orders continued to pile up under the next owners, Zaidan Realty Corp., culminating in a lengthy rent strike.

After the property fell into receivership in the mid-1990s, the Wynns bought it back for $20 million in 1997, outbidding frustrated tenants who wanted to run the building themselves.

Wynn’s son Paul promised to restore the property to its original glory, and claimed that his family’s company had poured $2 million into new carpets, lighting and repairs.

The city’s latest inspection of the West Lodge towers shows history is repeating itself, says Cole Webber, an activist with Parkdale Communtiy Legal Services.

“What you’re seeing is the latest round of tenants getting together to push to improve conditions,” he said.

“This is a good start.”

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With files from Laurie Monsebraaten and Astrid Lange