My tenant association, Bank Block Tenants (BBT), is a group of tenants representing two buildings in downtown Ottawa, namely 227 Bank St and 178 Nepean Street. We are fighting a demoviction so that we can keep our homes. Before BBT formed in the late fall of 2023, I had minimal experience with the LTB. About 11 years ago when I lived in the Glebe, my neighbor, James, asked me to be a witness in his eviction hearing. The landlord had accused him of purposely sabotaging the pipes in his kitchen and bathroom to cause damage. However, James showed me that due to the extreme cold of winter, his pipes were frozen. The exposure of the pipes to the extreme cold was the reason they broke since there was no insulation protecting them, not because James sabotaged the pipes (which would have been quite self-defeating I might add).
James had lived in his apartment for a while and as a result was paying a lower rent than most of the other tenants in the building, due to rent control in the province of Ontario. The landlord couldn’t raise his rent, although the landlord stood to increase its profit if James was forced to leave since rent control would no longer apply. By accusing James of sabotaging the building pipes, the landlord was trying to evict him. I cannot remember the result of this case by the LTB - whether the landlord and James came to an agreement or if the LTB ruled in his favor. Regardless, he did end up staying in his apartment. This experience left me thinking the LTB was at the very least reasonable.That was my only experience and knowledge of the LTB before I was served a notice of eviction.
In the late fall of 2023, my landlord, Smart Living Properties (SLP), filed an N13, which is a termination of tenancy notice with the LTB. This particular N13 form described the landlord’s intention to end the tenancy of all of the tenants on the grounds that they wanted to demolish the entire block in which we live.
The LTB informed me and my fellow tenants that we could make an account on their online portal, to view the landlord’s filing against us. This was the beginning of an entirely de-humanizing process with the LTB. For the landlord and the LTB, this was a bureaucratic and transactional process, designed to facilitate and expedite the destruction of my home. Not only that, the process was in their hands. The eviction hearing, whenever it would occur, would occur at their convenience, not ours. I felt betrayed by my government and my country in this unpredictable waiting game. I had always believed in acting morally and with integrity, and I expected the same from the authorities, who receive their authority only by the consent of the people. I never gave my consent to lose my home.
Eventually, at the end of March 2024, myself and the other tenants on our block received formal eviction notices from the LTB. This process was purely administrative in nature, with no further guidance from the LTB on the process. It was as if this tribunal viewed us as equal parties, landlord and tenants, and that this eviction notice was just part of a bureaucratic process, nothing more. But landlords operate within the market system and view homes as nothing more than commodities they can exchange for capital. In the case of our landlord, SLP, they own numerous properties and regularly buy and sell them for millions. This game they play, this game of buying and evicting, is their sport, their arena. Tenants are merely the spectators, watching the action from the sidelines, or sidewalks in this case. As tenants, we were left to live with the stress of an uncertain future, seeing as the eviction notices had no hearing dates.
In the late Summer of 2024, we finally received dates for our eviction hearings, with the dates ranging from late November to early and mid-December of 2024. My hearing date was set for the second week of December, which I thought was particularly heartless on the part of the LTB, given that it would have been two weeks or so before Christmas. It’s hard to enjoy a happy holiday season when you have just lost your affordable home.
In the early fall of 2024, out of nowhere, we received two communications from the LTB. First, they informed us that all of our hearings would be consolidated into one. Why they didn’t initially consolidate all the hearings together is anyone’s guess. There was no date set for this new consolidated hearing. We were left wondering, would it be before Christmas? The second communication from the LTB informed us that we would be having an adjudicative case conference on September 24, 2024. We were given three weeks’ notice for this. The letter we received from the LTB describing this case conference was so ambiguously worded that we were under the impression that we would have to provide evidence for this hearing.
The requirement for evidence submission worried me, so I called the LTB, and they told me that this case conference was in fact our actual hearing. This created an enormous amount of stress for all of us, since we had not yet hired a lawyer and we had no idea that we were expected to provide evidence so quickly. It turned out that the LTB was wrong, that this case conference was administrative in nature, allowing the parties involved to discuss how the actual hearing would proceed, and to set dates for the hearing. We found this out through our own research and from talking to people with experience regarding the LTB’s procedures. The LTB’s incompetence in this instance caused unnecessary harm. The fact that someone working for the LTB (the person who answered the phone when I called) could not distinguish between an administrative proceeding and an eviction hearing was concerning and frustrating.
At the adjudicative case conference on September 24, which almost all of us attended virtually in a shared space, the adjudicator was professional, yet encouraged us several times to come to a settlement with the landlord. In a sense, he was too professional, and not human enough. I found his constant urging for us to settle to be offensive. What would settlement mean in this case? There was nothing to settle in my mind. This greedy and wealthy landlord wanted to take away our homes and we were trying to keep them. Can you agree to give away half of your home? The bureaucratic nature of the case conference exemplified the entrenched power imbalance between landlords and tenants continually reinforced by the LTB.
As of early November, 2024, myself and the other tenants of BBT have been battling against the onslaught of capitalism, corporatization, and government ineptitude. I would have to assess the LTB as an extension of the capitalistic and corporatized approach that modern western governments employ to govern. I would also assess them as an institution devoid of compassion or respect for housing as a basic human need. Perhaps someday there won’t be landlords and tenants, but just people living in homes without being subjects of capitalistic exploitation. For now though, the LTB is disappointing and needs serious reform.