There Is A Serious Gap In The Current Agency Funding Program
While there is funding to pay rent for agency sponsored tenants there is no provision for payments for damages they cause. The agencies will claim they are already under-funded & perhaps that is true however THERE IS NO FUNDING for a landlord that houses them to repair damages that they may cause.
Let me illustrate the problem with a current situation. A landlord agreed to rent a newly renovated apartment to a client of the CMHA. The CMHA sign a contract with that landlord to mediate, laisse with the tenant & landlord to resolve any issues that may arise & a case worker is assigned. The case worker however turns out to be from a supporting agency, Recovery North Bay, and has no such contract with the landlord & is in fact prohibited by the Privacy Act from even discussing any issues with the landlord.
Things start to go bad when the landlord receives many noise complaints and has to issue a series of N5’s attempting to prevent disturbances to other tenants and to stop damages to the property that the tenant starts to do, seemingly in anger outbursts. The first N5 was issued on April 17th 2017. A total of 5 N5’s are issued and finally the Tribunal hears the case on December 4th 2017. The tenant does not attend as required & an eviction order is issued to be effective January 2nd 2018. On December 22nd 2017 the tenant, with the assistance of free legal aid, requested a stay & a review of the previous eviction order and scheduled a re-hearing for February 15th 2018. The tenant seeks mediation & agrees to leave at the end of February.
During all of this process the funding agency & the supporting agency were communicating with each other but prevented from communicating with or assisting the landlord.
Once the tenant left an assessment of the property was completed by the landlord and the funding agency representatives and 2 estimates were requested & submitted. Total damages amounted to $8,400.00. At a recent meeting between the 2 agencies & the landlord, the landlord was advised that there was NO FUNDING available for damages to the property – only to pay rent & utilities.
Does anyone see a problem here?
There is simply not enough social housing available in North Bay to house these agency clients/renters but if private sector property owners are hung out to dry and told to pay out of their own pockets for damages caused by these agency clients/renters, my guess is that the available market for these clients will shrink drastically.
There is more than just the funding issue here – there is a severe deficiency in the Social Justice Tribunal system that takes so long to deal with these landlord/tenant issues but that is a battle for another day. The issue to-day is a serious gap in the funding formula leaving private sector landlords out in the cold & suffering the costs out of their own pockets to repair the damages caused by socially supported renters.
We would draw your attention to a case in Ottawa in 2016 were the CMHA requested a landlord house a homeless person. That person then trashed the apartment to the extent of $18,000.00. A follow up to that story will show that that landlord WAS reimbursed so there is a precedent for recovery but we are not aware of the particulars of that case.
I would also point out that not all agency clients/renters are bad apples & not good tenants but there are inconsiderate & irresponsible ones out there and unfortunately ALL will be tarred with the same brush.
It is time for the funders/MPPs and all funded agencies to address this deficiency before the housing market withdrawal creates a homeless issue in this area that we can’t even imagine.I’m sure there will be those that say “ Oh well, the fat cat landlords are rich & can afford it” I would say to those that the real average landlord is your sister & brother, your mother & father, your next door neighbour - who scrimped and saved to put a down payment on a rental property to assist them in their retirement years. Do you really think they can suffer these kinds of losses? Could you?