I faught back against my landlord and won

I fought back against my landlord and won

Over a year ago I responded to an ad for an apartment for rent “in a unique setting”. I have learnt important lessons in the past year and I feel compelled to share my experience in hopes of saving others some of the problems I have faced. I have also learnt that just because it says Saint – it doesn’t mean you won’t get lied to and just because someone works for a “not for profit society” doesn’t mean they won’t try to take advantage of you. Even though I felt I had asked all the right questions before signing any lease I should have been even more careful and less trusting.  Not all the people running this organization were honestly representing or living up to the Society's good name.

Get everything in writing, get signed original copies and take any offers of employment or work related matters to a lawyer to make a binding legal contract – work related issues cannot just be added as an addendum to a residential lease. Make sure you protect yourself; do not trust what your potential landlord says. There is nothing wrong with trusting someone – if they are telling the truth, they won’t mind putting it in writing and they won’t mind if you bring it a lawyer.

Long story short: My husband and I are self employed, we work as a team, tiling and doing small renovations. We rented a small two bedroom apartment on the second floor of Abbeyfield House St. Peter’s Society: a senior residence on Reynolds road in Saanich. We moved here with our teenage daughter and our little dog. We were led to believe that there would be a lot of work for us; we were told we “would do very well here”. Prior to us signing a lease, we were shown several rooms which needed to be renovated at Abbeyfield including the kitchen and bathroom of our own unit. Many projects were discussed – now, in retrospect, it is clear we were lured here under false pretences.

The apartment we rented used to belong to a den mother – a resident caretaker for the seniors – she used to receive a modest salary along with this unit as compensation. Abbeyfield no longer employed a resident manager, however, it became clear to us pretty quickly, the society that run this place do very little around here and we were expected to do more than just pay rent. It even took months to have repairs made to our unit – repairs that should have been made prior to us moving in. The worst part is we were told we would be hired provide repairs and renovations to the building. Most of the work talked about when we first came to see if we would move here never materialised.

Abbeyfield needs a resident manager; since we moved in the staff, visitors and the residents have been led to believe that we were getting a special deal on rent in exchange for “helping out around here”. We have had so many interruptions to our personal and business lives. We were pretty much forced to be on call – it was our door that was pounded on when something came up (i.e.: no cook coming in, emergency water leaks, unannounced sprinkler and alarm checks, need help moving furniture – I could go on and on….)

The 12 seniors that live here are not all capable of living on their own, some are wheelchair bound, others are hard of hearing and some have poor mental health. Abbeyfield falsely advertises that a resident manager lives on site to help and take care of the seniors. The only staff here is a cook that comes in from approximately 10am to 6pm and a cleaning lady comes in once a week. Residents do get visits from aides but are left alone most of the time. Many of the residents need to be placed in a nursing home as their mobility and/or alertness is not what it used to be.

We have had several meetings with Barbara Walker, chair of Abbeyfield St. Peter’s Society over the period of a year to try and resolve the many issues which kept arising. We finally got tired of being strung along – all the work that Abbeyfield supposedly had just wasn’t materialising and we were tired of submitting quotes that would take months and months to get approved, if at all. We asked for a rent reduction retroactive for the last year due to untimely repairs, lack of privacy, lack of quiet enjoyment, imposed resident manager duties, misrepresentation and other valid reasons… Ms. Walker responded to us: “that Abbeyfield does not fall under the RTA (Residential Tenancy Act), that if we were not happy with the rent to move out” and then she served us with an eviction notice, and while we waited for a dispute resolution hearing, she served us with another and another. I responded by filing for a dispute resolution hearing. At first the dispute resolution officer was going to throw out the case because Ms. Walker had not followed proper procedures, but in the interest of expediency, I wanted the matter resolved. My husband and I are very happy with the dispute resolution officer’s ruling: we got a few months free rent as compensation. The landlord, Ms. Walker, wanted to have the judge throw us out immediately. Barb Walker, the Chair of Abbeyfield St. Peter’s Society House is the person from whom we rented this apartment over a year ago, she has lied to us and she violated our rights. We stood up for them and we won, that doesn’t happen very often and it feels really good! Someone in charge of a not for profit, government assisted senior’s residence should not be able to just do and say what they want. The constant delays and all the hassles made our lives miserable. It also affected our business.

Now I see where my tax dollars are going. By doing whatever they want and by not following the rules, this society wastes so much money. They approved a $14,000 illegal porch addition without taking a building permit and got caught by Saanich and then needed to pay more to take it down. What a waste of money and material. This mismanagement of our tax dollars should not be permitted. Someone should be held accountable.

This low income senior’s residence receives funding by the BC Government. It is run by a board of directors, many of whom have parents or relatives living here. Here are links to their websites: http://www.salescene.com/abbeyfieldhouse.html and http://www.abbeyfield.ca/ It would be more reassuring to know to know that places like this are inspected more often to make sure that the residents that live here don’t require to be placed in a nursing home and that the administrators are qualified and capable of ensuring the safety and well being of all the residents. Maintaining the buildings in adequate state of repairs should be the responsibility of qualified agencies. It should not be left to societies who fix things with duct tape and silicone….

Lastly, I would like to add that it is not always easy to stand and fight for your rights and the rights of others; it would make life easier and less complicated to just walk away and put things behind you. It’s very important to KNOW your rights and more important to stand up for them. This has been quite unpleasant and very hard to deal with; it took me a long time to get ready for the hearing with the RTA and I didn’t even know if this was under their jurisdiction (Barb’s lies). I took the time to write this article as I feel that, we, as a society (excuse the pun!) are going the wrong way, we need to become more involved and we need to help each other. We need to speak up and make things public, especially when our tax dollars are being mismanaged.

As we are leaving at the end of this month and Abbeyfield is looking to rent the apartment to someone else, I also wanted to warn the next guy. 