I’ve been reading some of the articles the NOW has been posting about issues involving landlords and tenants.
I agree that there are just as many bad tenants as there are bad landlords, but let’s remember that landlords are the ones who have all of the power.
So when a landlord behaves badly, a tenant has fewer resources to defend themselves.
I am writing about the situation involving my elderly uncle Sid, who is in his 80s and has been suffering from dementia. The signs of dementia started a few years ago and were quite mild at first.
We had put up with his forgetfulness but things started to go downhill and so we finally convinced him to stop driving. Our doctor worked with us to come up with a plan to keep him living where he was because the problems at that point were pretty minor.
We felt that him living in a familiar place close to all of the neighbours he was friends with was better than him living in a strange care home. We arranged for in-home care to clean and do some cooking and the situation was good for him.
Or so we thought.
It turns out the landlord who owned the house where my uncle was renting out the basement suite had been preying on him in a number of ways.
My uncle was doing fine with basic tasks but would get frustrated and confused in talking to people who were aggressive in any ways. Which is why my uncle ended up agreeing to pay rent hikes that were illegal and “fees” that were ridiculous.
The B.C. government froze rents throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but the landlord convinced my poor uncle that they had been lifted and so my uncle was paying 12% more between 2020 and the end of 2021. Even if there wasn’t a freeze on, those rent hikes would not be allowed to be so high.
And then this scumbag landlord was adding “fees” to my uncle’s rent each money if he wanted to continue using the backyard or for the caregiver to pay in the driveway.
I discovered all this as I was going through my uncle’s bank statements. I checked what he had been paying in 2019 and through the past two years and saw the increases. I confronted the landlord but since he never put anything in writing, I couldn’t prove it other than the monthly bank statements and the explanations of my uncle.
By this point, my uncle’s mental state had degraded to the point where he was agreeing to move into a care home in the Fraser Valley closer to where we live.
I’m so angry that someone could be so devious as to take advantage of a helpless senior.
T. Wren
