Pandemic-caused delay in LTB hearing is unfair to landlord
Q: I am a landlord in Ottawa. I signed a year’s lease that started Sept. 1, 2019. I received rent payments for September through December, but no further payments from January until now. In January, I filed an application for eviction, but there has been no hearing yet, after 10 months! The tenant is employed, but living rent-free, while I have lost 10 months rent. How long will this go on?
A: You are caught in a perfect storm. Before the pandemic, the Landlord and Tenant Board was backlogged about four or five months. Then the LTB was shut down as an emergency measure to contain the pandemic. For the short term, fairness was thrown aside in favour of public and individual health.
On Aug. 1, the courts and the government announced that eviction proceedings would resume. However, the LTB has been slow to hear eviction applications. The long delay is obviously unfair to you. You have to pay your mortgage, property taxes, insurance and repairs, all while your tenant lives rent-free. Besides the unfairness to you, the risk of that problem will inevitably discourage people from investing in rental property, and that is bad for everyone in the long term.
You are far from the only landlord with one or more tenants who can pay, but who are choosing not to pay their agreed rent. When the LTB announced its reopening, many tenants who had not paid up to that date, paid, often quite quickly. Other tenants arranged payment plans, when they had been ignoring their landlords’ outreach before the reopening. But some tenants have continued to refuse to pay their rent.
You will likely get a hearing at the LTB between November 2020 and January 2021. During that hearing, the LTB will decide whether it is fair to evict the tenant. For nonpayment of rent, the LTB always gives the tenant an opportunity to save their tenancy by paying their rent arrears. For tenants who are struggling financially due to COVID-19 or other reasons, the LTB considers whether to allow extra time to enable the tenant to pay, which cancels the eviction. That extra time can be many months. However, tenants who are gaming the system should not expect to get such extra relief.
Some tenant advocates are seeking an eviction moratorium “until the pandemic is contained.” Their goal is to protect tenants who have lost their income. But the result would be that your tenant can continue to game the system and live rent-free. An eviction moratorium would also punish good tenants whose lives are being disrupted by tenants acting badly (for example, by making excessive noise, or harassing their neighbours).
Besides that, an eviction moratorium is not an effective long-term remedy for tenants who lack the ability to pay; it just kicks the problem down the road. The longer the delay, the larger the tenant’s arrears, and the more difficult it will be for the tenant to pay their past rent along with their current rent.
There are much better remedies for the problem faced by tenants who cannot pay. With provincial funding, the City of Ottawa is giving rent help to tenants with insufficient income and few assets. Both landlords and tenant advocates have called on the province to help tenants who have too little income to pay their rent.
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