Waiting for a move

>> Community groups charge that the rental board prioritizes landlord complaints over those of tenants

URGENT CASES NEED URGENT HEARINGS:
Jennifer Auchinleck of Project Genesis

by SAMER ELATRASH

On immigrating to Canada two years ago, Muhammad Boumediene Bilal discovered that the Cartierville apartment he rented for his family came with a resilient nest of cockroaches. Pest exterminators paid almost monthly calls to the apartment, but the roaches reappeared after each visit. “They were everywhere,” says Bilal. “In the kitchen, the cabinets, they got into the fridge.”

Bilal, who had five months left on his lease, decided to move elsewhere. “The problem was in the building,” he says. “I told the landlord, ‘I understand it’s beyond your power. I’m asking that you let us move.’ He refused.” Bilal went to the rental board to request an annulment of the lease, but when told that it may take the rental board up to a year to hold the hearing, he decided to move out before the lease expired. “It was impossible for a family to live in that apartment,” he says.

The landlord filed a complaint with the rental board, which responded to the landlord’s request for a hearing in little more than a month. The difference in the rental board’s response to landlord and tenant complaints is common and unfair, says Jennifer Auchinleck, an organizer with NDG community group Project Genesis.

“On a daily basis, we see problems, but they can’t wait for more than a year,” she says. “When they get to the part where they ask, ‘How long does it take for a hearing?’ and they’re told it takes a long time, we see tenants who say forget it.” Project Genesis, along with housing groups RCLAQ and POPIR-Comité Logement, is demanding the rental board reduce waiting periods for hearings to three months at most, and three days for urgent cases.

The average waiting period for cases classified as priority or general by the rental board—usually cases that are not considered to be posing a health hazard to the tenant, and complaints which do not request annulment of the lease—is about 9.5 months for a priority case and 17.4 for a general case, according to statistics compiled by Project Genesis. The average wait for an urgent case, or when a tenant refuses to pay rent, is 1.4 months, but most tenant complaints, such as Bilal’s, are considered priority or general, says Auchinleck.

Auchinleck says the rental board favours landlord complaints against tenants withholding rent. “It’s unfair,” she says. “The rental board made a choice. They give priority to eviction cases.”

The rental board, which has handled a surge in eviction complaints since 1998, says it does not favour landlords over tenants. “The way we see it, cases for unpaid rent are cases that are treated apart,” says rental board spokesman Jean-Pierre Leblanc. “We have a lot, and the hearings are very short, and it’s easier to establish proof in these cases.”

He says the rental board tries to hold hearings into urgent complaints from tenants in about a month’s time, and landlords and tenants are equally treated to longer delays in other cases.

Leblanc says the rental board recently hired eight additional commissioners to deal with the outstanding cases, bringing the total number of commissioners to 49 (that won’t last long, though: eight others will be retiring in 2010). Leblanc says the rental board also plans to introduce a conciliation process that would lighten the caseload.

Auchinleck says the rental board ought to do more to reduce waiting times. “Rights are meaningless if the can’t be enforced,” she says. “They have a responsibility to get the resources.”