Hi Everyone,
You know, I like to think of myself as a creative person. But there are just some things that happen in my life that I just couldn’t make up even if I tried. The saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” is my life to a T. Here is the truth and today’s blog.
Back in June of last year I posted a blog titled, “Where’s the Heat?” It was about how cold it was in June, how I went to the city hall of the city I live in to see if they could change the heat by-laws and how I heated my apartment with my oven because even after my begging my landlord for a heater, twice, he refused to give me one. Or at least that is what I can remember of it. A lot has happened since then. This is what I mean.
What I didn’t blog about or tell anyone is that I also called the Landlord and Tenant Board of Ontario about my lack of heat. According to them, there is a law within the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, (RTA) that clearly states that the heat for buildings is to be turned off on June 15th, and the minimum heat is to be no less than 22 degrees Celsius. Since I have a thermometer, the temperature in my apartment was below the legal threshold more days than not. That’s why I started to heat my apartment with my oven and then began processing what is called a T2 and ticked off the box stating that my landlord was withholding a vital service, in this case heat.
On Tuesday July 9th, 2013, I went to what is called the Social Justice Tribunal Ontario, which is the legal division of the Landlord and Tenant Board and I was awarded a 15 day rent abatement. That was because my landlord and his building manager, (who has stated and testified at the Tribunal several times that he’s been a building manager for over 20 years) chose to turn off the heat on June 1st, before the legal date of June15th. For anyone who is interested, the building manager had to provide an hourly heat report for the last few days of May and each day between June 1st and June 15th. For some hours, the temperature got as low as 4 degrees Celsius. I am serious. And it was seriously cold!
Then as (my) life would have it, I was served with an eviction notice exactly 9 days after I was awarded my 15 day rent abatement. The reason is that I had a disagreement with Mr. Mental, who I am now calling, Crazy Pants, and he complained about my questioning his questionable behaviour of his murmuring to himself as he anxiously paced past my ground floor apartment windows upwards of 4-6 times in ten minutes while punching his left fisted hand into his right open hand. He, Mr. Mental, or Crazy Pants, behaved in the above manner for over a week! I felt as if I was being harassed because I was under a hundred pounds, have lived in that apartment by myself for then almost 4 years, and chose to have few guests. Plus I am a woman who again, lives alone on the ground floor!
If my receiving an eviction notice only nine after being awarded a 15 day rent abatement because I questioned the behaviour of Mr. Mental/Crazy Pants, a tenant and an employee of my landlord who was also recommended for his employment by the building manager sounds suspicious to you, you are not alone. Everyone I have told, “And exactly nine days after I was awarded my 15 day rent abatement, I was served with an eviction notice. I’ve been a tenant in Ontario for over 20 years, and that was the first complaint I’ve ever had so, I’ve been had a problem with any other apartment,” has felt the same way. If you were wondering if there is a law protecting tenants from being evicted because they have complained to the Landlord and Tenant Board about their landlord disregarding the provincial laws, I’ll answer that. There is. Section 83 of the RTA, 2006 deals with landlords who choose to lower themselves to that level, and there are a slew of subsections to Section 83. I quoted subsections b and c to the adjudicator every time I went to court over this matter. I even told her, Madame Chair C. L., that the person who complained about me was Mr. Mental/Crazy Pants, that he was a tenant and an employee of the Landlord and was recommended by the building manager. That got me nowhere. What is blatantly obvious to the uneducated, untrained and unpaid general public was not even remotely obvious to the highly paid government employee who is supposed to be educated, and trained to snuff out simple, childlike ruses of that nature! Go figure!
And one would figure that this matter would be resolved in a timely manner but it wasn’t. It dragged on, and on and on! Right from September 4, 2013 until February 20, 2014. I am serious. The reason for this is because it is, well, the government!
First off, Madame Chair C. L. took forever to figure out the cases before us, so our case got adjourned, rescheduled, and finally got fully addressed on November 18, 2013. Then it took Madame Chair C. L. over a month to finally create an 8 page court order that was riddled with mistakes. I am serious about that too!
How my evidence got to be the landlord’s evidence is beyond my comprehension and apparently beyond the comprehension of Madame Chair C. L. also! That is a pretty glaring mistake that only took her over a month to make by the way! And she wouldn’t even look at my other evidence! From the other people I have spoken to, Madame Chair C. L. has a real problem accepting and then allowing tenants to show their evidence. So yea, she has a reputation of being very biased and incompetent which, in my opinion, makes her very unprofessional! How that works into being part of the Social Justice Tribunal Ontario is still a mystery to me. Thankfully I am not alone! As I have mentioned above other people like duty counsels and other members of the Social Justice Tribunal Ontario have, “not disagreed with me,” when I have mentioned her conduct. One tenant even showed me a detailed letter from her counsel who pointed out in several areas; Madame Chair C.L.’s not allowing her to show her evidence in order for her to defend herself against her landlord! But the list is long and life is short so …
Madame Chair C. L. did dismiss all of my landlord’s claims, but as I mentioned above, her court order was riddled with mistakes. It is what one would call a comedy of errors! Just to remind everyone, it was on the taxpayer’s dime. I am telling you this because there were so many mistakes, that it gave my landlord a window of opportunity to take me back to court for a review due to Madame Chair C.L.’s numerous errors in her court order.
Since the review was done with another (female) adjudicator, my landlord and his representatives chose to use the fact that I share a hot water heater with my mentally challenged neighbour, who is also a former drug addict. In my then almost 4 years of living beside her and sharing a hot water heater, she had just recently started running out of hot water in the morning. Hmmm. Yep! There is no way a mentally challenged, former drug addict could be manipulated, coerced, or threatened into agreeing with the building manager into fabricating anything, especially since she allowed someone she put a restraining order against into her apartment and then that person robbed another tenant. Shortly after that incident, another tenant claimed my next neighbour robbed her! So yea, my next door neighbour would sign and do pretty anything to keep herself from being evicted or at the very least get back into the building’s “good books”. My next door neighbour didn’t testify against me. The building manager testified on her behalf. He only has tattoos, and not those large life-long scabs from doing drugs like she does. You would have to see her arms to know what I mean. Talk about gross!
All of those letters of complaints she filed against me, were, in my opinion, not in her handwriting because she can’t write! I know this because one day, after she tried to scam some shower gel off of me, I took her shopping to get her own. Not only did she have trouble writing her name, I had to count the change from the purchase because she couldn’t due to her mental challenges. In my opinion, after I quickly compared all of her handwritten letters of complaint, they all looked exactly like the building managers handwritten and hand printed letters. I tried to show Madame Chair C. L. those letters and the letters of the building manager as part of my evidence yet she just didn’t want to see them.
Just so everyone knows, one thing that Madame Chair C.L. did get right was the fact that if in case there was something wrong with the hot water heater, it is up to the landlord to fix it. That is something the building manager had ample time to do between mid-April and November 18, 2013 but never bothered because there was nothing wrong with it. Actually, he claimed under oath, that he was banging on my door and that I yelled at him to, “go away,” or something like that, when he never bothered to show up for work. How he got his arm to stretch kilometers and through doors and walls to bang on my door, is a trick the Special Effects Department of every film set would love to know! Maybe after he explains that, he could make the evidence he claimed on February 20, 2014 that he provided on November 18, 2013 magically appear in his file too! I checked that file after November 18, 2013 and it, the 24 hour notices of entry are not there! Yes, it would appear that the building manager has a problem with the truth and both adjudicators bought everything he and the other witnesses lied about, hook, line and sinker!
You know what? I could go on and on. I’ve got lots of material. Like I said at the beginning of this blog, the saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” is my life to a T. For anyone who is curious, all of this took place at 330 Gibb Street in Oshawa Ontario, L1J 1Z2. Anyone could have found that out if they wanted to on this thing called the Internet.
Here are some related blogs,
http://arebelsrant.com/wheres-the-heat/
http://arebelsrant.com/mr-mental/
http://arebelsrant.com/crack-heads-and-2/
http://arebelsrant.com/i-dont-really-like-people/
Thank you for reading, A. Rebel’s Rant!
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