Posts Tagged ‘legal help’
Canmore renters must pay in $19,000 in damages after dog pee destroys carpet
Sunday, November 14th, 2010Not even the surprise attendance of a harmless-looking Yorkshire terrier could persuade a judge to exercise leniency on Tuesday in Canmore small claims court.
Provincial court Judge Les Grieve stood his ground when a former tenant pulled the male pooch, named Boo, from inside his coat and tried to claim innocence regarding his landlords’ badly soiled carpet. The proof, according to the evidence, had already trickled into the rug.
Grieve then awarded Cochrane landlords Bonnie White and Bryan Niles $19,182 in damages — more than half of it to replace the damaged carpet caused by the former tenants’ dogs repeatedly peeing on it. The carpet, he concluded, was so ruined that it had to be replaced.
Grieve ordered Sylvia Wilson, Lori Hersey and Michael Hersey to fork over $10,000 for the carpet, $1,800 for one month unpaid rent last April, $5,400 for another three months lost rent while the GlenEagles house was uninhabitable, and carpet cleaning costs and other repairs.
Important for all Ontario Landlords: Bill 112 to Second Reading
Friday, November 12th, 2010FYI – Please See the full Bill 112 here:
http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/bills/bills_detail.do?locale=en&Intranet=&BillID=2408
This bill has passed first reading and has gone to second reading.
EXPLANATORY NOTE
The Bill makes several amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, including the following:
1. The Bill increases the time limit for most tenant and some landlord applications to the Landlord and Tenant Board from one to two years. Tenants can go back in time two years to file a complaint.
2. The Bill requires a landlord who terminates a tenancy for personal use to compensate the tenant and expands the circumstances in which a landlord is required to compensate a tenant if the landlord terminates a tenancy for the purpose of demolition or conversion to non-residential use. Formula given for compensation.
3. The Bill prohibits a landlord from increasing the rent charged to a new tenant by more than the guideline and abolishes landlord applications to the Board for above guideline rent increases where there has been a significant increase in the cost of utilities. No new rent increases to market rent beyond the guideline when you have tenant turnover.
4. The Bill requires that the Board dismiss an application from a landlord who has been given a work order under section 225 of the Act or an order under section 15.2 of the Building Code Act, 1992 and has not completed the items in the work order or the order. Excuse for not paying rent.
5. The Bill requires a landlord to obtain a licence with respect to a rental unit in a residential complex containing six or more rental units in order to enter into a tenancy agreement or renew an existing tenancy agreement. Money grab for Multi-family 6+
Something that we should not ignore! This would not only radically change the rental industry affecting each and every landlord from the smallest LL to the largest corporation, it would demand the creation of a huge new bureaucracy policing the actions of all of us!
Find your Ontario MPP here: http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/members/members_current.do?locale=en
Make sure they know how you feel. Call them or put something down in writing, make sure that they hear their constituents point of view.
Please also make your feelings known to the Minister of Housing:
Hon Rick Bartolucci, MPP
Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing
Ontario Liberal Party
Contact Information:
rbartolucci.mpp@liberal.ola.org
Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing
17th Floor
777 Bay Street
Toronto, Ontario M5G 2E5
Tel 416-585-7000
Fax 416-585-6470
Lease Help
Sunday, September 12th, 2010What are the most important things to make sure I put in my lease to protect myself?
• Full legal names of all tenants
• Term of the lease (month by month, yearly, etc)
• Amount of the monthly rent and what that includes/excludes
• When the rent is due
• Appliances and/or Furnishings Included
• Address for Service for the Landlord
• Special Clauses About Everything Else
The Bentley-driving tenant from hell
Thursday, August 26th, 2010By MICHELE MANDEL, Toronto Sun
She’s b-a-a-a-a-ck.
The Bentley-driving, condo-trashing tenant from hell who likes to claim she’s a Persian princess is back before the Landlord and Tenant Board for the umpteenth time.
Call her Mojgan Amir-Davani — or by her other six known monikers: Mozhe Aamere, Mozhe (Mozhgan) Avanni, Mozhe Amerjhajar, Mozhe Sheena Mere, Mozhgan Amere Ghajaar or Amiri Mojgan.
Whatever her alias, her modus operandi is the same: She’s terrorized at least four high-end condo owners in North York, convincing them she’s a successful broadcasting executive only to turn into a destructive squatter who expertly plays the system for months of free rent before she’s finally turfed out and moves on to her next victim.
We first told her tale here in January, of frustrated landlord Jane Randall who rented her investment property to the dark haired beauty only to be stiffed with $12,000 in unpaid rent and thousands more in damage.
Claiming to be suffering from cancer and refusing to move, her dog’s feces spilling off her balcony, the carpets stained with blood and urine, Amir-Davani was brilliantly manipulative.
When Randall repeatedly turned to the tenancy board for help, she was told to wait. And wait some more.
Six months later, she finally left only to move down the street into a Hollywood Ave. condo owned by another small landlord who’s now going through the same horror story.
We’ll call him Frank because he’s too embarrassed to use his real name. Renting out his two-bedroom luxury unit for the first time, the 35-year-old scientist was counting on the $1,920 monthly rent to help pay off his student loans and mortgage.
He figured his realtor had found him the ideal tenant when she arrived in a chauffeur-driven Bentley to sign the deal in February.
She said she was newly arrived from California and provided a reference no one seems to have checked.
Within a few months, his kitchen was damaged by fire, tenants below were complaining about feces dripping from her balcony and her rent cheques began to bounce as hard as a rubber ball.
Amir-Davani didn’t respond to a request for comment.
During a recent inspection, a contractor told Frank it will cost $9,800 to repair the damage so far. He’s also out $2,000 in legal fees and at least $6,000 in arrears.
“It’s hard to sleep some nights,” Frank admits. “The financial cost is one thing. But then there’s the emotional thing: Is she ever going to be out?”
He’s turned to Harry Fine, president of Landlord Solutions and the paralegal who helped evict Amir-Davani from a Harrison Garden condo in 2007.
“I see it every week and my heart goes out to them,” says Fine of naive landlords scammed by professional squatters. “They don’t check references. They don’t do credit checks.”
She finally agreed to move by Aug. 7 as long as Frank waived her back rent and damages. Not surprisingly, the date came and went, with her still comfortably ensconced in his ruined condo.
What she didn’t know is that Fine arranged for her to be confronted by Frank, Randall, and her 2007 landlord when she arrived at her eviction hearing Aug. 9.
“Like a husband walking into a room to be faced by his three ex-wives who had been exchanging stories, the tenant walked into the hearing room Monday morning to find not one but three of her victims,” Fine recalls. “She was furious.”
A landlord and tenant adjudicator gave her until Aug. 31 to leave. But Frank’s hardly home free: As soon as Amir-Davani files an appeal — and she’s vowed to do so — he’ll be back waiting for yet another hearing and yet another eviction date.
“The legal system just takes forever and is so weighted to the side of tenants,” he complains.
Which makes even less sense when this notorious tenant has been the subject of so many eviction hearings.
“She’s been in the exact same hearing room and still it goes on? How does someone get away with that?” he sighs.
“She’s the tenant from hell and beyond.”
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/michele_mandel/2010/08/20/15092061.html