Gangs in our houses: Why can’t we just throw the bums out?

If a gang member lives in public housing — meaning you and I are the landlord — and the gang member is a terror to the neighbourhood, why can’t we just throw the bum out?

This is a question you hear over and over from those inside and outside social-housing circles. Why should a thug with a gun and a cache of drugs be allowed to run his operation one unit over from a single mother reading Dr. Seuss to her kids or poor grandma cuddling her chihuahua?

The rental unit is a city asset, thus regulated. If you left your car on a city street in a no-parking zone, or blocked a municipal snowplow, the city would very soon ticket it, then tow it, probably seize it, scrap it, crush it and send you a bill. But abusing a public benefit like a $200-permonth apartment is a different story.

The power is certainly there, at least on paper. Here are a couple of sections of Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act, which governs private and public landlords:

“A landlord may give a tenant notice of termination of the tenancy if the tenant or another occupant of the rental unit commits an illegal act or carries on an illegal trade, business or occupation or permits a person to do so in the rental unit or the residential complex.”

Or: “A landlord may give a tenant notice of termination of the tenancy if … an act or omission of the tenant, another occupant of the rental unit or a person permitted in the residential complex by the tenant seriously impairs or has seriously impaired the safety of any person.” Nothing’s simple, however. Tenants in Ottawa Community Housing’s 14,000 units are protected by law and a contested eviction would need to be argued at the Landlord and Tenant Board. “There’s a lot of elements to this question,” says community housing chief executive Stéphane Giguère.

The housing authority needs ample evidence, not just rumour and suspicion, before it can attempt to evict an alleged criminal. This would include witness statements, documents, testimony from property managers, possibly police investigators, all of which can be cross-examined by the tenant’s defence. Still, they try. OCH takes hundreds of cases to the landlord tenant board every year, enough to employ two fulltime lawyers, though the bulk of cases are for nonpayment of rent.

However, the housing authority reports it files about 200 notices annually to tenants alleged to have committed serious breaches related to disturbances, illegal acts, impairment of safety, misrepresentation of income or wilful damage.

In 2014, of 209 notices in those categories, 96 applications proceeded to the Landlord Tenant Board, resulting in 63 evictions.

Giguère said the board can also reject eviction but impose conditions on the tenant. He says the authority takes safety seriously. It employs 28 safety officers, who patrol 24 hours a day on weekends and 18 hours a day during the week. It also operates a call centre round-the-clock.

Though landlord-tenant disputes can drag on, Giguère says the authority can expedite things in serious cases. “It depends on the urgency of the situation.”

There is anecdotal evidence that small steps have an effect, such as the newly-installed cameras on Penny Drive in an area known for loitering. A report on the initiative, a pilot project, is expected in June. The police estimate there are close to 500 gang members in Ottawa. It isn’t known how many live in public housing, nor was the housing authority able to say how many of the 63 evictions last year were strictly for criminal activity.

But I suspect we can’t just “throw the bums out” because of the complexity of the social structure. If a teenage or young adult son living with his family is involved in gang life, would a landlord-tenant adjudicator evict all the occupants — parents and siblings? If so, does this not create an immediate dilemma of where to house a poor family already reliant on state-subsidized accommodation? Do we just throw innocent people in the snowbank?

Indeed, it was interesting to read in Katharine Kelly’s groundbreaking study of 2011 just how many gang members financially supported parents or siblings, many of whom were thriving at school. It would be so much easier, said Kelly, “if they were just bad people. But it’s more complex.”

Throw the bums out? If only so simple.