Landlord-tenant ordeal reveals flaws in housing support-Ontario Works
"After months of litigation and the expenditure of tens of thousands of dollars to repair tenant damage to her home, Ayesha Asghar was finally settling in to the townhouse she had purchased in Hamilton. It had been six months since she had managed to get squatters out of her home who had refused to leave when Aysha bought the house. At times Ayesha, became homeless herself as she fought to get clear possession of her house. Then, last month, Ayesha picked up a newspaper and saw that the very individuals who had just caused roughly $40,000 in damages to her home and who skipped owing an additional $10,000 in rent were being profiled as new residents of the Barton-Tiffany tiny shelter site...
Looking back on her experience, as traumatizing as was her experience with the tenants from hell, Ayesha feels just as victimized by the bureaucracy she contended with in her ordeal. Throughout the journey, Ayesha saw firsthand some glaring holes in the system. Ayesha encountered frustrating experiences not only with the Landlord and Tenant Board, but with Hamilton Bylaw, and Hamilton Police. But what Aysha’s experience has most brought to light is what appears to be widespread gaming of the welfare system.
It was never Ayesha’s intention to be a landlord. The house was supposed to be empty when she took possession of the unit in June 2024, but the occupants weren’t going anywhere. Initially Aysha was told the tenants needed one more month to vacate. She was advised that there were five adults in the house, only one of whom was named on the lease. When Aysha was allowed to inspect the house a few weeks later, she found there were actually 10 people who appeared to be living there along with a number of aggressive dogs. The tenants had installed a makeshift bathroom in the basement which appeared to be operating as a kind of flophouse. A search of landlord and tenant records showed that one of the residents of the unit had run up $20,000 in unpaid rent in a previous apartment before being evicted. The male companion of the women who had signed the lease had been evicted twice—in 2019 and 2023 from the same apartment complex on Ottawa Street North. A third resident of Ayesha’s unit had been evicted from a King Street East unit for unruly behavior and damaging the premises.
Ayesha launched eviction proceedings with the Landlord and Tenant board. While the case was working its way through the system, Ayesha made several attempts to visit the townhouse, sometimes being admitted, sometimes being refused admission. Seeing the damage to plumbing and electricity as well as missing smoke detectors, Ayesha reported the deficiencies to City Bylaw, who made an inspection of the house, but under the law, only the owner of the property is responsible for such violations and accordingly it was Ayesha who was issued remediation orders for the property, even though she did not have vacant possession of the house.
Ayesha took her concerns about the ongoing vandalism at the unit to Hamilton Police, but she was advised that because it was matter before the Landlord and Tenant Board it was viewed as a civil dispute, not criminal and they could not help. Police records showed that they had made eight calls to the property during the months that Ayesha was attempting to get the tenants out. The reasons for the calls included disturbances within a premise, ambulance calls, domestic dispute and neighbour complaints.
Animal control visited the property to check on the dogs but under their legislation, all they were able to do was to issue an order to reduce the number of dogs on the site from 5 to 4.
Garbage was piling up outside the unit throughout the summer of 2024 and neighbours were complaining about that, as well as overcrowding in the unit. A City Bylaw inspector called Ayesha to tell her that if the city has to clean up the mess the bill will be sent to her. He also told her that with 8-10 residents, the unit was now deemed an illegal dwelling-place and that she could be subject to a fine for that infraction as the property owner.
On a visit to the property last August, Ayesha spotted some new persons apparently living at the site. One of them a male, told Ayesha that he had been paying rent to the leaseholder, confirming Ayesha’s suspicion that the unit was being sublet to squatters. A month later, Ayesha finally obtained possession of the unit and moved in. She started getting mail from the City of Hamilton OW office addressed to eight individuals at the unit. She wrote the Hamilton OW office stating, “ I want to advise the Local Ontario Works Office that the following individuals (listed) do not live at this address. They were evicted by the Sheriff’s Office on September 26, 2024. Please ensure they are not committing fraud against my house, collecting money.”
By now Ayesha had learned more about the way OW works when it comes to shelter. She knew that in order to qualify for the OW housing allowance a recipient had to submit proof of residency, usually with a lease. It was obvious from the correspondence that Hamilton’s OW office were assigning benefits to at least 8 individuals living in the unit. The Bay Observer contacted the City asking the following, “The individual in question reported that there were up to ten people in the unit during her attempts to gain possession, it appears a number of them had filed false lease forms in order to obtain shelter allowance. What is the process for confirming who is rightfully a tenant on an OW supported residence?...
There are rent assistance programs available to OW recipients, that could be used to provide last month’s rent but they are not managed by OW, but rather by Community and Social Housing. The Housing Emergency Fund provides subsidies ranging from $3,000 for a single person spread over 2 years, to up to $7,000 for a large family of five or more.
The Bay Observer examined several rulings by the Landlord and tenant Board related to this story. They tend to follow a similar narrative. The tenant manages to get possession of the unit by providing first and last month’s rent, whether through rent assistance programs or otherwise, but then rent payment ceases, which is hardly surprising given the OW shelter allowance is only $390 for a single person, $642 for a couple. From there matter goes to the Landlord and Tenant Board and eviction can take many months. For some of these tenants the process is repeated several times. It appears that one branch of the housing system is helping people get into accommodations that they can’t possibly afford to keep up. Add to the mix, addictions and criminal behavior and a truer picture emerges, than the strictly poverty narrative that is presented to the public.
For Ayesha it’s been a disheartening experience, “some of the people who were occupying my house were documented serial scammers and there was apparently nothing anybody could do about it,” she said. She had to clear away two garbage containers of drug paraphernalia, and two truckloads of garbage that were left behind. For weeks after she moved in, strangers would come tapping at the basement window and her front door apparently looking to purchase drugs from the previous residents.
Ayesha’s experience is not unique. The Bay Observer talked to Mississauga resident Hafeez Hussain whose retired father had purchased a house in Hamilton in 2017 as a rental property. When the elder Hussain purchased the property, it was occupied by tenants who were receiving OW benefits, but who were paying their rent on time. Hussain’s difficulties began when new tenants moved in. Said Hafeez, “they filled out an application form, they provided a reference from their previous landlord and then they provided employment letters…one said that they were working in a landscaping company and the other tenant said that she was working for a cleaning company.” After four months of non-payment of rent the tenants left. The Hussein’s had to make repairs to the electrical system of the house costing $8,750. But when Hafeez checked out the departed tenants on an online landlord-tenant database, he realized they had gotten off lightly. Unknown to the Hussain’s, the female tenant had a record of at least five evictions going back to 2018 involving four Hamilton properties and one in Kitchener. In two instances the tenant had been able to delay evictions by claiming she had large income tax refunds coming. The Kitchener landlord was owed more than $10,000. After the tenant left the Hussain property, she and her partner moved into a house in east Hamilton and were evicted last year owing over $30,000 in unpaid rent. After that, the Hussain’s were unwilling to risk renting the house again. They continued to pay taxes and utilities on the property for two years but decided to sell the house after the city passed the vacant unit tax measure last year.
Hafeez and Ayesha began to compare notes following the publication of her story, and Hafeez had become intent on understanding what is wrong with a social assistance system that appears to be deficient when it comes to detecting fraud and managing clients towards better outcomes. He issued a wide-ranging FOI to the Hamilton OW office to try to understand the department’s workings but says in some cases information that is being denied to him by Hamilton he has been able to obtain from the Ministry and other municipalities such as Ottawa and Mississauga...
Even before the audit is completed a number of issues are evident. The most obvious one is that OW rates in Ontario bear no relationship to the cost of living. They were reduced by the Harris government in its term that ended in 2003 and there has been no increase since, not even for inflation. There is virtually no hope that an OW recipient will be able to keep up the rent on their meager housing allowance unless several band together. The statistics provided by municipalities show that almost nobody exits OW for employment. The system is bifurcated–OW provides the cheques for individuals but another agency, Employment Ontario is responsible for getting the individuals back to work. And then there is the same issue with OW that Hamiltonians saw with encampments—addiction, which often leads to crime, and which the people managing the various programs will not publicly acknowledge. “Housing First” might well work if the system were simply dealing with people having trouble making ends meet, but that is not the population that is mostly in front of us. Until the real issue is recognized the system is treading water."
Obviously we need to expand welfare to help people and stop crime, and just give people houses. Landlords are always to blame for problems with their property, even when they have no control over it.
