We are Jason and Lorinda Seward, this is our story.
We launched this website in mid-June and have had over 16,500 site visits. It is abundantly clear that this issue is important to a lot of people. Small landlords need to be protected from deadbeat tenants who weaponize the laws that are stacked in their favour.
We are the owners of the property located at 734 Chemong Road, duplex here in Peterborough. On December 20, 2019, we entered into a lease agreement with our tenant for the upper unit of our property.
For the first year of her tenancy, our tenant paid her rent on time, occasionally early, and we enjoyed a friendly relationship. Since mid-2022 our tenant began paying her rent consistently late and often in instalments throughout the month. As we understood the pandemic was hard for everyone, we wanted to be supportive and understanding, so we never filed an N4, or made any issue with the rent being late.
On Sunday, September 10, 2023, our tenant, was arrested for assault with a weapon against one of her guests. This assault took place in the unit. As a result of this incident, our tenant was ordered to vacate the property, leaving behind her guests.
On September 12, 2023, our downstairs tenant advised us that one of the squatting guests attempted to change the door code for the shared front door and in doing so, they broke the lock. Our downstairs tenants felt scared as they were unable to lock their front door. Upon arriving to investigate, we noticed that the lock on her unit door had been tampered with and broken as well. At that time, we replaced the locks and left a set of keys for the tenant with her guests.
At this time our downstairs tenants further let us know that they had been feeling unsafe for a while. For one, they advised us that over the previous months, the police had attended to something at the upstairs unit with regular consistency. This was unsettling for them and their 2 young children. Additionally, despite being repeatedly asked not to smoke because of the shared duct work, our tenant and her guests had been regularly smoking in the unit.
Through a Freedom of Information request with the Peterborough Police Service, we came to find out that the police visited the unit occupied by this tenant 11 times between July 22, 2023, and September 26, 2023. The ongoing police presence relating to the tenant and her guests created a volatile and unsafe living environment, leading to the departure of our previous downstairs tenants, and preventing us from both re-renting the downstairs unit and selling the property.
On September 18, 2023, our tenant notified us that she had suspended the hydro to the unit. Not only was this a breach of her lease agreement but had the potential to cause further damage to our property. At the end of September 2023, our downstairs tenants advised us that as a direct result of the actions of this tenant and her guests, they would be looking for another place to live. Unfortunately, we lost good tenants who took care of their unit and consistently paid rent on time.
At the end of September of 2023, we hired a paralegal, who applied for the eviction of this tenant and her guests with the Landlord Tenant Board. We were absolutely shocked to learn that the average wait time for a landlord to have their case heard at the Tribunal was 12 months! We were grateful that the Board accepted our application for an expedited hearing, and we were given a hearing date of December 7, 2023. Still a little over 2 months from the date we filed, but still better than one year.
On the hearing date, our tenant was represented, not by a licenced paralegal, but by her friend, who identified herself as an employee of the Landlord Tenant Board. Despite not being a licenced legal professional, she spoke on our tenants behalf and asked for an adjournment stating that the tenant had a bail hearing the next day to alter her bail conditions which would allow her to enter back into the unit. With no request for proof of any of this, the LTB Adjudicator allowed for this adjournment, which was rescheduled for January 29, 2024.
On November 16, 2023, our tenant filed a T2 application against us claiming that we illegally locked her out of her apartment. On January 17, 2024, this T2 application was scheduled to be heard at the LTB. Our tenant asked for an adjournment as her paperwork was not filled out correctly. After some discussion, the adjudicator granted this adjournment and issued an order that the T2 application and our A2 application were to be heard separately. On January 29, 2024, when we appeared before the board, the adjudicator that day, disregarded that order and ordered that both applications be heard together on March 18, 2024.
On March 18, 2024, our hearing was once again deferred and on April 5, 2024, we finally had a hearing. Our hearing was 6 hours, that is 6 hours just for us. During the hearing, it became evident that our tenant had some sort of vendetta against us and has waged a campaign of harassment since that date. On May 28, 2024 our tenant addressed our security camera saying “Fucking bitch, I’ll get you”, and she has proceeded to do just that.
During our eviction hearing on April 5, our tenant acknowledged that she pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon and as of February 6, 2024, she was permitted to return to the property. During the hearing, she testified that she was not living there, despite being legally able to do so.
On May 6, 2024, we received our final order. Our tenants T2 was dismissed, and she was ordered to pay $15,096 by May 31, 2024, or vacate the unit. On May 6, the day we received the order, despite not living in the residence for almost 8 months, our tenant moved back in and it has been a nightmare ever since.
The house became a known drug house, with people coming and going, literally all hours of the day and night. On May 10, 2024, Peterborough Police surrounded the house to execute an arrest warrant for someone who was wanted for robbery with violence, failing to comply with probation and breach of recognizance. Police found him hiding in a closet.
On May 14, 2024, we requested assistance from the Peterborough Police for a standby to execute a 24-hour inspection notice at our rental property as we had deep concerns regarding safety, given our tenants documented violent history and suspected drug activity on the premises. Two officers entered the premises with us, and we began our inspection, room by room. Within approximately 5 minutes three occupants were arrested and the officers in the house requested back up.
On May 31, 2024, the day our tenant was to pay or leave, she did neither. On June 3, 2024, we went to the Court Enforcement Office, paid the $315 fee and registered our eviction. On June 4, four days AFTER her eviction date, our tenant applied for and was granted, a stay by the LTB citing that the original LTB member had failed to address some evidence. Her eviction is now paused while we wait for a review hearing, to determine whether her review should be granted.
She is now over $18,000 in arrears and has made no attempt to pay anything. She acknowledged in the hearing on April 5, that she does not have the financial ability to cover the rent. She is exploiting the system for no other reason than she can.
On June 5-6 our tenant loaded up a U-haul and vacated the unit, though she continued to allow her “guests” to stay there. On Sunday June 9, 2024, we checked on our property to discover that our tenant and/or one of her guests ripped the lock and cover off the breaker panel causing extensive damage, kicked in the door to the vacant downstairs unit and stole tools and supplies that we kept down there. We called the police and our tenant acknowledged that she ripped the cover off the breaker panel and pulled the lock right out of the wall, but had “no idea” who kicked in the door and stole our property. On June 10, 2024, she was arrested and charged with mischief.
On June 24 we received word from the neighbours that those occupants had packed up and left. We went over to discover the door to the unit was wide open, all the contents of the unit had been removed and there was no one there. We cleaned up the piles of garbage, drug paraphernalia and dog feces and await our next LTB hearing.
This is LUDICROUS! We are working-class people, and this is the only rental property we own. Our tenants actions combined with the outrageous wait times at the Landlord and Tenant Board has placed us in a position of dire financial distress. We are in jeopardy of losing our investment property to bank foreclosure, having only weeks left in our line of credit to cover the expenses of that house. Our bank extended our line of credit in January, but will not extend it any further.
Our tenants complaints are frivolous, vexatious, made in bad faith and an abuse of process. On May 28, she addressed our security camera and said “Fucking Bitch. I’ll get you”, and she has made it her mission to do just that. Her actions have taken an unmeasurable toll on our mental, physical and financial well-being. The unbearable stress that her actions have placed on us has deeply impacted our ability to be present for our children, our family, our friends and each other. Her actions have put our financial future in jeopardy, not only as we face the inability to pay our mortgage, but also the countless days that we have taken off work as we navigate this unprecedented level of stress
How does she have more rights to our house than we do?
Media
Thank-you to Ioanna Roumeliotis and the team at CBC’s The National for this fantastic coverage.
Thank-you to Bill Hodgins from the Peterborough Examiner for taking the time to speak to us about this important issue.
Thank-you to Weiting Bollu, founder of OpenRoom.ca for this coverage and for all you do for struggling housing providers.
Huge thanks to Tricia Mason at Global News Peterborough for helping to share our story and the plight that tens of thousands of small housing providers in Ontario face!
Finances
Our monthly expenses for the house include: | |
Mortgage | $1,952.96 |
Water | $133.79 |
Gas | $60.00 |
Insurance | $195.65 |
Total | $2,342.37 |
Tenants unpaid rent
$20,980
Lost income from downstairs rent
$15,180
Paralegal Fees
$5,156.24
Resources
Openroom enables informed rental decisions through access to tenancy court orders and empowers small housing providers to operate compliant, respectful rental businesses.
Small Ownership Landlords of Onatio is a volunteer coalition of 8,200+ independent Landlords spread out across the province of Ontario, Canada. It started in the spring of 2020 as a result of the numerous issues small housing providers were facing with the Landlord Tenant Board (LTB) of Ontario.
Ways you can help
Please contact your local MPP and demand they make changes to the Landlord and Tenant Board to protect small landlords from deadbeat tenants.
Please ask your MPP to intervene on our behalf:
If you are financially able to do so, please consider donating. We increased our line of credit once, but were turned down a second time. We are in serious jeopardy of losing our house and our live savings.
