I rented a 1 bedroom apartment to a young man in March 2021. He came as a referral from a current tenant who vouched for him. She said he was a responsible and respectful person. He didn’t have credit history and was recently employed at a construction job. As I do with all new tenants with poor / little credit history, I told him that he would need a guarantor to rent the apartment. His mother agreed to be the guarantor.
At first, things were okay; he was respectful and responsible: he paid first and last in March and then paid rent on time in April and May. However, he started to fall behind in June. I was very respectful and generous by giving him as much time as I could before applying to the Ontario Landlord and Tenants Board (LTB) for non-payment of rent. In October, he paid no rent at all, and so I gave him a “Notice to pay rent or move out form N4” and shortly after, I made an L1 application to evict for non payment of rent at the LTB. Things got worse from there. I started to receive complaints from several tenants about this tenant and his friends. Other tenants stayed the following: people were running around the hallways at night; loud parties continuing late into the night; excessive noisemaking noise and banging on apartment doors; not cleaning up after their dog’s waste was left in the hallways; the tenant and his friends were parking in other tenants’ spots; throwing things over the balcony, and they lit furniture on fire in the parking lot late at night! There is now a permanent, black smoke stain on the side of the building.
All this while, I waited patiently for my hearing date, hoping that it would come soon. It was never scheduled, and I was not able to connect with a single person who could give me information on when it would be scheduled. I tried to talk with the tenant several times to plead with him to stop this behavior, but he never answered the phone nor returned any of the messages I’d left.
Additionally, before I had applied to the LTB , I told him that I understand the situation is hard for everyone because of Covid, and that I was willing to do what I could to help him through whatever difficulty he was having. I told him that I would forgive all the rent that he owes, if he agreed to move out before Dec 1st. He said that was “fair”, and then he stopped answering or replying to my messages. When I sent my property manager to go speak with him on December 2, he was extremely rude to the property manager but said he would be out by the next morning. On the morning of December 3rd, my property manager went to the unit and found that the tenant had purposely damaged the unit.
The property manager and I both assumed the tenant had no intention to return, so we changed the locks. My property manager also called the police to show them the damage, but they did not return his call. The next day, I received several calls from the police to advise me that I had illegally locked the tenant out of the unit, and that I needed to provide him with the key. The police seemed unconcerned or frankly, not care at all about the damage that the tenant had done.
I’ve sent an email to the tenant’s guarantor, asking her what she wants to do but have not heard back.
The unit has been destroyed to the point that it is uninhabitable. I am still waiting for a hearing date. I am planning to apply to the LTB for an urgent hearing involving excessive damage, but I am not hopeful that they will schedule the hearing soon .
Despite all this, the tenant technically still lives there, and there is nothing I can legally do to stop him from further destroying my property.
I have waited 2 months for a hearing date for the L1 application I made. If the LTB was following its protocol of scheduling hearings within 60 days of application, none of this would have happened. All I want from the LTB is for them to schedule hearings in a timely manner, so that I can go and argue my case. The system seems so unfair; it’s disheartening.
