Lisa Fox has called it a learning experience and moved on.
But it was an expensive lesson and an emotional one that she doesn’t ever want to repeat.
The Orillia woman purchased a legal four-plex several years ago. The investment was meant to serve as a way to develop a retirement fund in the absence of a pension.
But it didn’t work out that way at all.
When the pandemic hit, two of her four tenants stopped paying rent after the Ontario Superior Court issued an order suspending evictions and Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) suspended most hearings related to eviction applications.
That was in March 2020.
It wasn’t until the following August that the LTB resumed through a new video-conference hearing model. But it took 11 months for Fox to get a date before the board.
By that point, she had lost more than $12,000 in rent from the tenants who were still in their unit. And the legal bills had exceeded $4,000. She figured had she not recruited the help of a paralegal to navigate the complicated tribunal system, she might still be waiting for her case to be heard.
Once they did get a date and just as they were to appear before the tribunal, the tenants moved out.
Fox then discovered damage and spent another $18,000 on renovations. But there was no question: She wasn’t going to try to go back to the tribunal to recoup her losses. Instead, she decided to sell, fortunate to have seen an escalation in property values making up for the losses incurred from the rental experience.
“While I have always understood there is risk in real-estate investing ... my eyes are now wide open to the failed system and what it takes to gain control back of your property as well as the financial hardship and emotional stress,” said Fox, adding the LTB “is a costly and highly complicated system, which is very archaic in process and in desperate need of an overhaul.”
The story on the tenant side of the equation is equally frustrating. Many who have filed applications to have problems addressed have been waiting for prolonged periods of time.
“There continues to remain a significant delay in scheduling tenant applications. Hearings are being scheduled within approximately eight to 10 months of a tenant application being filed,” said Micheal Hefferon, executive director of the Simcoe, Haliburton, Kawartha Lakes Community Legal Clinic.
He noted the majority of currently scheduled tenant applications were filed last June or July.
A major concern, Hefferon added, is hearings are often bumped and further delayed if the tribunal runs out of time and can’t get to the case.
Of the $19 million the province announced earlier this month, to be spent over three years to tackle long-standing backlogs and accelerate decisions at both the Ontario Land Tribunal and LTB, the LTB is to receive $4.5 million. The government says that raises resources at the LTB to unprecedented levels to help it resolve existing backlogs.
The money is expected to go toward more adjudicators and staff.
Barrie property manager Rob Hilton says the investment is a move in the right direction, but he expects it will take some time for it to make an impact.
“With the current backlog, the requirement to hire, train and then set up, I would anticipate that for the next nine months we would not see any measurable change in service,” he said.
Hilton figures it might not be until 2024 that the tribunal will have a chance to get back to pre-pandemic levels.
Historic delays
The tribunal’s problems are not new. Long-standing delays before the LTB, which users say force tenants to live in inadequate premises or with outstanding complaints and landlords unable to collect outstanding rent or unable to evict problematic tenants, have been getting worse.
The Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario announced in January 2020 it was launching an investigation into the delays. Its report is anticipated sometime this year.
“We have now received more than 1,600 complaints in connection with this investigation. Wherever possible, we have resolved these individual complaints,” said Linda Williamson, its communications director.
Meanwhile, in its annual report, Tribunals Ontario notes a more than doubling number of active LTB cases over a two-year period.
By the end of its 2020-21 fiscal year, there were 34,731, which is up from 22,803 the previous year. In 2018-19, there were 14,726 active cases by year’s end. And even though there were far fewer applications in 2020-21, the number of those that were resolved was less than half of the two previous years.
Tribunals Ontario refused a request for an interview with its executive director, Harry Gousopoulos. Interviews are not possible, wrote spokesperson Janet Deline in an email.
In a follow-up email, she said during the first five months of the pandemic, the LTB suspended non-urgent eviction hearings. Only situations involving serious and ongoing health or safety issues or a serious illegal act would be addressed.
The result, Deline added, was a “significant impact” on the LTB’s caseload. At the same time, modernization of the organization meant many of its core services had to be adapted.
“While the LTB recognizes the impact that delays have on those who access our services, we are making progress. Depending on the application type, new matters on average are now scheduled within three to four months,” Deline said.
There is a form, allowing applicants to submit a request to shorten the time if they feel it to be a priority, she added.
Frustrating process
For Hilton, as a property manager, ongoing delays have been frustrating.
Referring to the tribunals’ 2020-21 annual report, he points out that the average hold time for those calling the LTB in 2017 was nine minutes. That increased by 75 per cent to almost 16 minutes even though the volume of calls had dropped by more than 74,000 calls to 197,927 last year.
“It should also be noted that during this time the Landlord (and) Tenant Board also increased their service fees for applications,” Hilton said.
There was also a big jump in the amount of time a landlord had to wait for a hearing application for non-payment of rent. In 2020-21, the average time was 131.7 days, up from 31.8 two years earlier. The target is 25 days.
The money lost during that period is rarely recovered, Hilton added.
Barrie paralegal Erli Bregu says the LTB might be described as a “train wreck.”
“It’s very tragic for both sides,” he said, adding tenant applications have been on the back burner since last year as adjudicators have been focusing on landlord cases. “Now they’re going to be prioritizing tenant applications and they’re going to be putting landlord applications on the back burner.”
That’s good for tenants, but landlords will have to wait.
Bregu says there have been new adjudicators added and the backlog seemed to be ebbing, but it has built back up.
Paralegal Christina De Palma said the delays are not as severe as they were, but they linger and scheduled cases are often bumped.
“How do we explain that to our clients?” said De Palma, whose firm works across Simcoe County — about half of it representing both sides in landlord-tenant disputes. “Parties are stuck waiting for the board to come up with the results they need. Somehow, the board has to get caught up or come up with a better solution.”
Many, like Fox, simply give up out of frustration, De Palma said, realizing they’re not likely to recoup the lost rent after months of waiting.
De Palma points to a client who started the eviction notice process in June whose case has been bumped twice. Meanwhile, they’ve collected no rent in that period.
All De Palma says she can do is make sure they are prepared and not the cause for any delays. Then she tells them patience is key.
“The Landlord and Tenant Board has the potential to be a really great avenue and resource for people,” said DePalma, adding since it adopted an online streaming model, more opposing parties have been showing up to the hearings.
“I think it just needs some … perspective or input from those who use it every day.”
