Getting Started: The LTB

© 2016 Ontario Landlords Association

The Landlord and Tenant Board is one of the busiest tribunals in the province. This blog will look at some of the more recent decisions that the Board has made, and offer speculation on both the circumstances of the matters raised, and the reasoning apparent in the Board's determinations.

These posts will be learning exercises, as I know almost nothing about how the Residential Tenancies Act has been applied, and I am woefully ignorant of contemporary landlord and tenant issues.

The Board's decisions can be found on the Canadian Legal Information Institute’s website.

MH evicts HH

This is the Board's most recent published decision. In August of this year, a landlord obtained an eviction order for her tenant. The landlord, ‘MH,’ claimed that she had heard the tenant, ‘HH,’ utter a death threat. The tenant, ‘HH,’ requested a review of the eviction order. HH rejected the landlord’s claim. According to HH, no one had been threatened.

Few details were provided in the Review Order. Perhaps HH is MH’s son, perhaps HH had threatened his mother’s partner. Uttering a threat is a criminal offence, but there is no reference to criminal charges brought against HH. Nevertheless, the Board accepted the landlord’s “finding of fact.” The Board considered MH a sufficiently reliable witness, and the request to review the eviction order was denied. (Landlord and Tenant Board, 2016).

It appears, then, that if a landlord witnesses behaviour that threatens the safety of another person in the residence, obtaining an eviction order is relatively straightforward. This is likely for the best, though I wonder whether a police investigation would allow for a more complete assessment of the evidence. From HH’s perspective, however, an eviction is almost certainly preferable to a conviction under the Criminal Code and an eviction. Perhaps the Board recognized this, and did not insist upon additional investigation.

It is possible that HH struggles with mental illness. In any case, I hope that HH succeeded in finding housing following the eviction. My next post will look at a more complex order which involved a not-for-profit social housing and a tenant with a documented mental illness.

References

Landlord and Tenant Board. September 7, 2016. TSL-74420-16-RV (Re), 2016 CanLII 61385 (ON LTB), retrieved September 30, 2016 from http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onltb/doc/2016/2016canlii61385/2016canlii61385.html

N.B. For ease of reading, I've sort of mixed the APA and ACWS citation styles.