Mental Health

Hannah

Reprinted from the Housing as a Human Right issue of Visions Journal, 2022, 17 (2), pp. 22-24

I have been renting my Vancouver apartment for the past 16 years. As of this fall, I have paid my landlord over $220,000 in rent. Mine is a one-bedroom apartment with a total of 550 square feet. Our building is so large and wide it occupies half a block. On each floor there is a long hallway with doors to 10 different apartments. More than 200 families live here.

When we moved in there was no proper ventilation anywhere in the building. When the weather got hot during heat waves, our apartments turned into giant ovens stacked on top of one another. It became really hard to breathe and impossible to sleep. In the bathroom, towels got mouldy from the heat and humidity caused by lack of air flow.

Despite the maintenance and repair issues, we felt grateful to have a roof over our heads and were doing our best to keep peace and maintain a good relationship with our landlord. We never complained.

We lived this way for 11 years, hoping for change. But eventually, mould was growing in the carpet in our bedroom and in the living room. The damage extended to the kitchen floor and bathroom. Humidity was eating up everything from the inside. My husband read our lease agreement, BC’s Tenancy Act and the rules and procedures of the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB). We learned we had the right to request that the landlord make the necessary repairs so we could live in sanitary conditions.

In 2017 we filed a complaint with the RTB about the moisture. We were afraid this would create animosity with our landlord, but I was developing strange allergies. I sneezed whenever I was in my bedroom and had rashes. My husband worried that my health would keep deteriorating if we did not take action.

Separately, my husband sent a letter to the landlord quoting the relevant section of the Tenancy Act. The landlord agreed to remove the carpet and replace the bathroom and kitchen floors. We had to move all our furniture out of the apartment, or else the landlord would not do the work. Although we requested that he fix one room at a time, the landlord refused, and we were forced to move all our belongings and furniture to a storage room for five days. We had to ask a co-worker if we could sleep at their place for four nights.

The renovations took longer than expected. The day we returned home, we walked through the door and the landlord’s agent served us with a one-month eviction notice. We both sat on the floor of our empty apartment, physically tired from the move, mentally exhausted by our feeling of bad faith on the part of our landlord.

The landlord stated that we had requested frivolous renovations for our suite and that this was interfering with their business—claims later proven false. My husband and I were so tired from the temporary move, we considered just trying to find a new home rather than moving back in only to be evicted a month later. Instead, we decided to fight for our rights and dispute that eviction notice.

A hearing date was set for more than three months later. Three and a half months of stress, anxiety and insomnia. The same question in my head before bed each night: what if the arbitrator believed our landlord? If we lost, under the BC tenancy act, we would have to leave our apartment within two days. Similar apartments in our neighbourhood were renting for around $2,500 a month. We could no longer afford to stay in Vancouver and would probably have to move to Langley or Abbotsford to afford a similar place. This would mean a two-hour commute every day to and from my office. These were the longest three months of my life.

At the hearing the RTB found no evidence of misconduct. The eviction was cancelled. The next day, we wrote a cheque for our rent and had the best sleep we’d had in months. The victory felt so good, but it was very short-lived.

The heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system still wasn’t working. An inspection by the City of Vancouver confirmed this, but the landlord sent a report from his contractor that contradicted this finding and claimed that it was working. The city then closed our file, siding with the landlord despite its own inspection.

My husband organized our neighbours and educated them on their rights under the Tenancy Act. All the tenants wrote letters to city hall and made a joint application to the RTB for emergency repairs and monetary compensation. After years of fighting while living in unsanitary conditions, we finally got a partial victory. The landlord was now ordered to deduct $100 from the rent for three months until the HVAC system was repaired. And—you guessed it—the landlord did not repair the HVAC system.

A few months later, I was pregnant with my first child. It was a light at the end of the tunnel for us, a little bit of happiness after years of stress, anxiety and insomnia. When I was three months’ pregnant my husband had an accident and broke his leg: a fracture with displacement, both painful and difficult to heal. Our landlord sent us another eviction notice; we think they were upset at my husband for organizing and educating the tenants of their rights. The notice arrived just 10 days after my husband broke his leg.

We were forced once again to dispute the eviction notice. Again, we had to wait. This time, the hearing took place two months after the notice was served. More months of insomnia and anxiety. With my husband’s mobility still very limited, we had no means of moving out now. Like last time, during the hearing the landlord provided no evidence of misconduct and we won our case.

The landlord was never punished for any of these eviction attempts based on no evidence. We got to stay in our apartment, but the threat of eviction still hung over us. As of October 2021, the HVAC system still does not work properly in the building.

Just a few months after I gave birth, our landlord sent us a third eviction notice. We faced homelessness with a newborn during the COVID-19 pandemic. That eviction notice was cancelled, but our mental health has been deteriorating greatly, and we continue to live in constant fear of the next eviction notice.

Because we have been living here so long, our rent is grandfathered. Should we be evicted, a new tenant would pay almost double the rent we currently pay—perhaps the primary motivation of our landlord, the Sly Billionaire.