Small landlords trapped in a broken system

The family seemed nice, though they were down on their luck.

Their previous landlord had given them a good recommendation. So landlord Subhra Dutta decided to take a chance on them. In November 2021, he accepted them as tenants to live in the main floor and basement of a Kitchener duplex he owns.

But soon after they moved in, he was sorry he had.

For more than a year after that, the family didn’t pay their rent.

They filled the home with broken furniture, computer parts and many bicycles which they hung from the ceiling, Dutta said. They stored gas-powered motorcycles in the backyard, a violation of city rules.

They removed the smoke alarms. An electrician who inspected the property said it was a “public health concern” because of multiple extension cords being used, causing potential for shock or fire hazard; and clothes heaped up by the furnace, causing fire hazards.

The situation caused Dutta stress and anxiety.

“I have never seen somebody living in these conditions,” he said.

When he spoke to the family about it, he said, they “became very aggressive” and told him he had no business telling them how to live.

Although the lease stipulated the property was to be smoke-free, they smoked indoors so much that the other tenants, who lived upstairs, moved away because it was impossible for them to work from home with the smell.

The agreed rent for the unit was $2,210 a month. But after the first month, only half or one-third that amount was being paid each month, Dutta said. Later, nothing.

Dutta reached out to see if the tenants wanted to make a payment arrangement. They didn’t respond.

So in March 2022, he went to the Landlord and Tenant Board for an eviction order and to collect on the thousands of dollars he was by now owed in rent.

He didn’t get the family evicted until Jan. 24, 2023, almost 11 months later. They refused to leave so he had to get the police involved. Finally, on Jan. 27, he regained possession of his unit.

According to the order from the Landlord and Tenant Board, dated Dec. 9, 2022, Dutta had lost $17,475 in unpaid rent. He said there are also utility arrears of $5,760 and his legal costs.

Dutta described the Landlord and Tenant Board as a “completely broken institution,” in part because of the many delays he faced as a landlord.

A representative from the board, Hanna Ali, said in an email the board “recognizes current processing times are longer than we wish them to be, and we understand the impact that delays have on those who access our services.”

She said the COVID-19 pandemic, including the five-month moratorium on eviction hearings from March to August 2020, played a role in the board failing to meet its own service standards.

It is working to improve things, including hiring more adjudicators and enabling parts of the process to be managed online. But for some, this is too little, too late.

An Ontario-wide landlords’ association agrees with Dutta that the Landlord and Tenant Board is too slow to properly protect landlords — and says some are leaving Ontario as a result.

“Over the years, the Landlord Tenant Board has gotten worse and worse to the point where we’re able to state (it) has collapsed,” said Cambridge-based Kayla Andrade, president of Ontario Landlords Watch.

Evictions for non-payment of rent used to take six months, but now it’s closer to a year, she said.

That’s leading to a “mass exodus” of small landlords in this province, who are selling their Ontario buildings and taking their investment to friendlier places such as Alberta, Central America, Texas and Florida, she said.

“It doesn’t make sense to invest here anymore.”

Smaller private landlords form the backbone of rental housing in Ontario, she said.

But they are getting assaulted by all sides: higher interest rates; long delays in removing tenants who don’t pay rent; and the lingering financial effects of the ban on evictions when the pandemic first surfaced three years ago.

One effect arising from the pressure on landlords is that they are less likely to take a chance on a tenant with a poor credit rating or a low income, because of the length of time and the money they’ll lose if they have to evict that person, she said.

At a time when the Ontario government is aggressively trying to build more homes, they’re not thinking of the rental homes they’re losing when landlords across the province give up, she said.

My attempts to reach the family that was evicted by Dutta were unsuccessful.

But Joe Mancini of The Working Centre, which operates several shelters for homeless people and also provides support to homeless families living in hotel rooms paid for by local government, said there are more and more people like them, who need a place to stay, yet don’t play by the landlord-tenant rules of obeying the conditions of the lease and paying their rent.

“These rules in society are holding less than they previously did,” he said.

“There is, overall, a higher level of mental health and addiction issues,” he said, adding that hoarding is a form of addiction.

“More people can’t function in the ‘normal’ landlord-tenant arrangement.”

Dutta still believes there are more good tenants than bad ones. He will keep renting.

But he will be more careful about who he rents to.

He has every right to try and avoid the nightmare scenario he has just been through.

But what does this mean for the people who can’t find a place? And in a society that thinks of housing as a human right, but treats it mostly as a financial transaction, what happens to the people caught in the middle?

Over the years, the Landlord Tenant Board has gotten worse and worse.

K AY L A A N D R A D E O N TA R I O LANDLORDS WATCH PRESIDENT