Homeowner’s warning after rental horror

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This article was published 31/08/2023 (737 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After a four-month struggle to evict a tenant, Kerri Stephens believes she will have no choice but to sell her house once she spends thousands to repair the damage.

The first-time landlord is warning others about her experience, after feeling powerless while navigating official channels to regain lawful possession of the property near St. Malo, about 60 kilometres south of Winnipeg.

“I feel like something needs to change,” said Stephens. “I’m so angry that it got to this. The place became trashed with a cockroach infestation.”

Stephens decided to rent out the house for 10 months, while she worked a temporary job in a different region of Manitoba.

It was a new home, built after a faulty electrical outlet sparked a fire that destroyed the original farmhouse and killed her 13-year-old dog in January 2021, she said.

“It has been one nightmare after another. I’m starting to feel the property is cursed.”

Still reeling from the fire, she decided to take a job in new surroundings, which meant finding a tenant from January to October of this year.

While interviewing the eventual tenant, Stephens, a single mother who was helped through tough times, saw an opportunity to pay it forward to someone who claimed to be in challenging circumstances.

She regrets not doing a thorough background check. “In smaller towns, you kind of trust people more, and I like to believe people are who they say they are.”

Stephens said everything seemed fine until the spring, when area cottage owners began arriving for the season. They complained about piles of garbage and dogs.

She said she learned six people, rather than three, and 13 dogs were in the two-bedroom home.

After failing to resolve the issues with the tenant, Stephens contacted the Residential Tenancies Branch for guidance in May.

She issued a warning to the tenant and followed up with an inspection. No one was home and the locks had been changed without her knowledge or permission, she said.

“That was the turning point for me, where I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is happening right now?”

Garbage was left rotting outside the house. She suspected the interior was in a similar state.

Stephens said all her attempts to enter the home were blocked, and window coverings prevented her from peering inside. She said police were unable to help because it was a civil matter.

Based on advice from RTB staff, Stephens sought an order of possession on the basis of the unkempt state of the home. She served the tenant with an eviction notice for the end of June.

Stephens said the tenant didn’t pay that month’s rent and refused to move out.

At an RTB hearing in mid-July, she presented photos of the yard, neighbours’ statements and emails from the tenant as evidence.

However, Stephens said she was later told the order was not granted by a hearing officer because she failed to prove the condition of the interior, which she had been prevented from seeing.

Rather than appeal, Stephens filed a second order of possession application and served a second eviction notice. This time, it was on the basis of unpaid rent.

The case was handled by mediation, which led to the tenant agreeing to move out and pay the outstanding rent in monthly instalments of $25, said Stephens.

She said she has not received payments on the amount owed — $3,900 for three months.

When the tenant left, she finally saw the interior. Animal feces was on the floor and smeared on walls, she said.

“It was truly heartbreaking,” said Stephens. “The smell in there is so bad that you can’t go in without a mask.”

She fears it will cost more than $15,000 to restore the home to its original state.

Her finances are being pushed to the brink, while paying the mortgage and rent in her temporary home. “It’s now affecting my credit and my ability to move forward.”

Stephens questioned whether the RTB’s rules could be tweaked to make it easier and faster for landlords in a situation like hers.

In her case, she believed the system was too rigid, required a high burden of proof and wasn’t tough enough when it came to enforcement of unpaid rent.

“I think it needs to be a bit more case-by-case,” said Stephens. “There has to be a way to enforce their decisions or else it’s not a real (hearing), because I did it by the book.”

People who are considering renting out their home should do thorough background checks of applicants, including a scan of the RTB’s database of previous orders, she added.

Katie Szilagyi, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba’s faculty of law, said the RTB offers clear guides to help with those checks and resolve disputes between landlords and tenants.

It’s natural that both sides might have complaints about their rights or the pace of the system, which has provisions to protect the parties, she said.

“That balance can be tricky to strike,” said Szilagyi, who teaches property law.

Manitoba Landlords Association spokeswoman Amy Wong said tenant screening must be a priority.

“The good news is most tenants will pay rent on time and take care of the rental property,” she wrote in a statement. “However, like in most things, there are some ‘bad apples’ out there. We provide advice as well as heavily discounted credit checks to help our members find all the great tenants out there.”

A spokesman said the RTB cannot get into the specifics of individual cases.

For orders of possession relating to unpaid rent, a hearing is typically held 10 business days after an application is filed, he said. The average wait time for other claims is 12 business days.

Between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023, the RTB mediated about one-third of the 3,023 applications it received.

The spokesman said Manitoba’s timelines for eviction notices and orders of possession and its burden of proof requirements are similar to those in other provinces.

“Like Manitoba, all other jurisdictions require a landlord to prove on a balance of probabilities, that the tenant has substantially breached their tenancy agreement or the legislation, as alleged, as part of an OP hearing,” he wrote in an email.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching