“Joel in Burnaby” is a local landlord who just wanted his tenant to be a little quieter so the other renters in the house he owns could live in peace.
In return for this simple request, he got pooped on – pretty literally.
Joel responded after reading my recent blog on a “monster” tenant who spray painted graffiti all over a Burnaby basement suite before skipping out on the rent.
“I wish in my case it had ONLY been graffiti,” Joel said. “My terrible tenant did much, much worse.”
Joel “had words” with the disruptive tenant, who didn’t take kindly to being told to be a little quieter.
“After our conversation, I was worried about what might happen,” said Joel. “He gave me a look that frankly scared me, but I hoped he would cool off.”
When the rent didn’t get paid on the first of the month, Joel dropped by the house to check on the tenant – only to find the place was empty of all of the tenant’s things. (Not the furniture – the place was furnished.)
“When I entered the suite, the smell of s**t hit me like a hammer,” Joel said. “It was an unholy stench. My tenant had smeared feces all over the place. And no, I don’t know if it was human or dog poop. The walls, the floors, the furniture. The place is carpeted so I had to rent a steam cleaner but it didn’t come out so I had to replace all of the flooring. It took weeks to clean because I could only stand it inside for an hour at a time. And I couldn’t find a cleaning company that would take on the job.”
The tenant also disappeared – ghosting all of Joel’s messages.
Joel said that the tenant was “extremely noisy” and that this was disruptive to the other tenants. That’s the main reason he was telling the tenant to shape up.
According to B.C.'s Residential Tenancy Act (RTA), landlords are responsible for providing quiet enjoyment to all tenants. Upon getting a disturbance complaint from a tenant, the landlord must take steps to fix the problem. For example, a landlord may need to speak to a tenant about noise if it bothers neighbouring tenants.
Tenants must make sure they, their guests and their pets don’t unreasonably disturb other occupants.
If there are disturbances like unreasonable noise, excessive second-hand smoke or harassment from a neighbouring tenant of the same landlord, the tenant should speak to the landlord about the issue.
There are other high-profile noise issues that have happened in B.C. in 2021.
Several people complained of "very loud sex noises" by the tenant in one particular B.C. dispute; in this case, the tenant was represented by an advocate. The landlord stated that a person living next door to the tenant complained of very loud music as well as "sounds of the tenant masturbating — including moaning and the sound of the tenant's release." At the time, the landlord tried to get the building manager to corroborate the sounds, but the incidents occurred outside of their shift.
The neighbour actually made a log of the "masturbatory noises" over several months but eventually became frustrated and left the building. Following this, the new neighbour stated that they "heard their neighbour loudly masturbating and finishing by the wall. This got louder and louder as time progressed until one day it sounded three-dimensional, so disgusting."
The new neighbour moved in on Oct. 1 and stated that she heard loud, masturbatory sounds between 4:30 and 5:30 a.m. daily until Nov. 16 — "100 [per cent] of the a.m.'s since she's moved in." She added that the neighbour "groans at the end."
Under the details of the cause to end the tenancy, the landlord writes that the tenant is a "self-confessed sex addict" who has a "long history of disturbing the quiet enjoyment of his neighbours due to excessively loud masturbation, loud sex acts, and playing of loud pornography."
You just can’t make this stuff up.
- With additional reporting by Elana Shepert, Vancouver is Awesome
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
