[Nark_Sinseeker]

Homeless homeowner:

Here's the story of a landlord who, because of the pandemic and emergency legislation, went homeless for over 16 months while her lowlife tenant stayed in her home rent free:

TLDR: landlord wanted to move in to her own home and lawfully evict the tenant. Tenant delays and doesn't pay rent for 16 months. landlord gets the home but not the rent.


I dubbed her 'suitcase lady' (SL) because she literally lived out of a suitcase; couch surfing with friends and family until an order was issued. This is the saddest tale of how the law favors tenants in my province.

Bit of background on the law: Tenants here have what is called 'Security of Tenure'. That means they cannot be evicted except for a limited number of grounds. Unless the tenant commits a wrong (fails to pay rent, damages property, does illegal activity, etc) the landlord only has two options to lawfully evict. One option is if the landlord or family member requires the property to live in for at least 12 months.

I get a call one afternoon from a very soft-spoken, kind hearted woman. I could tell right away she was tired - like she was getting ready to tell the same story for the hundredth time. Her tone was a mix of wanting advice, but also needing someone to talk to. I was happy to listen.

She explained that she had just gone through a nasty divorce, and as part of the settlement had to sell her matrimonial home and split the proceeds with her now ex-husband. She owned a property in the city that she wanted to move in to, but her Tenant (T) refused to leave.

She was very independent. She had called the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB), the body who adjudicates these disputes, and they told her the steps she had to take to successfully evict T. As instructed, she gave the proper notice, filed the proper eviction forms, and impatiently waited for her hearing to be scheduled. Everything the law asks her to do in order to lawfully evict the tenant. She hoped it would go smoothly. She was wrong.

As soon as she gave notice to T, they stopped paying rent. T claimed that when the notice document was given, it terminated the tenancy, so he didn't have to pay rent despite continuing to live in the unit (??? what). SL calmly explained to T that he still had to pay rent but once the time period expired (60 days from when the notice is given), he would have to leave. T refused, and wanted to fight it in front of the tribunal. SL was taken aback, and called us for help.

Sidenote: This all happened in the midst of the pandemic. My province had just enacted an eviction moratorium (ban on enforcement of evictions). That ended up being a catalyst for disaster. Tenants decided this meant that if they couldn't get evicted, they didn't have to pay rent! (That was a busy couple of months at my firm, but more on that in another story) Too bad the banks weren't as forgiving. Imagine thousands of tenants failing to pay rent and hundreds of landlords still on the hook for their mortgages. Businesses shut down during the lockdowns, meaning streams of income were cut off... It was a mess. Anyways back to suitcase lady.

So I have to painfully explain to her that because of the pandemic, there's about a 4-6 month delay from the time of filing an application to when it actually gets scheduled. Then there's the delay at the hearings themselves, the time from judgement to when an order is issued, and then the delays in enforcement of the eviction order from the Sheriff. All in all, it could take upwards of 8 months (I thought I was being generous in the delay. turns out I severely underestimated how bad things were).

Months go by and not a word from the LTB about her hearing. I file a request to shorten the hearing, claiming the landlord is HOMELESS and this is an urgent matter. They agree and it gets scheduled a few weeks later. SL is annoyed at the delay but happy to have something firm. She has been homeless about 4 months at this point.

Then the day before the hearing, T says his wife has to go to hospital and needs to be there, so will miss the hearing. He asks it gets pushed back. Unfortunately due to something called the Principles of Natural Justice, T gets his wish and the hearing is pushed forward a few weeks. Note T is not paying rent this whole time, and SL is beyond humiliated for having to ask friends and family to sleep on their couch a little while longer. She's been storing all her stuff in a storage facility costing a few hundred each month too. All the while T is kicking back, warm and cozy, rent free, no worries in the world.

Get to the new hearing, and T requests that it be in french language. Since many provinces in Canada are bilingual, the tribunal has to oblige, and we get an english-french translator. That makes the hearing take FOREVER. Every sentence, the party needs to pause, let the translator say their thing, then continue.

Add to that the fact T is a sophisticated slimeball. He knows if he delays long enough the hearing will need part 2. He starts rambling on some nonsense at the speed of molasses - and it's obvious to everyone what he's doing. In the end, T gets his wish. It takes so long that they have to adjourn the matter to be re-heard at an unknown time in the future. We bring a motion to shorten again, but don't hear anything back. The new hearing ends up being scheduled another 3 months in the future.

Next hearing, and we come ready. We know T is going to delay as much as he can, give some BS sob story cause he has no argument in law, and so we actually give the adjudicator permission to ask all questions herself and hear all responses in french (despite our client only speaking english). Then there's no need for translation and we can speed through.

It works. The adjudicator gets visibly angry at T because every time she tries to ask a question, T blabbers about irrelevant nonsense. She ends up cutting him off enough times to keep him on track and finally she snaps mid-sentence and says "MISTER T, since the start of this you have not given me any reason why I should not grant this eviction. You have not paid rent in 13 months and claim it is because the tenancy is terminated. But since the last hearing it has been explained to you that this is wrong and illegal. If you do not give me a reason, I will have to end this hearing and issue my judgement."

Meanwhile SL and I are smirking behind our masks cause we were hoping the adjudicator's patience would run out. T had nothing to say, and literally just begged the adjudicator for some more time to find a new place to live. Absolute slimeball. I speak up and point out he has had more than a year to find somewhere, and despite SL sending him rental advertisements of places in the area with similar rent, he still hasn't chosen one. More time won't do anything.

And you know what T says to that? What this scumbag says? He says "Well, maybe if SL would assist me by giving me, I dont know, like $300 a month to help me find a new place, maybe I can ---" the adjudicator cuts him off again. No one can believe what just came out of his mouth. You've accrued over $10,000 in rent arrears, left this poor lady homeless and paying storage fees + mortgage, and now you want HER to subsidize YOUR rent?? Are you insane? "Hearing over, expect the judgement soon."

Unfortunately, "soon" doesn't mean anything. We waited over 6 weeks for the order to come out. All the while T still not paying rent. We file with the Sheriff to enforce the eviction, but the enforcement branch is delayed an average 8 weeks. All in all, T doesn't get out of the unit for over 16 months.

Part of the judgment was that he pay the arrears, but he's on disability support, which is government funding and immune from garnishment. So SL is pretty much out the rent + other costs permanently. She's grateful for my firm's help but extremely bitter about the process. She's since gone on to advocate in every avenue she can find to try and change these laws.

The legislation here is really skewed against landlords. You can't even charge interest on rent arrears, so if the tenant waits until the day before the sheriff knocks at the door to pay in full, there's no penalty and they can continue to live there. So why even pay?