After the adjudicator decided that there was no prejudice against me and up until one week ago, I was ready to give up, let my house be foreclosed and just walk away and attempt to start over. The problem is that I wouldn’t exactly be able to walk away. The pain, injustice, unfairness of the situation and the blatant support of our government to my robbers will keep keeping me awake at night. Again when you’re barely holding on to your sanity, there’s very little energy left to fight, especially when your ‘opponent’ is someone with the deepest pockets and most resources. The very ‘entity’ that should protect you – your government.
Through this group, I met a few individuals that came up to my support. Pearl Poliquin Karimalis, Rose Marie, Kevin Costain, Varun Sriskanda and the entire SOLO family. I can’t say thank you enough to all of you. But what this has taught me is that if a few people championing a cause can make such a resounding impact, imagine what 5,500 of us in this group alone can do.
Unfortunately, there will not be a positive change in the LTB as the system is functioning exactly as it should. To keep tenants in place for as long as possible and FORCE landlords to pick the bills. We small landlords are the scapegoats, we are expectedly the ‘minority’ that are designed to take the fall for some people to look charitable or gain the followership of the many – tenants. Our resources are to be robbed and exploited for as long as possible so the government won’t be in a hurry to rise up to their responsibilities. The LTB is not broken, the LTB is designed to do what it’s currently doing – rob Ontario landlords, exactly why no one is ‘fixing it.’ There is a reason the LTB is designed in such a way that they have all the power but cannot be held accountable. There is a reason for the office of the Ombudsman who should oversee their activities, continuously assure you that they can and will do nothing. ‘Backlogs’ is a meaningless excuse, if the favoured party was negatively impacted, the government will act and fast. We can already see this in how tenants are endlessly supported and landlords are readily fined and penalized. Again I’m speaking as someone who is BOTH a tenant and a landlord.
We small landlords need to be deafeningly loud so that we can’t be ignored. But we need to speak with one voice else or loudness is just an offensive noise. To do that we need to figure out what solutions we unanimously want to see. My thoughts: We landlords need our townhall meetings to decide what will help Ontario landlords. We need to contribute. This is not a donation to a person but a contribution for our cause. If 5,500 of us could contribute $200 each or even $100 each, we will have $1,100,000 – $500,000 in our coffers for whatever we decide. I learned the last class action idea was dumped because of no funds. Most of us are bleeding thousands of dollars every month to this unfair system and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future – doing nothing is costing us more. The situation left as it is, will only get worse. We have to take ourselves seriously before any MPP, Ombudsman, Mayor, even LTB would.
As I read through many comments, I see that we are tired of being tired. It seems Ontario landlords are all asking what they can do. We hate the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. We feel like we are being raped in broad daylight, in open spaces and everyone is walking by. We see the law enforcement and authorities and these seem to be holding the torchlight for our rapists, emboldening them and cheering them on. We know our attackers are merciless and won’t stop. NO ONE is coming to save us, we have to ‘within the confines of the law’ fight for ourselves.
I’m not very knowledgeable with how these things work. Most of us are not. We do not want to take laws into our hands. We are law-abiding and busy individuals, but again we won’t sit and watch our wealth be redistributed by the government or eroded by fraudulent tenants. So my questions to those that have been doing this for longer are:
HOW DO WE BRING BACK THE CLASS ACTION?
WHOM DO WE HOLD RESPONSIBLE?
HOW MUCH DO WE NEED?
WHAT OTHER RESOURCES DO WE REQUIRE?
WHAT ELSE CAN WE COLLECTIVELY DO?
WHO CAN WE COLLABORATE WITH?
We are ready! I am ready. What can I do?
At SOLO we worked to get Elsie’s story out in a series of articles. Her story was picked up by the CBC and other major outlets leading to a successful GoFundMe campaign.
