My husband and I have worked continuously over the last 20 years. Planning for our retirement, we decided to invest and bought a 2-year old condo. We asked questions, did our homework and were proud and excited to begin this new venture. We took our responsibilities as landlords seriously.
When my husband went to the condo to meet the tenant, a prospective tenant, he came back home and told me she was ready with all of her paperwork, including a previous landlord’s reference and a letter from her work stating that she would be employed for the foreseeable future. We entered into the tenancy agreement one month before the start of 2021.
Not long after, problems began to arise. She complained about the noise, told us she had fallen ill and then that she had suffered the loss of a family member. Assuming her honesty, we investigated the noise complaint, acknowledged her misfortune and granted an extension on her rent payment. Even with the extension, she didn’t pay.
When she also missed the following rent payment, we sent the tenant information on how to acquire financial support from the government. We began to question the authenticity of her references. The law states that it is a criminal offence to mislead and conspire to deceive someone for the purpose of entering into a contract (such as a tenancy), yet there is no recourse for a small landlord when a tenant commits this crime. Instead, the landlord is warned about doing due diligence during the vetting process. Furthermore, since hearings at the Landlord and Tenant Board are so backed up, some tenants (and their paralegals) have gotten wise to the fact that they can get months of free rent.
Sure enough, the tenant started avoiding our attempts to communicate by text, phone and email. Nervous, suspecting that we had been duped and were dealing with a “professional tenant”, we decided to make our first and only phone call to her “former” place of employment (a number that she had provided us). After all, all communications had shut down, and we didn’t understand how the tenant could have gone from “pays her rent on time,” and “employed for the foreseeable future,” to unpaid rent and unemployment 2 months into the tenancy.
Our contract and trust broken, tensions escalating, we decided to serve the tenant an N4, a notice to evict a tenant for non-payment of rent. What followed took us on an emotional roller-coaster of a ride. She obtained a paralegal and was claiming breach of privacy and defamation of character because we made a phone call to her former employer (we believe it was actually more like a “friend”) to find out if she was actually, if ever, employed.
She was also claiming a second breach of privacy because we reported her non-payments to a Credit Reporting Agency. It is within a landlord’s rights to report a tenant’s arrears without consent, nonetheless, she had her paralegal (who has since stopped representing her), send us two letters asking for money to the tune of $5000, then $35000. If we didn’t do this, she would sue us. The offer stated that the tenant would move out, provided that we pay her $5000. The common term for this is “cash for keys” (which I believe should actually be called “legalized extortion”). The $5000 she would get from us would be used to shakedown her next landlord. Dumbfounded and also terrified, we were forced to obtain our own legal representation.
Currently, we are proceeding with an eviction as our tenant continues to stay in our condo without paying rent. To date, it has cost us almost $10000 in lost rent and legal fees with no sign of our tenant budging. It has been months of research, paralegals, courthouse visits, conversations with the police and many restless nights. How is it that our tenant manipulated her way into an agreement where she gets to live for free while continuing to try to extort us and cause us emotional and financial damage?
I understand that we live in a civilized society that doesn’t want to put “the unfortunate” out on the streets. However, the government is simply downloading their responsibility/expense onto private landlords. We don’t owe the tenant a rent-free condo and she is misusing the system to live a life she cannot afford.
We have used up all of our emergency money and are now faced with the choice of either defaulting on our mortgage, or borrowing from our line-of-credit. Unless at a reduced rate, it would be difficult to sell our condo with a tenant. When the tenant is evicted, it is likely that we will have to sell to recoup some financial damages and that we will not see a dime from her. To conclude, we have not been the cause of any financial damages, meanwhile, we have financially suffered and continue to sink. How is this fair?
