Crossposted to r/vancouver
Hi everyone!
I am currently living in Vancouver, BC and have found myself in quite the predicament with my landlord.
Currently, I am living in a house and am sharing the space with three other roommates (I’ll call them Bubbles, Buttercup, and Blossom.) We all pay rent and pay utilities and happily live together.
When I first signed on to the house in August 2017, it was stated that there were three separate units within the house and our landlord lived off the premises.
One unit is the shared space that I currently live in with those roommates, the other being a small unit that we share the front door with (initially, with a separate lock) and another unit on the ground floor where they enter through an entirely separate entrance.
In Spring 2018, my landlord informed us that they were removing the lock that separated the shared space that I live in and the small unit that shares the front door with us. This is because my landlord decided to move in to this unit after the former tenant moved, declaring that now the landlord is our roommate (!!!!) and will be sharing the common areas with us (such as the bathroom, kitchen, living room, etc.) This is because the small unit downstairs only had a mini fridge, a stove top, and no bathroom so they need access to these amenities upstairs in our unit (which makes me wonder how the former tenant in that unit survived, but that's besides the point.)
During this time of the lock removal, they didn’t give any prior notice about when they would be coming in to remove the lock between the two units. This trend of not notifying us when they enter the premises has continued even up until this point, as I guess they believe they are now a “tenant” and no longer need to let us know about their presence as they are no longer just a landlord.
At first this didn’t bother me, as not only did I never see them around after they supposedly moved in but also I now had to pay less in utilities as now the cost was being divided by 5 people (my three roommates, myself, and now my landlord.) The only thing that grinded my gears was that I was still paying the same amount in rent despite the addition of now an extra unit and having to share the space, but I brushed this off.
Until now that is.
Our oven broke a couple months ago. Blossom notified the landlord ASAP, but they haven’t done anything until Buttercup messaged them again about it this weekend. They said they could not replace the oven, but that they would give us a toaster oven instead…… which we have already.
So we have decided that enough is enough. I emailed them regarding one of the broken appliances and they accused me of being threatening and disrupting the peace within our household.
I wasn’t trying to be threatening. In fact, I tried to be straight to the point to avoid confusion. I think they found my referencing to the laws that are stated in the BC Rights of the Tenant as threatening, as well as informing them that I would seek the assistance of an arbitrator if nothing was done about the broken appliances.
They then went on to mention that they have been nothing but open and communicative with us…. (when they really haven’t, which I’ll get to in a bit.)
This obviously got me quite upset. It is ridiculous that just by pointing out my rights I am accused of being threatening. Myself and my other roommates have done what we can to accommodate our landlord and their not-exactly-legal status in our household.
Going back to what they said about being open and communicative with us, they have on numerous occasions failed to notify us about certain “going ons” in the household, such as:
- When they enter the premises
- Who is living in the units below us
- Heck, what is even going ON in the units below us….. One time I was out in the backyard and to my surprise, there was a woman who very obviously looked like a traveller standing there with a backpack stating that she was to stay in the downstairs unit separate from ours (which we thought was empty after the former tenants moved.)
- And the big one: I found out through Buttercup (who just moved in at the beginning of the month) that she is only staying there until the summer as the landlord will apparently be moving in afterwards!! The landlord confirmed this information when Blossom inquired about it.
Obviously, as all of us are working professionals in our 20s, we do not want to really share our space with our much older landlord as none of us have agreed to this.
I am so lost in how to navigate all this. Am I wrong in thinking that if my landlord moves in, that they should be paying rent and therefore reducing our rent? Especially as initially when I moved in, I was told I’d be sharing the space with three other people, not four.
I feel awful as all my other roommates are new to the country and don’t understand the laws of the tenant. But who do I contact? Do I get a lawyer involved? Will I get kicked out if I pursue action? Personally I don’t mind if the latter occurs as I have places to stay. But I worry about my roommates who are all young and don’t have family or friends to lean on if the landlord decides to take action against them.
I would very much appreciate if anybody has any tips or ideas on how to move forward with this whole situation. Ideally, I would like to see this happen:
- Our appliances are fixed
- Our landlord does NOT move in to the upstairs unit
- Our landlord gives us notice about when they are in the house
Is that too unreasonable to ask for?
TL;DR: Landlord who didn’t initially live in the house is now living wherever they please in our house and using our shared space and isn’t telling us in advance. They won’t fix major broken appliances (instead offering shabby replacements like a toaster oven to replace the oven I signed off on) and they are now accusing me of being threatening by asking them to replace our broken appliances or else I would contact an arbitrator.
Thank you so much for reading all this, I appreciate any and all the help I can get! :) Please let me know if you need any more information. I tried to be as thorough as I can but obviously this is all very new to me.
Cheers,
Yet another Vancouver renter with landlord problems
Written By: DisgruntledYVRTenant
Source: http://bit.ly/2KBKaMF
No comments:
Post a Comment