An unusual dilemma

Those that know me (or read me) know that I'm usually pretty quick to report by-law violations, especially in rental properties. There is a property close to me, I've affectionately dubbed it the "drive by shooting house" due to an incident from a few years ago, that violates at least a few by-laws including missing eavestroughs, a questionable fence and through the neighbourhood gossip line I'm told that the basement is caving in on itself, among others.  Now, I've actually reported all of these violations before, in an Al Capone sort of way of dealing with problem tenants (getting the landlord to pay attention to his property and therefore being aware of his problem tenants because he's getting nasty notices from the City).

Now the dilemma ensues... the most recent batch of problem tenants have disappeared into the night. I'm pretty sure it was a midnight move and no idea what prompted it but it certainly wasn't at a "traditional" moving time of the 1st or the 15th. They've been gone for a while now and it's kind of nice - no garbage being thrown in the yard, no poor dog tied up and barking for hours at a time, no sketchy van coming and going 17 times in an afternoon (I run that many errands every day, don't you?). Oh, and I certainly miss the home visits by the Street Connections Van to that place - can't keep your yard clean, but hey, you're using clean needles - I suppose it's a start *eye roll*

So my dilemma is this: If I push the by-law issues, as I am currently not sure where they are at, I can likely have the house repaired. However, I have no idea where the landlord's head is at and if he even realizes yet that he has no tenants, and if he is suddenly (finally) forced to fix up the house he is probably going to want to have tenants living in the house to help pay for the repairs. In the past 5+ years there has yet to be one set of "good" (quiet, tidy) tenants in the place, I'm thinking that the next batch won't be great just because they have fancy new eavestroughs on the house...

I think I'm going to leave it for a while and push the issue again when there is bad tenants in there. The house may be unsightly but in theory it won't get worse quickly all on its own, however if a new batch of people move in there might be more problems than there are right now. This particular time I'm not going to chase down the by-law folks to make sure they are enforcing.