Two disturbing cases involving brutally destructive tenants have now been resolved, but at great cost to the landlords in question.
The first involved a Burnaby Heights landlord who said the basement suite he rented out was taken over by “Satan’s tenant” – a person hellbent on wreaking havoc before finally agreeing to leave.
“The weird part was that he had a great reference, but then I called that number back after the problems started and the number was out of service,” said Ralph K, a Burnaby senior. “So I think I got duped because there is no way that guy was ever a good tenant.”
“Satan’s tenant” lived downstairs while Ralph lived upstairs. There was noise late in the evening and early in the morning in violation of the lease agreement. But Ralph thought a simple note to the tenant would improve things.
“Instead, things only got worse from there,” he said.
The tenant started breaking things and leaving trash out on the lawn. The problem is that Ralph couldn’t enter the suite anytime he wanted. He only suspected the breakage and couldn’t prove where the trash was coming from.
Then there were the fights. The tenant would get into loud arguments with a presumed girlfriend as well as other buddies who would come over for nights of heavy drinking.
This went on for months until Ralph threatened to evict the tenant if he didn’t clean up his act.
“Things got even worse after that,” he said. “I started looking into how to evict this devil but it’s not an easy process.”
Then, Ralph went on vacation, taking his RV for a trip to clear his mind. When he arrived home, he discovered the upstairs of his home covered in graffiti all over the walls of most rooms. Ralph said the tenant broke through the connecting door between upstairs and downstairs and then went to town on his place.
“When I went into his unit, he was gone,” Ralph said. “He packed everything up and disappeared. His phone wouldn’t connect. The one friend I knew about wasn’t talking. The basement suite was fine but my place was trashed. I haven’t had a tenant since then. I don’t know if I ever will.”
This follows a Burnaby landlord with three young children who pleaded with B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Branch to let him break the lease to immediately get rid of a tenant whose drinking was out of control and who was receiving regular deliveries from shady drug dealers.
That’s what was listed in a recent RTB dispute resolution file in a heartbreaking case in which the landlord, who had three kids under the age of 10, literally offered to pay the tenant to leave quickly. He even offered to help her move out if she would just find a place to live quickly.
“Right from the beginning there’s been problems,” the landlord said at the hearing. “I noticed a syringe by the shared garbage area. The tenant has a daily, I assume, drug dealer who comes every morning and drops something off and stays for a few minutes only.”
There are also constant deliveries of alcohol.
“So, from the time anyone encounters her, whether myself or my young children, she is so intoxicated that she becomes unruly and confrontational – causing considerable stress in my household.”
The RTB adjudicator asked the landlord if it would be reasonable to wait for a longer period of notice.
“I feel we’ve suffered enough,” the landlord said. “This person is very hard to deal with.”
The RTB ruled that the landlord could break the lease early and force out the tenant two days after giving her an order of possession.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.