Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board isn't working for anyone, so how do the parties plan to fix it?
After losing more than $8,000 to a person he describes as "a professional tenant," landlord Nicholas Sikatori wants provincial politicians to fix Ontario's "badly broken" Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB).
At the top of his list is allowing landlords to quickly evict tenants in clear cases of non-payment, avoiding what is now often a months-long process he said hurts both tenants and landlords.
"It's easy to fix," Sikatori told CBC News. "No rent, no stay. Landlords are leaving units empty because of the risk [of renting to bad tenants] right now."
Sikatori endured a six-month ordeal to evict a tenant who stopped paying after the second month, intentionally delaying the legal eviction process, then demanded thousands of dollars in payment to leave.
It started last August when Sikatori bought an eight-unit apartment on Ross Street in St. Thomas, Ont., renting out a two-bedroom apartment to a man who receives a monthly stipend from the Ontario Works Program.
Their arrangement was that the tenant's $1,200 Ontario Works rent supplement was paid to Sikatori directly, with the tenant agreeing to cover the balance on the $1,800 monthly rent.
Sikatori said the man paid first and last month's rent and also paid for September. After that, Sikatori said his tenant didn't make another payment.
'Landlords are leaving units empty because of the risk right now' - Claire Whittnebel, ACORN
Sikatori filed an L1 form with the LTB, which is a legal eviction notice used in cases of non-payment.
However it took months to play out, in part because the tenant was able to get two stay orders approved by the board, each one delaying the eviction by more than a month. Sikatori said the tenant also failed to show up to some of the LTB online hearings, and those no-shows added to the delay.
"The adjudicator would just postpone it, leaving me helpless," said Sikatori.
A few months into the troubled tenancy, Sikatori said his tenant asked him for $10,000 to leave in a "cash for keys" deal.
"He wasn't going to leave otherwise," said Sikatori. "He was not afraid of being evicted by the sheriff."
Sikatori did some digging and said he learned his tenant had used similar tactics against previous landlords. Sikatori said the last landlord gave Sikatori a false positive reference just to get rid of him.
Desperate, and now out thousands in rent, Sikatori threatened to post his eviction notices against the man on Openroom, a website that compiles court documents and LTB decisions in a searchable online database.
Sikatori said the site has become a standard tool for landlords to screen prospective tenants. The tenant eventually agreed to vacate, so long as Sikatori didn't post his eviction order to Openroom and also agreed to stop chasing him for back rent.
"If I had paid him $10,000, that would have been his first and last month's rent for his next apartment," said Sikatori.
While tenants often complain the LTB works against them, Sikatori said his months-long ordeal illustrates the LTB isn't serving landlords well either, because it can tie up rental suites for months.
A tenant from the Webster Street apartments in London holds a sign advocating for city officials to strengthen their renoviction bylaw by requiring landlords to relocate and provide rent top-ups to displaced tenants. (Isha Bhargava/CBC)
Sikatori's situation illustrates what was clearly spelled out in a scathing 2023 Ombudsman's report which found widespread problems at the LTB, illustrating it isn't working well for landlords or tenants.
A report released last year by Tribunals Ontario found the LTB had a backlog of 53,000 unresolved cases.
Tenants also say fixes needed
Claire Whittnebel of the London chapter of the tenants rights group ACORN agrees the LTB "isn't working for anyone." However, she said any fixes coming from the next government at Queen's Park should first be directed to helping tenants, saying the system is weighted in favour of landlords.
'In our experience, landlords have more access to lawyers - Claire Whittnebel
She'd like to see a return to in-person hearings, which are now only done by video chat, and a triage process for tenant applications to speed up the hearing process. "In our experience, landlords have more resources to access lawyers," she said. "The system needs to be improved, but our focus is on tenant situations."
What the parties are saying
Ontario PC's told CBC News in November they're spending an additional $6.5 million for 40 new LTB adjudicators along with five new staff members.
Also last fall, the province announced it would introduce the Cutting Red Tape, Building Ontario Act to speed up operations at the LTB, by allowing staff to overlook small mistakes in applications and give executives the power to reassign cases to a new adjudicator if the original one fails to complete a hearing.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of the Attorney General said the province has made recent investments in the LTB — including spending an additional $6.5 million in 2023-24 for 40 new adjudicators and five new staff.
ACORN was critical of those changes, saying they included measures that would allow consumer reporting agencies more access to information about tenants who'd fallen behind on their rent.
In a statement to CBC News, the Ontario Liberals agreed the LTB "needs an overhaul."
They're offering phased-in rent control, and also say they'd hire more adjudicators to get disputes resolved "in two months." They're also proposing an emergency reserve fund to help vulnerable renters avoid eviction if they fall behind in rent due to an emergency. The Liberals also want a return to in-person hearings and more face-to-face supports, including counter service, for tenants who need help with the process.
In a statement issued Thursday, the NDP said fixing the LTB will be part of a wider package of supports for renters, one that includes "real rent control" so that rents don't jump so sharply when units become vacant. The NDP is also promising to crack down on renovictions and limit short-term rentals to the property owner's primary residence.
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