When Natalie Eger, her husband and five children left their rental home in Surrey, British Columbia, for a little over two years last fall, it was because the house on 24A Avenue was sold and told the new owner would inflict.
“We found another property as soon as possible, which was very difficult,” she said. “We received two months’ notice to vacate the property.”
This notice was delivered last September in a form used to terminate the lease for “use of property by the landlord”. In this case, he identifies the buyer or a close family member who intends to live there.
According to the Housing Rent Act, if this does not happen within a reasonable period of time after the notice period or for at least six months, the tenant may receive an annual rent as compensation. The burden of proof is on the landlord or owner in an arbitration hearing. The arbitrator can also excuse the landlord from paying compensation if there are “mitigating circumstances”, according to the government’s website.
Eger said that days after the announcement of the vacancy date in December, she and her husband discovered that the house was being advertised for rent online for nearly $ 2,000 more a month.
“I was shocked, honestly,” she said. “It’s really frustrating, because after I started talking to other people about it, more and more people came saying yes, and I had the same problem.
Egger is now prosecuting arbitration through the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB), but said they are trying to contact the homeowner to give months of notice. They sent registered mail to the property in the name of the owner, which was returned, searched for them online and tried to ask the people associated with the property to help them.
“We looked for both real estate agents… no one would help us. We were told that they should not give any information, “she said. “We contacted our previous owner by asking him if he had any information. In fact, we went to the new tenants and asked them if they had contact information.
THE SITUATION IS NOT RARE, SAYS THE LAWYER
Robert Patterson, a lawyer with the Center for Resources and Advice for Tenants (TRAC), said it was certainly not uncommon to see situations where it was a challenge for tenants to track down previous landlords or home buyers.
“In some cases, when the registered owner can indicate that they actually live in this property, but the tenant realizes that they do not, then they may need to take additional steps,” he said. “For many people, this requires an investment of time and sometimes resources if you need to hire a leaky tracker or process server that they might not otherwise have, so it’s definitely a barrier to accessing justice.”
Patterson said there was also an option to apply to the branch for a “swapped service” and essentially seek approval to try to serve the other party in another way.
“They have to explain what attempts they have tried to serve the other party and then explain how they want to serve them and finally explain how they think that alternative means of service will lead to the person actually receiving notice of the proceedings.” Patterson said. “One problem and one concern we have is that it seems that the rental office really only deals with this issue in the actual hearing … so it kind of requires tenants to put everything on the line.”
Patterson said a simple change that could be made by the government to try to avoid situations where a landlord or new landlord raises rents instead of moving after the lease is terminated would be to force them to apply for RTB in advance.
“They have already done this with the renovations and we have seen the number of unscrupulous renovations fall off a cliff,” he said. “I think that by requiring landlords to start the lawsuit by submitting documents, you are really removing a lot of bad actors.
CTV News called the phone number listed in the previous online rental advertisement and contacted the homeowner, who said they intended to live in the house even though they were not currently there and were planning to move in soon. .
Eger recently found another way to try to notify the owner and intends to lead the trial to their scheduled hearing in October.
“If we have laws that need to protect not only landlords but also tenants, why is no one doing anything about it,” she said. “I want that to change.”
“MALICIOUS” REMOVALS
Patterson said that since more restrictions were imposed on renovations, they had seen a “significant increase” in the number of cases where rent was raised after the lease was terminated, claiming that the landlord or landlord was moving in.
“The sheer number of cases shows that this is a big problem,” he said. “In the ideal world, there are (are) two significant changes that we would like to see in the rental branch. One would be to significantly upgrade the number of arbitrators and the training they receive. At the moment, the processing of claims in RTB takes a long time.
Patterson said he would also like to see increased resources and support for RTB’s compliance and law enforcement unit, which has the task of intervening in disputes before they go into arbitration.
“However, this is a very small part of the industry. I think this is criminally underfunded and supported, “he said. “You have to be much bigger to achieve your goal.”
Patterson also encourages tenants who find themselves in such situations to contact TRAC for assistance at 604-255-0546 or 1-800-665-1185.
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