Francchesca Ranger, a small business owner in Ottawa, was found homeless during the pandemic after selling her husband’s house due to divorce. She decided to move into her rental unit, a mansion in Barrhaven, and gave her tenant a 75-day notice notice with a relocation date of 31 August 2020. She says her four-year-old tenant refused to leave, stopped paying rent and was left to pay thousands a month in mortgages, property taxes, bills and warehouses for all her belongings – all while running a small restaurant hit hard by lockdown and pandemic restrictions. “All I could think about was what I worked for, and what I saved, my future is just lost,” said Ranger, who “lived out of a suitcase” from September 2020 until this year. “I felt so frustrated and so violated.” She was finally able to return home this February, after alternating stays with friends and family every few days. “My life was not mine,” he said. Ranger finally managed to return home in February, after alternating stays with friends and family every few days. (Francis Ferland / CBC)
Small landlords – those who usually have only one or two rental units – can become homeless when a tenant refuses to leave a space needed by the landlord for his or her own accommodation. CBC spoke with two other Ontario landlords who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless due to delays in receiving a hearing and eviction order from the Ontario Tenants Board (LTB) – the decision-making body when landlords and tenants disagree. Experts and organizations working with landlords say they have seen dozens of homeless people during the pandemic, have frequent access to homeless shelters, live in vehicles, surf the couch and even lost their assets to banks due to bankruptcy. all this while waiting for LTB to hear their case and make a final decision. During the pandemic, the province cut off evictions and hearings for months at a time, leaving some landlords with nowhere else to go until they could legally evict their tenant. “We are trying to navigate our clients through a system that has collapsed,” says lawyer Kathleen Lovett. CLOCKS The owner describes how she became homeless:

How this homeowner was left homeless when a tenant refused to leave for 18 months

Francesca Ranger found herself homeless when she could not move into a mansion she owned after selling her main home during a divorce. He says the tenants refused to leave – and the eviction process took 18 months. 1:43
From start to finish, the entire process from application to decision making should take one to three months, according to LTB pre-pandemic service standards. After the tenant was served with notice N12 – a form required by Ontario housing and rental law if a landlord, immediate family member or buyer intends to move into a rental unit – Ranger had to wait eight months for listening. Three days before the hearing, the tenant requested that the hearing be conducted in French, so she had to wait another four months for a second hearing. It then took three months for a eviction order and about three more for the sheriff’s office to come and enforce the eviction. “I find it inconceivable that they would pay tax dollars for a government agency with zero liability, which thinks it is okay for someone to have a home and be homeless,” Ranger said. He wrote letters to several lawmakers, Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford and the attorney general, offering no response to offer assistance. “How is it possible for someone to rent a place, stop paying rent and live in it for 18 months? … It does not make sense.” Ranger says her ex-occupant left her home with rubbish and debris. He says they even left a stack of cans in one of the toilets and a bathtub full of jars of peanut butter. The tenant did not respond to a request from the CBC for comment. (Submitted by Franchesca Ranger)
The former Ranger tenant owes her even more than $ 24,000 in rent arrears and compensation, according to LTB. This tenant did not respond to a request for comment or comment from CBC. However, in the eviction document, he testified that he refused to pay rent from June 2020 because he “took the N12 to mean that he was no longer obliged to pay”. The tenant stated that his wife was disabled and was in ODSP and would face medical difficulties in the event of eviction because her doctors “were all close to the rental unit”. He said the family would be homeless if he was evicted and asked Ranger to pay him to leave earlier and find another rental unit. Ranger says the tenant left her place in ruins, with jars of peanut butter stacked in her bathtub and rubbish strewn around her house and lawn. “My house was literally held for ransom,” Ranger said. “I guarantee you I will never rent again.” This is what the ranger yard looks like after the eviction of its former tenant for many years. (Francis Ferland / CBC)
“During the wait, the landlord goes crazy,” said Boubacar Ba, president of the Small Ownership Landlords of Ontario (SOLO), a nonprofit organization that provides resources and advocates for working class owners. Bah says he knows of at least 50 homeowners involved in his group who have been left homeless. He says the mental health record was “huge”. This nightmare [keeps] going… I do not know when it will end.- Pearl Karimalis, Paralegal
“The landlord does not have this problem,” he said. “A corporate owner has about 1,000 apartments, if one or two people do not pay, then [don’t] Care. “But a small landlord, if he wants his house back and the tenant does not pay, can go bankrupt.” He says the housing lease law and the overdue court fail small landlords. “The way the system is designed requires abuse.” CLOCKS A small owners’ advocacy team describes the damage done to the owners:

Annoying tenants can cause a lot of stress for small homeowners, says lawyer

Boubacar Bah, co-president of the Small Ownership Landlords of Ontario, says that for small-scale homeowners, the impact on the mental health of a tenant conflict can be enormous and long-lasting. 1:27

The delays are “inappropriate,” says the paralegal

Lovett, a lawyer since 2009 and owner of KLP Paralegal Services, has worked with more than 20 homeless clients – something she had never seen before with COVID. In some cases, its customers wait up to 14 months for a eviction decision, while LTB promises its customers “fair, efficient and timely dispute resolution.” “It’s against their own rules,” Lovett said. “We are waiting for months and months; something that is completely unnecessary and inappropriate.” No one should be homeless, including an owner.- Francesca Ranger, former homeless owner
Pearl Karimalis, a lawyer and volunteer with SOLO, challenges the current state of the LTB office, including whether it has limited staff and everyone knows how to do their job properly. She says staff could not answer key questions about her clients’ files, and even mistakenly sent her judgments and witness requests for cases unrelated to her own. Although he works with more tenants, Karimalis said that “LTB bias towards tenants is systemic”. Karimalis says the LTB should temporarily extend working hours, hire more judges and the province should give the police more powers to get involved in landlord-tenant disputes, especially for fraud, extortion and property damage. “This nightmare [keeps] “I do not know when it will end,” said Karimalis.

LTB acknowledges the shortcomings, the province promises funding

The former Ranger owner says she wants the LTB to be “completely overhauled” so that the laws are fair to both small landlords and tenants. The provincial government wants to provide temporary housing to homeless owners, while LTB is resolving the dispute. The government will also have to compensate landlords if they pay for non-paying tenants to continue living on their property, he added. “No one should be homeless, including an owner,” Ranger said. The Landlords Council declined an interview with CBC and did not immediately answer many questions about homeless landlords. On the contrary, its announcement said that the provincial moratoriums that end eviction hearings in 2020 had a “significant impact” on the workload. As of March, LTB had 39 full-time and 49 part-time judges, “the highest number of judges ever appointed,” said spokeswoman Janet Deline. “We know we are not there enough and we have more work to do, but we are confident that service improvements will be made in 2022,” Deline said. The Ontario Attorney General, the ministry responsible for LTB, declined to be interviewed and did not answer specific questions about homeless owners. The ministry said it was not allowed to “intervene or comment on court proceedings or decisions”, as it is an independent judiciary. Department spokesman Brian Gray said in an email that the county would invest $ 4.5 million over three years to hire more judges and staff to reduce LTB delays. Both LTB and the province have identified a new digital portal – where people can access information about their disputes and their resources for mediation and self-help tools – as a way to address LTB delays.