Renovictims No More

Article in the Monday Magazine that appeared today, March 26/09.I'm making a short documentary about this topic.

Posted By: Jason Youmans
03/25/2009 8:00 AM

Evicted in the name of cosmetic renos, some Victoria tenants are fighting back

If you’ve searched for an apartment in Victoria at any time in the last year, chances are you’ve talked to Martin Syrovatka. Perusing the online classifieds at any given time, his name and telephone number pop up frequently as the contact for at least a half-dozen rental units across Greater Victoria. But in a city where the rental vacancy rate flickers perilously around half a percent, how is it that Syrovatka has so many gleaming apartments at his fingertips waiting for the right tenant to move in? The answer is simple: Syrovatka is the agent for local physician and property owner Dr. Edward Domovitch, who, on the instruction of his boss, will have delivered “end tenancy” notices to residents in what could be as many as 100 Domovitch-owned units by year’s end. These evictions, premised on the landlord’s need to undertake extensive renovations of the suites, mark the arrival in the Garden City of what until now had been a mainly Vancouver-centric phenomenon—the “renoviction.”

These evictions have caused everything from inconvenience to anguish among those who have received the notices and further exacerbate the city’s affordable-housing woes with significant rent hikes for incoming tenants and murky prospects for those forced out.

“[Domovitch] probably has no idea what he’s doing to people in this rental market,” says Myk Rhodes, a Domovitch tenant who has been ringing the alarm bell over the recent rise in renovictions.

Landlords, under the current incarnation of the province’s Residential Tenancy Act, can end tenancy if they can prove, as per RTA Section 49(6) that, “The landlord has all the necessary permits and approvals required by law to demolish the rental unit or repair the rental unit in a manner that requires the rental unit to be vacant.”

But tenant advocates—and the renovicted—say landlords are using this provision simply to skirt rent-control laws that forbid raising rent by any more than the rate of inflation plus two percent—which currently allows a four-percent bump. In doing so, landlords are free to set their rental rates at any amount they choose between tenancies, so there can be a significant financial incentive to empty out as many units as possible and restock them with new tenants at a new rate. In the case of the Domovitch properties, rent on the renovated units has shot up in the neighbourhood of 20 to 40 percent or more.

But as the number of renovicted residents mounts, so too do the numbers of those willing to challenge the grounds on which they receive their notice and demand the landlord prove that the renovations are not only necessary, but that they require the apartment be empty for an extended period. What’s more, some tenants have started to win.

Real people got real problems

Filmmaker Michele Anderson has lived in a 61-unit Domovitch-owned building at 1204 Yates Street since 2005 and she, along with at least three other building residents, received a two-month eviction notice on January 29. Anderson was offered the opportunity to move back into her third-floor suite at a monthly rent of $800, $165 more than she currently pays for the sunny bachelor apartment. She says that while the carpet has seen better days, the unit is in otherwise good condition.

Anderson echoes what many people faced with the threat of imminent eviction in a city with little rental stock say. “You get one of these notices and suddenly you have 60 days to change your entire life,” she says. “And there’s no guarantee that the eviction notice will be overturned.”

Fortunately for Anderson, her eviction was overturned at a March 18 Residential Tenancy Branch dispute resolution hearing, because neither Domovitch nor his agent showed up to defend their order to end tenancy—possibly because a number of recent decisions have not gone their way.

But Anderson says despite her RTB victory and the fact she’s able to stay in her unit—until the next inevitable eviction notice, at least—the whole process has left her with a bitter taste.

“It’s just so incredible that the burden is on the tenants,” she says, in reference to the fact that the landlord must only provide a truthful account of their plans if called before the RTB at the expense of the renter. “There’s time, money and energy that must be put into fighting, and 90 percent of people who receive these notices are just going to take them and walk away.”

And that, says Russ Godfrey, an advisor with the Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre Society and former RTB employee himself, is the reason renovictions persist. Godfrey says that while most of the province’s landlords abide by the rules, some choose to exploit a slow-moving dispute-resolution system and general absence of rights education among renters—often young, elderly or on income assistance—in pursuit of financial gain beyond what the law currently allows.

“Landlords do this even if they don’t have permits, because they know that there’s a certain percentage of tenants who won’t dispute it” Godfrey says. “Sometimes it can take six weeks to two months to schedule a hearing, so, if you lose, you may have just days to pack up your family and find a place to live. Landlords will roll the dice. They’ll say, ‘I know that if there are 15 people in my unit here, I’m going to give them all two-month notices. I know I don’t have permits, but at least half of them aren’t going to dispute it.’”

It's a bet some landlords are all too happy to wager. A rent increase of $200 on a single unit yields an extra $2,400 a year for that apartment. If their tenant opts to mount a challenge, the only downside for the landlord is the possibility of having to reimburse their renter for the $50 RTB filing fee if they lose.

Of course, a win at the Residential Tenancy Branch doesn’t guarantee an end to a given landlord’s efforts to oust a tenant.

A battle of attrition
Myk Rhodes, who has lived in a one-bedroom ground-floor apartment at 540 Rithet Street for the past six years, received his two-month eviction notice on December 29. He challenged it at the RTB and won because he handily proved that the notice to end tenancy was made under false pretense—namely, the landlord wished to install laminate wood flooring in Rhodes’ unit, an upgrade, as Rhodes’ photographic evidence proved, that was completed two years earlier after a flood in the unit and was finished, Rhodes adds, in a matter of days.

In Rhodes’ case, RTB dispute resolution officer E. Letain decided “[ . . . ] that while the Landlord may not need permits for the proposed work, there has been little or no plans made to actually perform this work. The landlord has not entered the unit to assess it, or for the purpose of making plans, or for taking measurements, or to assess what work really needs to be done. Otherwise he would know the unit already has laminate floors. This leads me to conclude that the Landlord is simply trying to end tenancy without a valid purpose and does not have a clear intention to do the renovations.”

Bomplaining about his patio area and his ’69 Volkswagon Beetle parked in the back lot that the landlord alleges is leaking oil onto the pavement (Rhodes placed two oil pans under it on the off chance some oil had actually escaped). Rhodes has another dispute resolution hearing scheduled for late May to defend himself against his latest eviction notice.

Myk Rhodes has become something of a thorn in the side of Edward Domovitch of late. In a bid to inform tenants of their rights, Rhodes has been spotted setting up a card table in front of Domovitch-owned buildings distributing information about how tenants can challenge their notices to end occupancy and the rights to which they’re entitled under the Residential Tenancy Act. His not-so-covert advocacy activities (he brings with him a sign that says “Domoviction”) have caught his landlord’s attention, as evident in a March 20, 2009 letter to Rhodes where Domovitch writes, “You have also been seen slandering me in front of another building, ie. 976 Humboldt,” and demands, in addition to cleaning up his patio, removing his car, and allowing pest-control employees into his apartment, that Rhodes “Stop slandering me.”

Rhodes says he’s always been a good tenant, paid his rent on time and complied with the demands of his property managers to avoid confrontations like the one in which he currently finds himself embroiled. But he says the ongoing battle to stay in his home—one packed tightly with books, music and assorted global curios—is taking a mental toll.

“He’s trying to wear me down and I am getting worn down,” says Rhodes. “Even if I win again I am going to have to move because they’ll just keep holding it over me and trying to pin whatever they can come up with on me.”

While Rhodes, Michele Anderson and others have fought and won at the RTB, most have chosen to accept their evictions and walk away. Among that group is local photographer and writer Nancy Raycroft, who has lived in a six-unit Domovitch-owned building on Quadra Street for the past eight years.

Today, her belongings are stored in boxes stacked in the dining nook of the apartment. Every inch of wall space used to be covered in her art, but bare patches are starting to show as she dismantles almost a decade’s worth of decoration. Raycroft received her two-month eviction notice on January 27 and was thrown into a panic about where she could find a new home that wouldn’t suck up all her modest disability pension and one that would welcome her dog, Slick.

“When I first got this notice I cried for two weeks straight,” she says. Although she says she’s caught 78 mice during her time there, it was home all the same.

Raycroft chose not to challenge it at the RTB, thinking she might be able to work out a deal with Domovitch that might see her move back in at the close to the same rate she was paying. That didn’t happen and the 15-day window to file a dispute notice passed.

When the new tenants move into her bachelor suite—which she says is being advertised as a one-bedroom—they will pay $800. Raycroft was paying $560.

“[Domovitch] is just not being held accountable for the pain that he’s causing to these residents,” says Raycroft.

A City of Victoria stop-work order posted to the building’s back door is a testament to the fact that permits were not sought prior to the start of the renovation effort.

Domovitch did not respond to Monday’s request for an interview.

Landlords, of course, are not typically in the business of charity. They are in the business of making a profit from the buildings that they own (a quick perusal of the BC assessment rolls shows Domovitch has holdings worth at least $16 million). And they are a crucial part of the housing continuum—without landlords and their willingness to take chances on tenants, there would no apartments to rent.

Rental Owners and Managers Society of British Columbia CEO Al Kemp says there are legitimate reasons that a particular landlord would undertake renovations to a unit. First he says, is the need to fix infrastructure that was simply outdated and in danger of causing damage to the unit. Second, is the need to make sure units meet contemporary standards.

“The typical renters today are not looking for a shag carpet and green appliances and purple bathtubs and so-forth that were the rage 40 or 50 years ago,” says Kemp. “So, if that’s what you’ve got, your best renters will look elsewhere.”

Kemp adds that it’s usually in a landlord’s best interest to keep long-term tenants because of the costs associated with a turnover, and the risk of getting a bad tenant the next time around.

But he says its unreasonable for renters to expect their landlord to invest $15,000 in a unit, only to allow them back in at the same rent they previously paid.

“I don’t know of any business in the world that would operate on that premise,” he says.

However, Kemp is adamant that installing new carpets or painting the walls falls far short of the “major” renovations that would justify a notice to end tenancy.

Tables turning on renovicters

Renovictions first garnered public attention starting in Vancouver several years ago when landlords there began executing floor-by-floor evictions with the premise of undertaking major renovations and subsequently upping the rent for those units by as much as 100 percent to match the then-sky-high market conditions.

Since then, several high-profile court cases have cast further light on the matter—and possibly changed the way the Residential Tenancy Branch makes decisions when a renoviction dispute comes before them.

In the most prominent case, “Sarah Berry and Jeremy Kloet v. K. Miller and Hollyburn Properties Limited,” Justice L.P. Williamson overturned a residential tenancy branch decision after finding that the Hollyburn tenants would willingly have vacated their units for the duration of time necessary to conduct the renovations. “Such a finding flies in the face of the purpose of the statute, which is to balance the rights of tenants and landlords,” wrote Williamson. “It is irrational to think that a landlord could terminate a tenancy because a brief period of emptiness was required.”

An attempt by B.C. NDP housing critic Diane Thorne in April 2008 to bring B.C. into line with Ontario’s “right-of-first-refusal” for tenants forced out by renovation died before it could be debated.

In early February a group of current and soon-to-be former Domovitch tenants brought their concerns to Victoria City Hall in a bid to convince the local government to examine what role it could play in preventing the unnecessary evictions of its citizens.

Myk Rhodes led the delegation and asked City Hall to use its municipal powers to draft an emergency bylaw that would forbid cosmetic renovations in rental apartments when the Canadian Mortgage and Housing rental vacancy rate for Victoria fell below 4 percent and to delegate a city approving officer to visit unit’s scheduled for renovations to determine whether they are in fact “major” and “required,” and to submit evidence to the residential tenancy branch as to their conclusions.

Mayor Dean Fortin told Monday at the time that they would take Rhodes’ recommendations into consideration, but did not seem confident they would be implemented. Pam Madoff did put forward a motion urging the provincial government to examine the residential tenancy act to determine whether the Section 49 “loophole” could be closed.

The Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre Society’s Russ Godfrey says there’s a simple long-term fix to the renoviction problem.

It goes back to a lack of affordable housing supply being built, because if there was more competition in the market, this wouldn’t, this couldn’t be happening—period.” M