Penny Drive residents want problem tenants evicted

Some residents living in Ottawa Community Housing complexes on Penny Drive, where there has been a spike in shootings and gang activity, want their landlord to do more to force problem tenants out of the neighbourhood.

"The housing has to check the people they put in the houses because it seems like it's repeating. They're putting the same kinds of people in the same houses — drug dealers, crack heads that are using hard drugs," said resident Anita Wade.

"We are not rich here. We are surviving. We are people that are outside, working hard. We are nurses in here. We are people who clean houses. We are painters that live in those projects. We are people who take care of those people who are supposed to take care of us."

Wali Farah, who has worked as a mentor with youth in the neighbourhood, called Ottawa Community Housing an absentee landlord.

"If you are not contributing to the community and you are contributing death and destruction and damage to the community and to these young people, the Ottawa (Community) Housing Corporation has a responsibility to take care of this," he said. "Deal with them. Get them out."

• Under the Gun: Ottawa gangs and the rising number of shootings
• LISTEN | Stu Mills speaks to Penny Drive residents on Ottawa Morning
• WATCH | Steve Fischer's report on Banff-Ledbury on CBC News beginning at 5 p.m.

But Bay ward councillor Mark Taylor told CBC News that, in many cases, there is little that can be done unless members of the community speak out.

"Ottawa Community Housing is like any landlord, shackled to some degree by the Landlord and Tenant Act. You can't just randomly evict somebody without justification," he said.

"We know there are some problem addresses. Our plan is to drill into those addresses."

Ottawa Community Housing told CBC News that it needs evidence of illegal activity to evict tenants.

Taylor added that "those addresses sometimes act as magnets to pull other people in," but that problems are not necessarily reported in some neighbourhoods.

"There isn't that community sense of ownership that if they see something, they'll say something," he said.

​"That makes it ripe for people to come in and do bad things because they know nobody is going to call and report us. We have to change that paradigm as well."

Taylor said the challenge is compounded by the fact that, in some cases, tenants can be victims of home takeovers. 

"It's not an easy answer. There's no answer that's as simple as evict them all, arrest them all," he said. "If it was that simple, it would have been done years ago." 

Banff-Ledbury gang strategy holding strong

Residents in Banff-Ledbury in south Ottawa were intimidated by violence, drug trade and gang activity a decade ago but its reputation as the city's most dangerous neighbourhood has faded away.

There were a record high 49 shootings in Ottawa last year but none in Banff-Ledbury.

​​​Homework club for youth at the Banff Community House is one of more than a dozen programs aimed at keeping children in the neighbourhood busy and out of trouble.

Many residents credit the No Communities Left Behind program with driving out the notorious Ledbury Banff Crips gang. 

The program brings together police, health and social workers, community leaders and members of the different ethnic groups.

It has expanded to other social housing communities the south Ottawa, and each month they get together to compare notes.

Still, the neighbourhood is transient with people moving in and out constantly, meaning the program must evolve with it to recruit new members with new ideas.

Community leaders said they know there is always another gang ready to move in if there's an opening.