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Peace on Earth at Home

This originally senior citizens building is one of the worst noise ugly places I've had the misery of experiencing. I was threatened with being taken out and butchered by a motorcycle person visiting the adjacent apartment on one occasion and with having my genitals cut and stuffed in my mouth and razors stuffed in my anus from the apartment above following the suicide by alcohol of the tenant above me. He had sent police to my door following a swastika spraying and fire alarm ringing incident which he appears to have been responsible for but tried to blame me for. For the complete story click here.

THE BUILDERS OF MULTIPLE FAMILY HOUSING COULDN'T CARE LESS ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY AND REAL QUIET. AND ONCE YOU SIGN TO BUY - IT'S YOURS - COMPLAIN AND ALL THEY'LL SAY IS - GET USED TO IT. THIEVES AND LIARS ARE THE RULE. TENEMENT GARBAGE IS THE RULE. THEY ARE BUILDING HELL ON EARTH FOR THE FOOLS WHILE THEY LIVE WELL ON YOUR BACKS. MAY GOD CURSE THEM TO HELL.

This site is devoted to trying to change Canada’s building code as it regards to soundproofing in multi-family housing such as apartments, condominiums of any kind, townhouses, stackhouses or any other type of housing where there are adjoined and shared walls, floors, ceilings and doors to hallways.

If you arrived here via Google search for * noisy housing * and have no interest in changing the future so your children can have what you've been cheated out of, then I suggest you check the system for soundproofing already built housing which is advertised on the Google search page you came from. Such fixes are usually not 100% satisfying, are expensive, and, of course, you lose overhead space as well as floor space to do it. If it isn't built properly it will never be as perfect as it can be.

It would be pleasing to have an effect on the whole world's bad housing conditions and provide stress free quiet housing for all mankind in the future - whatever future there may be.

As a youth of 24 (in 1955) I began to experience other than a real house (detached from anything like my first 12 years) or a very well built, with heavy wood timbers and clever design to separate the adjoined wall noise by using cupboards - large closets - on them, creating buffers, as the second place I lived, an apartment, was built.

I was quite disturbed by the lack of privacy and quiet, having my nerves jerked around almost constantly in the junk that was the norm, for most people. I had not recognized the quality of the very ordinary middle class apartment my mother had been lucky to find after my father died when I was about to turn 12.

I had made, at 24, a very false assumption, that builders would, as they found the results of their previous structures, work hard to make more private places so people could have decent quiet lives. How naïve I was to think that even Christians were that deep and sensible.

Instead, they make cheaper for better profit and use such absurd excuses as - most people don’t seem to mind - a statement I’ve found plenty of observed consideration over the years to disbelieve; despite those who do say to me, "Oh, it doesn’t bother me", which reveals they do hear; or, "Oh, I just don’t listen", which to me is a totally absurd consciousness. Such persons, observed over a period of time tend to prove otherwise to me, while they don’t even realize their own position.

Some landlords, agents say, "People move to often to make it worth the expense", which is totally stupid if people move to hopefully find a better place. If they were built right more people would likely stay put; in some cases for a lifetime.

In that regard, Premier Mike Harris, PC, of the Ontario government of the 1990’s moved to get rid of rent controls by phasing them out using a process of when a rent control apartment is vacated the rent control ceases. That was figured to rid rent control in five years or a bit more based on the fact that 20% of renters move every year.

No one seems to question why, or know why, or admit why 20% of renters move every year. I postulate that most are moving to find better - which of course is almost impossible to find. In my 73 years of life, in the first 67 years, I have lived in 59 places, and only 3 to 5 of those could qualify as adequately built to provide God’s children with decent sanity saving quality life.

In this age even luxury condos are built to a tenement quality with Canada’s building code. A code that was created to be a minimum for the poorest housing aimed at the poorest people. Now it is used as a maximum by luxury builders - and that according to a statement made to me by Ottawa’s well respected architect Barry Hobin in 1994, at the opening of an apartment building he designed for the then Ottawa City Living - a subsidized for poor people body. There may be exceptions of builders who do make better, but evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Were I to consider buying, were I wealthy enough, something like a half million or more condominium in this age, I would not do so until I knew the standard was well above the governments requirements. Of course, they try to get you to sign to pay before they even build now, and if you were to ask they will assure you they do everything possible to make it quiet - which I do not believe on the basis of what I have observed in construction.

At the time of writing this, I have found that this web site, in existence from 2000, is visited by people who type, * noisy condo * into a Google search. That, in September 2004 gets a list of 11,200 sites mostly complaining about the problem and seeking a solution to it. There is no real solution other than to build them properly to begin with. Something builders and would be renters resist with a vengeance. I have had my life threatened in quite ugly but unprovable ways over the past twenty five years of my pursuing change to the law.

To view the complaints and buck passing uselessness of what is offered by those owners or renters who seek help click here. To see what other efforts I’ve made to get change just follow links through from that.

If you care about the future you might add your name to a list by e mailing me, or writing your Federal Member of Parliament about the problem and perhaps mention this site. It is a Federal responsibility to suggest codes to the Provincial government in Canada and not a Municipal problem to solve. Municipalities have no authority to change building code in this regard.

There are lobbies for Fire code changes but no one lobbies for better sound proofing so far as I’ve found in 25 years - except me.

(Edward) Hugh Petrie

E MAIL HUGH

E MAIL HUGH