EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a new Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
"The police don't step in, bylaw officers don't step in, and with this data, we see the Landlord and Tenant Board is not punishing bad landlords," NDP housing critic Jessica Bell said. Landlords face fines when tenants file a complaint and win an adjudicative process with the LTB, a legally binding tribunal outside the court system.
Thirty-six of the 51 fines resulted from T2 complaints, meaning a landlord entered a tenant's unit illegally, changed the locks on them, "harassed, interfered with, obstructed, coerced or threatened" them, or "seriously interfered with [a tenant's] reasonable enjoyment of the rental unit or the complex."
His organization has found a "significant increase" in the number of these "own-use" evictions over the past few years, he said. A recent ombudsman report found tenant applications could take up to two years to be scheduled. Landlords wait six to nine months.The government has doubled the number of adjudicators, which Attorney General Doug Downey has said will speed things up soon."If I go and rip off $300 from a Tim Hortons, we don't go to the Tim Hortons company and say ...