The year 2020 will be remembered by most as the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, to many of us small-ownership landlords it will be remembered as a “Year of Hell”, as we struggled to survive but that we came together and formed Small-Ownership Landlords Ontario (SOLO).
I remember Boubah asking me what would we call ourselves, and in about three minutes I said as a writer, it drives me crazy how people say “small landlords” implying we the people are small not “ownership’ and so I wanted our name to be proper English. After telling him we need to say Small-Ownership Landlords Ontario we then realized the acronym was SOLO. How perfect was that because we felt so alone and abandoned!
A lot has happened since then.
Remember the days of brain storming to get the attention of politicians so they’d hear our plight and open the LTB? Twitter, email, telephone, Facebook campaigns to MPPs? Boubah and I spent endless hours just getting the group set up such as a Facebook, website, email account, Twitter, writing intros, news releases and determining what our objective was for small landlords. And of course, looking for help! Thankfully Rose took the bait early on and joined us as did Adrianne, Jenn and Sue and eventually others (thank goodness).
I think from the beginning we recognized that we were going to be a group that make things happen. We didn’t want to be just another Facebook chat group for landlords. Although there have been previous groups that have done this type of work and our attempts to get their assistance went unanswered, we decided we didn’t have time to waste looking for help and that we’d do things “our way.’ And boy have we ever !
We sat in Superior Court during the ACTO legal action to stay the eviction ban in August, we’ve protested at Queens Park and at the Landlords and Tenants Board (LTB) offices and got media coverage. We had several articles written by the media such as the Toronto Sun and City TV interviews. In fact, because of that coverage SOLO has become one of the main landlord stakeholder groups in Ontario and meets regularly with the Tribunal Ontario’s Vice Chair and senior staff. We are now also incorporated and have a Board of Directors (that’s an entire other blog).
I think most importantly we have become a support group for landlords who often feel alone. Who better to understand a distraught landlord than someone who has been, or is, in the same position? This work is important but needs to be balanced with being an advocate group for change.
It’s no secret the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA) needs to be over hauled. Although Bill 184 made some minor adjustments that helped landlords, it doesn’t remotely go far enough. In addition, the policies and procedures of the LTB, need much improvement.
And this is where we need to decide. What steps are next? Where do we focus our efforts? Much time from the working group is spent on helping individual landlords which takes away from the time we have to improve things for all landlords. With limited help in the working group, this is- and has been an ongoing concern.
My personal goal for the group is to pressure the government for disclosure of eviction orders with full names of non-paying tenants made public– similar to other courts in Ontario. The perpetual professional tenants will never stop if they can continually get away with squatting and stealing from landlords.
But as a group we must come together to decide what other goals are our priority in 2021. And now with another eviction ban, re-instating evictions is going to be a huge priority and how to make noise about that.
From the beginning we’ve said, #werestrongertogether and so we will continue to be.
Dar
