‘I was offended, highly offended': LMCH under fire as graffiti with swastika and genitalia left on housing complex wall for months
Graffiti showing a swastika and male genitalia were left on the outside wall of a London Middlesex Community Housing complex for as long as two months, according to tenants.
'I was offended. Highly offended. My family fought in World War Two. Seeing that symbol, it's a hate-symbol. It was not nice,' exclaimed one tenant of 1481 Limberlost Road. He didn't want his identity revealed for fear that he could be evicted by LMCH for speaking out. Instead, he reached out to CTV News to express his concerns.
'That's really sad. Tenants do not speak out because there's a cone of silence,' he said.
The graffiti in question is a mess of scribbles made in chalk on the outside wall of a unit facing Gainsborough Road. The offending images are easily identifiable.
'There's always something going on along here with all these kids. So, never really thought anything much of it, I guess at the time,' said Rob Lavigne.
A family friend of the tenants in the vandalized unit, Lavigne says he initially wrote it off as kids being kids, until the swastika was pointed out to him.
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Graffiti of swastika and genitalia on a London housing complex. (Bryan Bicknell/CTV News London)
He tells CTV News the graffiti has been on the wall for a couple of months, and maintenance staff at the complex were aware of it.
'They stop by, they give us new screens, apparently, and they never did. And they just looked at that and walked away and we haven't seen them in like almost two months,' said Lavigne.
'It's worse than offensive, it clearly constitutes hate speech,' said an angry Sam Trosow. The city councillor says he was contacted by tenants in the complex who complained about the graffiti, so he visited the site to see for himself. A vocal critic of LMCH, Trosow pulled no punches in expressing his disgust.
'Just disgraceful. This is on Gainsborough, it's visible when you're coming into the Wonderland Road, you see that. I've been complaining about the conditions at London Middlesex Housing. This is yet another example of their absolute failure to keep their premises in any kind of reasonable shape,' said Trosow. The city councillor says he's filing a municipal code compliance complaint against LMCH.
CTV News reached out to LMCH to see what it had to say about the graffiti and the claims made by tenants. The agency issued the following statement:
London and Middlesex Community Housing strongly condemns anti-Semitism and hatred of any kind. These acts are unacceptable. We encourage tenants to report these incidents to us immediately. The graffiti has been cleaned up, and this matter has been referred to London Police for further investigation.
— London Middlesex Community Housing
LMCH also says it sent a power wash crew to the site Friday afternoon for a thorough cleanup of the graffiti.
In the meantime, just one question from the anonymous tenant who first called it out.
'Why did it take so long?'
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