Several tenants at a Chatham fourplex complex received official notices to end tenancy late last week
Threatened with possible eviction for their garden sheds and gazebos, several long-term tenants of a Chatham fourplex apartment complex are worried they’ll soon be on the streets.
Late last week, N5 forms – official notices to end tenancy for interfering with others, damage or overcrowding – were left in several mailboxes at the Orchard Heights Drive fourplexes that demand the tenants move out by month’s end if fences, sheds, gazebos and swing sets aren’t removed from outside their units within seven days.
The forms also state the landlord will charge the tenants thousands of dollars for repairs or replacement of damaged property if they remain in their units without making the specified fixes.
With many of these tenants surviving on Ontario Disability Support Program benefits, the threat of eviction is terrifying, longtime resident Ron Moore said.
“If we got to find another place to move, where are we going to get the money for it?” Moore said. “We’re only on disability.
“There are people in here with kids. Where are the people going to go when they’ve got kids?”
Moore said the “interference” that resulted in his N5 form is a wooden fence he paid to have erected on the front lawn of the fourplex property several years ago.
The notice from landlord Vanroboys Enterprises also states Moore will be on the hook for $10,000 – an estimate of how much it will cost to do the work – if the fence isn’t removed.
Penny Hutchins, another tenant, also faces a $10,000 cost estimate if she doesn’t remove the shed beside her rental unit, as well as a cement bench decorating the garden area of her lawn.
“Oh my God, I’m on a fixed income,” she said. “I’m ODSP. There’s no way we can afford to move, not with the prices of rent anymore.”
With most monthly rents at the buildings set below $1,000, many of the longtime residents suspect the notices are a tactic to force tenants out.
“He knows if he can get rid of us and just put a little lipstick and rouge (on the units), they can double the rent,” said tenant John Deline, who shares a unit with his brother.
Their notice demanded they remove their shed and homemade yard decorations or face $2,000 in costs.
“Just talking about this, I’m getting upset because I can’t move in two weeks,” Brian Deline said. “They shouldn’t be able to do this.”
Property owner Steve Vanroboys, though, disputes holding claims that these notices are a ploy to oust long-term residents to hike the rents on their units.
“That’s too bad they think that way,” he said. “There’s no intention whatsoever there.”
Despite the warning on the forms – “this is a legal notice that could lead to you being evicted from your home” – Vanroboys said the intent of delivering the notices isn’t eviction.
“Not at all, they’re all good tenants,” he said. “I get along great with all of them. They’re all super-nice people, and this is no ill intent to get rid of them because they’re nice people.”
The notices were delivered, he added, because he wants to see the property “cleaned up.”
Jeff Wilkins, a lawyer specializing in housing law who works for the Chatham-Kent Legal Clinic, said the N5 notices look “scary,” so many people immediately react without realizing they have rights.
“I see a ton of people who move out on these notices, which scares me, because they think it’s an eviction notice. They don’t realize that there’s a whole process (involved),” said Wilkins, whose office has already been contacted by a few of the Orchard Heights Drive tenants.
Wilkins said he’s previously spoken with a number of people who moved out within seven days of receiving this or similar notices from other landlords, thinking they had no choice, and ended up in an emergency homeless shelter
The lawyer said he’s seen a growing number of seniors and families facing these kinds of precarious situations.
Many landlords, he added, opt to serve the forms to tenants via mailboxes without telling them these notices are only the beginning of the process.
While these three-page notices do contain information on tenant rights and the hearing process, they do state the landlord wants “to end your tenancy” and provides a “termination date.”
“If you’re a tenant, especially if you’re on (disability), you’re going to start panicking,” Wilkins said.
After seven days, the landlord is actually required to file the N5 form with Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board and then wait to have a hearing scheduled. With the enormous backlog of cases at the board, Wilkins said these claims normally won’t be heard for five to eight months.
When the hearing is finally scheduled, the landlord then has “to try to convince the board that the behavior was so egregious” that the tenant should be evicted.
Carol Nehru, who has lived in her unit for about five years, said her notice threatened a $1,000 removal cost if her gazebo and shed weren’t removed within seven days.
She said she only put up the shed in 2018 and gazebo in 2019 after receiving verbal permission from the complex’s former property manager. The only stipulation, she added, was not blocking the walkway.
“He’s basically saying we did this all without permission,” despite receiving permission years ago, Nehru said.
Mary Williston said her daughter was told she had to take down her kids’ swing set, which has been up for years. She added her daughter already had to remove a trampoline and toy shed from the yard.
Vanroboys also disputed these claims, saying most of the offending structures are relatively recent and were put up periodically without any authorization.
Vanroboys also said he didn’t know about the thousands of dollars in estimated repair costs that were included on the forms. He referred that question to his property manager, who is also a paralegal. The property manager did not return repeated calls for comment.
Wilkins said it’s troubling that more and more tenants are being served with these types of forms as average renters in Ontario continue to soar. While residential rent increases for properties built before 2018 are set by the province – 2.5 per cent is the 2023 guideline – there are no such controls on vacant units.
Wilkins said he has seen dozens of low-income tenants receive N5s or similar forms as a result. Other common tactics are “renovictions,” where a landlord evicts a tenant by claiming they need to complete major renovations on their unit, and personal-use evictions.
When these people are forced or tricked from units that are well below the current market rate, Wilkins added, those affordable rents are “gone for good.”