Standing inside her non-profit managed rental unit in central Windsor, Ont., Sue Pare points to a crack in her kitchen floor she can’t get fixed.
“I put in a work order and didn’t hear anything for a while,” said Pare.
That order went in four years ago, according to Pare, who shares her wheelchair accessible unit with her daughter who lives with cerebral palsy.
Pare has been here 35 years and remembers prompt repairs in the past.
“They were very on top of maintaining the buildings. The grounds were kept really nice,” she said.
“Then it got to be, ‘We have no money to fix it right now.’”
While Pare sought a fix for her kitchen floor, the Labour Sponsored Community Development Group (LSCDG), which manages her affordable housing unit and hundreds of others, was looking to solve its own financial issues.
Court documents filed by LSCDG obtained by CBC News show accusations of financial misconduct totalling $3 million by the organization’s executive director Anna Angelidis and two administrators she supervised: her sons Jim and Danny.
“We had received some information that we thought incredulous at first,” said Dino Chiodo, who chairs the LSCDG board of directors.
“But as we started to look into it and do our own investigation, we started to realize that things weren’t necessarily adding up.”
The investigation claims there were unauthorized pay hikes for the family totalling half a million dollars over four years, $1.7 million in payments to a family member’s company for work not required or completed, and projects charged to the non-profit that were completed at their family homes.
The organization also claims Anna paid vendors $1.4 million spread across 479 cheques that were pre-stamped by former board member Gary Parent after he died last May.
Last October, the LSCDG board unanimously agreed during an emergency meeting to fire all three members of the Angelidis family.
In December last year, each fired family member filed a wrongful dismissal suit seeking combined damages of at least $735,000.
The documents claim the three acted with professionalism while working at the Labour Sponsored Community Development Group.
The family members say they never received formal reprimand about any issues prior to their dismissal — and they were fired without severance, according to the documents.
That was met by counterclaims from the LSCDG filed in April seeking at least $3 million in damages, with a warning that number could increase as the investigation continues.
The Angelidis family has not filed a response to the counterclaims.
Their lawyer, Gurlal Kler, said they intend to follow the legal process and that he would deliver the family a request for comment in response to the allegations on behalf of CBC News.
CBC News has not yet received a response.
Pare, who was aware that the family was fired but not of the specific details of the allegations, called the family’s alleged actions “despicable.”
“That certainly explained why they weren’t doing any repairs,” she said.
The City of Windsor, which provides most of the non-profit’s funding, launched a review of the LSCDG sometime in 2022.
The review raised operational concerns, according to court documents, which the city told Anna about in November 2023.
But that information never made it to the board of directors, despite the city requesting Anna schedule a meeting with the board, according to the court filing.
It’s not clear when, or if, the city sent the review directly to the board. A spokesperson for the city declined to comment because of the court case.
The review found evidence of unexplained expenses, undisclosed conflicts of interest with vendors and fees paid above market rates.
It also concluded that Anna failed to disclose key information necessary for the board’s effective governance in her role as executive director.
Anna, 67, had spent nearly 40 years working for the LSCDG when she was fired.
She was previously the financial director before being promoted to executive director in 2002.
That promotion put her in charge of Housing Information Services Windsor and Essex County (HIS), which runs the Keep the Heat program that helps pay low income families’ utility bills.
As the executive director of HIS, Anna was responsible for dozens employees and $4.3 million in municipal and regional tax dollars, according to the most recent non-profit disclosures.
Anna also pushed for the creation of Windsor’s Homelessness and Housing Help Hub (H4) downtown, which eventually fell under her HIS portfolio.
She also managed 228 geared-to-income and market rental units managed by LSCDG, as well as 300 units rented through private landlords.
Between 2021 and 2024, a company run by Anna’s family member was paid $1,798,297 for work at LSCDG units, according to the court documents.
That work wasn’t awarded through a tender process, which would allow contractors to bid on the project, and went ahead without following a policy that required Anna to disclose if a vendor paid for work was a family member, according to the court filing.
LSCDG says in its court filings the work was performed poorly, if it was done at all, and that it may not have been required.
The filing also accuses the Angelidis family of getting work done at their own homes with the promise of getting contracts for work at LSCDG properties or paid for by the LSCDG.
It amounts to $27,000 of work paid for by LSCDG or written off by vendors for roofing work, grass cutting and tree trimming at Jim and another family member’s home.
Chiodo said the board is frustrated, disappointed and feels terrible that this happened.
“I think it’s fair to say that as a board, you come in and you talk about the things that are presented to you,” said Chiodo.
“Sometimes when you’re working with somebody and they’re providing you detailed information and you’re looking at documentation, you would take what they’re presenting to you and you would take that at face value.”
He said that the board considered criminal charges but would not say if they’re pursuing that option.
The Windsor Crown attorney’s office told CBC News to direct questions to police.
The Windsor Police Service has not replied to multiple requests for comment left with director of communications, Gary Francoeur.
Chiodo said they’re working closer with the city and other partners to make sure that this doesn’t happen again, and that they’ve given more authority to individuals in the organization so that power isn’t concentrated in one position.
He said that since they fired the Angelidis family late last year, the number of complaints has gone down, finances have improved and vendor complaints have also dropped.
“We are a sustainable organization that can maintain its operations and I think that we can thrive and do much better,” Chiodo said when asked what he would say to tenants.
“I think we’re going to continue to make better improvements so people feel more comfortable in their household and the unit that they’re renting,” he said.
For Pare and her neighbours, they’ve seen changes recently that give them hope things are going to get better, like tree trimming and eavestrough cleaning.
“It is a wonderful place to live here, or I wouldn’t be here, and I’ve been here for 35 years,” laughed Pare.
She wants to see the board succeed and be more transparent about problems they’re facing in the future.
“So that’s my hope, that everything can go back to a positive thing.”
