Reading B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Branch website and looking at reports on dispute resolutions offers a look at some of the bizarre situations that take place in rental homes.
I’ve written about many of these decisions in recent months. There have been stories about bad landlords and terrible tenants. The documents reveal just how broken some situations are and how even just a little communication could fix things.
One resolution detailed a Burnaby renter who was called a “quirky artist” by his supporter, but also a rude and filthy person who wrecked the place where he was living.
The landlord thought he was a bit of a hoarder, but was willing to put up with this until there was an infestation of cockroaches.
The RTB dispute resolution report details a renter who had been paying just $955 a month in rent – a total sweetheart deal in today’s rental market - in a unit he had occupied for about a decade. The landlord applied to the RTB to terminate the lease because the renter hadn’t lived up to one of the lease conditions that the home be kept with a minimum of health and sanitary standards.
The dirty conditions led to a cockroach infestation, but the tenant has refused to accommodate efforts to have a pest control company treat the place, a hearing heard, including moving his personal possessions.
“The tenant is also aggressive and rude with other occupants, the landlord’s agent, and with the pest control inspector,” reads the ruling.
The tenant refuted the accusations, saying that he complied with a request to clean his unit and that there was no “infestation.”
The tenant’s advocate agreed that the unit was “cluttered but that it is not a hoarding situation and not dirty. The tenant’s advocate stated that the tenant is a quirky artist that is sometimes misunderstood and lacking social skills,” reads the ruling.
The RTB arbitrator, however, disagreed. The ruling says the landlord had provided sufficient evidence, including multiple written cautions asking the tenant to clean up the unit. The arbitrator also found there was a significant risk to the landlord’s property from the cockroaches and that the tenant was “impeding” efforts to treat the infestation.
And, so, the RTB ruled that the tenant could be evicted.
This is a case study in how a lack of communication really sours a relationship. The landlord appears to have been willing to put up with a lot if the tenant would only have responded in a better fashion. Now that tenant has to find somewhere else to live without a good reference from his landlord.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
