Heather, on a bench in front of 200 Wellesley, watched people come and go; some were her neighbours, some were not. “Anyone can come in any time. It’s not good.”

She’s right; it’s not.

She has lived at 200 Wellesley for 20 years. There used to be security at her front door — 10 years or more ago — and again more recently, during the chaos in the days after the fire.

Not any more.

Cliff Martin, one of the tenant reps, has been fighting a running battle to get a front-desk security system restored. No luck. “They have a guy from TCHC who comes during rush hour, between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m., but he doesn’t stop anyone.”

If the security guy isn’t stopping anyone, then there’s no security, and this is in a building where, as Cliff notes, there are 7 entrances, 6 elevators, 3 stairwells, 2 basements, 29 floors, 719 apartments and 1150 residents.

Heather said, “This is the equivalent of a small town; we should have a sheriff.” Cliff said, “The front doors are pretty much always open. Or else they are locked shut so no one can get in, because the key fobs don’t work.”

The drug dealers and the addicts have a system; one gets in and lets the others in. But tenants, including women on their way home with groceries, and men in wheelchairs, are on their own.

Heather twisted her mouth. “You used to be able to see four of the entrances on security TV; now you can only see one.”

Cliff said, almost as an afterthought, “The electric doors for wheelchairs weren’t working two weekends ago.”

Am I wrong to think, in the aftermath of the fire that displaced so many people for so long, that a little tenderness might be lavished on the tenants of Canada’s largest social housing complex?

As we chatted, a woman named Sam came by. She had a complaint. “I don’t know if the fire alarm on my floor is working. We have these speakers in the hall; one of them is hanging off the wall.”

I asked her, as an aside, if the alarm inside her apartment was working. She didn’t know. I pressed her. She got defensive. “They don’t want us talking to the media after the fire, or they said there could be consequences.”

Consequences?

“People are afraid they’ll be evicted.” Cliff said the fire alarms were tested in May, but no one was told if they work or not.

You would think that everyone at 200 Wellesley would always know for certain if the fire alarms were working.

Cliff said there was an office for some TCHC staff on the third floor. I went up to see what they knew about the potentially faulty alarm; remember, anyone can get in. The alarm was plainly visible, barely attached to the wall; there was loose plaster on the floor underneath; it looked broken.

I tapped on the door of the TCHC office. The woman who answered recoiled when I introduced myself; yeah, she’s not the only one. I asked what she knew about the fire alarm. She said she didn’t know anything and couldn’t say anything, and told me to call a TCHC spokesman.

Why would I?

If TCHC won’t give the tenants, or a tenant rep, a straight answer, I doubt they’d give one to me.

On my way out of the building, I saw two women your mother’s age chatting on a bench. They said they’d seen some crack users going into the building. How did they know? “You can tell,” said one of the women, “by the way they act.”

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Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca