Tenant fined for unpaid rent of more than $40,000

A B.C. woman has been fined $5,000 for deliberately not paying rent totalling more than $40,000 in eight separate tenancies spanning five years.

A decision by the Residential Tenancy Branch’s compliance and enforcement unit says Colleen June Clancy has withheld $43,624 in rent from multiple landlords between 2018 and 2023, despite orders from the Residential Tenancy Branch.

The Residential Tenancy Branch started an investigation after a complaint by a former landlord and found she had a history of not paying rent between 2018 and 2023. Landlords of each tenancy took action against Clancy and the tenancy branch ordered her to pay the money owed, but she did not obey the orders, according to a decision by Scott McGregor, director of the tenancy branch compliance and enforcement unit.

“Based on the evidence before me, I find that it is more likely than not that the respondent has entered the tenancies in question with intention to not pay rent,” McGregor wrote.

The address of the rentals are redacted in the decision. However, court documents ordering Clancy to pay $19,500 to a landlord show one of the rentals was at a Sidney address. In one situation, Clancy accumulated $19,000 in rent owed to a landlord and was ordered to pay $19,500, the decision says.

Clancy did at times pay a portion of rent, and has communicated an intention to pay rent in arrears, but there is no evidence that she has paid the rent owed to the landlords, he wrote.

“I find that the words of the respondent through communications to numerous landlords and additionally, through the dispute resolution settlement agreement process, carry little weight, and are more likely than not, not made in good faith,” McGregor wrote.

In two situations, Clancy entered into settlement agreements, but those decisions appeared to be tactical to delay or usurp the landlord’s ability to collect unpaid rent, the decision said.

“I find that the actions of the Respondent in this matter especially egregious and serve to undermine the legitimacy of the settlement agreement process and to erode public confidence in these processes and must be deterred through significant sanctions,” McGregor wrote.

One landlord told the tenancy branch she and her husband required significant counselling due to the financial and emotional impact the tenant had on them.

Clancy was given an opportunity to respond to the allegations against her but did not submit anything, McGregor wrote in his decision.

Hunter Boucher, vicepresident of operations at LandlordBC, welcomed the decision. Boucher said while tenants like this are an outlier, it’s this type of situation that has motivated landlords to stop renting units and have put some people off becoming landlords altogether.

“Tenants like this aren’t just hurting the landlords that they’re not paying.

“They’re hurting the overall rental housing market in general, the ecosystem in general, which of course is going to have an impact on others tenants,” he said.

Collecting unpaid rent from tenants is a challenge for landlords, and the tenancy branch decision may not help the landlords impacted by Clancy, he said.

But the decision, which is publicly available, will make it harder for Clancy to continue this pattern, he said.