After spending 17 years living out of her car, a Bradford West Gwillimbury woman thought her new home was a blessing.
Now, she said she is fighting to get the “bare minimum” from her landlord.
Janet Jones said her stove broke about a year ago and it has never been repaired.
Her overgrown grass was cut this spring for the first time in nearly a year, and a crumbling staircase leading from the driveway to her lower-level entrance was not repaired well and she injured her knee, she said.
Jones said she has also had people arrive at her home unannounced to do repairs between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m.
“I was 17 years living in my car. I shouldn’t have to put up with this,” she said. “I’m asking for bare minimum. I’m not asking for an arm and a leg.”
But for Elly Vahed, property manager of the Drury Street property, it is a different story.
“She causes a lot of issues for us. She was yelling at the contractor and the contractor left,” she said. “I want to help her, but I can’t do more than this.”
“We are in the beginning stages to remove her from her property because she has been causing an issue,” added Vahed’s colleague Val, who declined to give his last name. “She’s making all kinds of accusations and complaints. The things she is saying are not true.”
Jones has taken her issues to the Landlord and Tenant Board and sought legal counsel, but she said she still struggles to get repairs and maintenance done.
In Bradford West Gwillimbury, there are minimum maintenance standards by which property owners and tenants must abide, said Brent Lee, the town’s manager of bylaw enforcement.
If tenants have issues with their properties’ structures, including flooring, walls and foundation, or outdoor tidiness and land issues, the town’s bylaw officers can get involved.
They would give a written notice to the landlord with a minimum timeframe of when the work needed to be complete, Lee said.
If it does not get done, the town’s bylaw enforcement officers have the power to hand out fines, court injunctions, or carry out the work themselves.
They can also then apply the costs of doing that work to the property owner’s taxes, he said.
“There can be some frustration felt by tenants. It’s fairly effective in establishing a way to help these tenants,” he said.
Lee noted it is “atypical” for the town to get complaints about long grass because lawn maintenance usually falls under tenants’ duties in lease agreements.
If repairs must be done, landlords must also provide 24-hour notice and the work can only be completed between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., he said.
“Coming on (a property) without notice is a form of harassment,” said Michael Hefferon, a lawyer and executive director of the Community Legal Clinic, which assists about 5,000 people a year in Simcoe County, Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton.
If the work is still not completed, tenants have the option of taking their complaints to the “user-friendly” Landlord and Tenant Board in Barrie, he said.
A duty counsel and mediator are on-hand at the board for anyone who needs it, he said, and the Community Legal Clinic can sometimes provide representation.
If a landlord does not show up to a board tribunal, the case will proceed anyway, he said.
“If the board acts properly, they will require the work gets done and an abatement of rent — the tenant didn’t get full bang for their buck — and that continues until the work gets done,” Hefferon said.
When issues are ongoing, even after a tribunal, he said tenants may need to submit more applications to the board if their initial resolutions did not outline what would happen if the landlord did not complete the work.
“The Landlord Tenant Board is a pretty efficient board,” he said. “They don’t want to have repeat customers.”
