A Toronto apartment owner says she was told to remove the Ukrainian flag from her apartment window by the property management company that oversees the building’s operations.
Anastasia Pioro, who is of Ukrainian descent and has a family in Ukraine, said the flag and other signs of support for the war-torn country have been hanging from the window of her third-floor apartment since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th.
But on Saturday, she said she received a phone call from the building’s chief asking her to remove the flag due to complaints she had received from other tenants and the possibility of vandalism.
She refused and was informed that she was in violation of building regulations. Pioro said she had been told she would receive official notification of the breach from the property management company.
“Then I asked him, ‘Who’s complaining and why are they complaining?’ I don’t understand what’s so wrong,” Pioro told CTV News Toronto. He said, “How would you feel if all the Russians in the building raised their flag?”
A copy of the bylaw, in which Pioro is accused of violating, which was seen by CTV News Toronto, shows that “No window visible from the outside should have a window covering, which is something else that is white or almost white “.
Pioro said she and her partner, Mikita Hreidin, a Ukrainian expat currently in Spain working to register his mother and siblings as refugees, felt “disrespected” by the action.
She explained that calling Hraidin and explaining the situation before removing the display was “one of the worst things she’s ever had to do.”
“Now he’s just folded, sitting in my chair,” Pioro said. “I was forced to remain silent.”
Pioro said the removal of the flag had a particularly chilling effect on her mother, who was born and raised in Soviet-era Ukraine.
She said: “I am 62 years old and all my life the Russians have told me to keep quiet. I was told that I should be ashamed to be Ukrainian, “Pioro recalled. She said: “Folding this flag is like this generation is still being asked to remain silent.”
CTV News Toronto contacted the building management company to comment on the story.
COMPANY RULES AGAINST THE WINDOWS OF “GENERAL” WINDOWS: EXPERTS
While the blue-and-yellow flag has become a unifying cry since Feb. 24 wherever Ukrainian roots can be found, the practice of property management companies imposing what may or may not be placed on public windows is common practice, experts say.
“It all depends on the written rules of the apartment corporation,” said John Andrew, a private commercial and urban planning consultant who worked as a professor at Queen’s University and was director of the real estate roundtable.
“There are usually bans on showing things on the outside of someone’s device or visible from the outside. This would include a flag, in most cases. So, it is unlikely to stop a political statement – more a general rule.
In addition, as Toronto real estate attorney Bob Aaron sees, bylaws introduced by a property management company must be followed as part of the tenant’s or landlord’s tenancy agreement.
“The issue is not legal or illegal. The question is whether the rules of the apartment forbid the attachment of anything to the exterior of the building, which is common, “said Aaron.
Aaron said there is case law supporting the ban on certain elements of building management and that the tenant or landlord must abide by these rules or possibly take further action against them.
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