A Thorold family has been left in limbo by delays at the Ontario Landlord Tenant Board (LTB).
With permission from their landlord, Connie and Doug Joy sublet the basement in their half of a rented duplex to another tenant – a family of three – to boost their income. Connie is a full-time caregiver to their eldest daughter, who has special needs that resulted from a stroke she experienced a birth, and Doug – who has suffered emotional distress stemming from a cancer diagnosis and treatment – is an Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) recipient.
The sublease was for one year only with no provision for month-to-month rental afterwards, but when the lease was up in December 31, 2023, the tenant refused to leave – in spite of the Joys giving verbal and written notice in October 2023.
Dealing with a tenant who doesn’t want to leave is bad enough, but the Joys say the LTB delays are making an already tough situation even worse.
“We were told (at a hearing in June) that it wouldn't be longer than a month before we got the second hearing,” Connie said. “But the second hearing is now Dec. 2.”
Janet Deline, media spokesperson for the OLTB, said work to shorten the delays has been ongoing, adding “real progress” has been made with the help of additional government funding.
“To support backlog reduction, 54 full-time and 35 part-time adjudicators have been appointed to the (board) since May 2023.”
Those additions mean that as of Sept. 5, the board employs 80 full-time and 57 part-time adjudicators, she said, adding the number of dispute resolution officers, who help landlords and tenants resolve their application by mutual agreement, rather than by going to a hearing, has “significantly increased.”
Board statistics provided by Deline showed that the time between an L1 and L9 application being filed and hearings being scheduled has been shortened to five months, down from earlier this year when waits were as high as 10 months. On average, other new and adjourned matters are currently being scheduled within seven to eight months from when they were received or adjourned.
On average, orders are being provided within 60 days or less of a hearing. Mail delays, meanwhile, can be overcome by emailing the board at [email protected] and asking that any Notice of Hearing and/or order be sent by email.
But Ashley Somerville, a community legal worker and paralegal for the Landlord Self-Help Centre in Toronto, said that while hearings are happening quicker, it isn’t necessarily preventing delays. The centre is a specialty clinic funded by Legal Aid Ontario and is not affiliated with the LTB or the provincial government.
“A lot of times the hearing will get adjourned due to hearing overflow, which means that there's too many cases on the docket, and the adjudicator can't get to all of them,” she said.
Somerville said the situation is frustrating for a lot of small landlords like the Joys.
“We definitely hear a lot more people who are on the verge of losing their home because they are small landlords and they don't have big income properties,” Somerville said. “They're renting their basement, or they have one unit.”
There are things small landlords – or any landlord for that matter – can do to help themselves get through the process, she said.
“The most important thing is to make sure that all your paperwork is done correctly,” Somerville said. “If there are errors on your notice, and you wait three to four months for your hearing …. if your notice is incorrect, the adjudicator will likely have to dismiss it.”
There is a way that a landlord can try to get hearing times shortened, Somerville said.
“There is a form that they can fill out that’s called a request to extend or shorten time,” she said. “But in order to get a shortened hearing, you would need to show that there's prejudice by having to wait and that it's significant.”
Financial issues may be a reason a shortened hearing is sought but the onus is on the landlord to prove that that is the case.
“You would really need to prove that you're at a breaking point,” she said.
Connie, meanwhile, said it would be simple for her family to up and leave and wash their hands of the situation.
"But I don't want to do that,” she said. "I like where I live. I want my house.”
