May 4, 2023

Hearing Date: May 18, 2023 Hearing Time: 09:00 AM EST

Hearing Location: Virtual
https://bit.ly/ZLTBVideo131
Toll free: 855-703-8985 or Local: 647-374-4685 Passcode: 984-7343-3457#

What follows is a copy of the email I’ll be sending daily;

To Whom it May Concern;

This is my third attempt to contact the LTB about the final order for LTB-T-080275-22. To date I have received one automated reply that 

had no information, and one reply that may not have been automated or it may have been a human who hadn’t read my email. Copies of those replies are below my message.

The subject applications were filed in December 2016, March 2017, February 2018 and November 2018. They have yet to be heard. In the meantime, our ex-landlord has had seven eviction applications heard. None were successful, as all were based on provable falsehoods. After our ex-landlord obtained a pay-and-stay order in November of 2019, we voluntarily terminated our tenancy due to the continued homophobic harassment and threats made by our ex-landlord and his agents. That harassment was recorded on video, and continued for years.

After eight days of hearings the T6 application was heard (the last hearing day was March 8, 2023). The final order for that hearing has not been written and Member Neumann’s appointment to the LTB ended as of midnight April 28, 2023. It appears no final order was written for that application, which means that the eight days of hearing time was wasted. 

To date there has been more than 40 hearings scheduled for these matters, and it has become apparent to me that the LTB is incapable, or unwilling, to hear a tenant application that requires anything more than a brief hearing. It is clear that there is no barrier to a landlord filing one vexatious application after another, engaging in homophobic harassment, making numerous false criminal complaints to police, or threatening and assaulting tenants. At this point the delay has irreparably prejudiced our interests, and our ex-landlord continues to harass and attack his current tenants. There appear to be no consequences whatsoever for a landlord using these tactics. Our ex-landlord was recorded on video stating he is above the law. At this point it appears he is correct.

I’ve had some experience with a failed state, specifically Sarajevo. The stench of injustice that permeated that place was one I never wanted to experience again, but it’s happening here in my hometown of Hamilton. It’s long past time you people get your act together. I am not the only tenant rendered homeless as a result of your inability to fulfil your mandate. Details are here.

Please advise on the status of the final order for LTB-T-080275-22. 

Capt Peter Bosch (formerly)

RCA/RCHA

289-698-6779

AUTOMATED REPLY:

Automatic reply: LTB-T-071201-22 99 East Ave S, Hamilton Hearing Date 18 May 2023

from:LTB (MMAH) <LTB@ontario.ca>
to:Peter Bosch <pbosch468@gmail.com>
date:May 2, 2023, 11:37 AM
subject:Automatic reply: LTB-T-071201-22 99 East Ave S, Hamilton Hearing Date 18 May 2023
mailed-by:can01-yqb-obe.outbound.protection.outlook.com
signed-by:ontario.ca

PLEASE NOTE: 

Thank you for contacting the Landlord and Tenant Board.  Please note that it is currently taking us longer than usual to process applications and schedule hearings. Current processing times are approximately 7-8 months.      

If you have a file number or have been issued a one-time PIN number, you can check the status of your file on our website. If your file number begins with LTB (e.g. LTB-L-000420-21) then you must log on to the Tribunals Ontario Portal. If your file does not begin with LTB (e.g. TSL-00123-09), you can check the status of your file at LTB: Check File Status | Tribunals Ontario. 

If you submitted your application more than 7-8 months ago and have not yet been provided with a file number, you can reach out to the LTB Contact Centre or send an inquiry by email to your regional office ensuring to provide your name and the rental unit address. 

LTB Contact Center: 

Toll free: 1-888-332-3234
Toronto area: 416-645-8080
TTY:   Call the Bell Relay Service at 1-800-855-0511 

Please note that our call centre agents only have access to the same information available to you on Tribunals Ontario Portal or Check File Status on our website.   Thank you for your patience. 

*********************************************************************************************** 

This is an automated response.  

Once your application has been processed you will be notified and provided with a file number. If corrections are required, you will be contacted.  

Important: Due to security standards, applications and requests containing credit card information will be permanently deleted and you will be required to resubmit your documentation without credit card information.  

For information on the Board processes, procedures, and operational updates please see our website:  Landlord and Tenant Board | Tribunals Ontario. Your application will not be processed if any of the following are not attached to your email: Your application. The name of your attachment must include the address of the rental unit A copy of the notice of termination if applicable to the type of application The Certificate of Service showing how and when you gave the tenant the notice of termination Receipt for online payment. 

POSSIBLE HUMAN RESPONSE

Good morning,

Thank you for your email regarding the status of your hearing order.

An order has not yet been issued on your application. While the LTB is committed to its’ service standards, we recognize that every case is different, and some decisions take longer to issue than others.

I regret any inconvenience the delay in the Adjudicator’s issuance of this order has had on you. We have reached out to the adjudicator informing them that you have inquired on the issuance of this Order and asked that it be prioritized. I wish to assure you that the Board is taking steps to assist Adjudicators in issuing orders as soon as possible.

Orders for L1: Application to evict a tenant for non-payment of rent and to collect rent the tenant owes and L9: Application to Collect Rent the Tenant Owes, are usually issued within 30 days of the hearing. Orders for all other applications are usually issued within 60 days of the hearing.

If you have not received a decision after 60 days from the hearing date, you may wish to make a complaint under Tribunals Ontario complaints process.

Thank you,

Caroline (she/her)

Customer Service Clerk

Landlord and Tenant Board – Eastern Region

tribunalsontario.ca

April 29, 2023

After eight full hearing days (the last of which was March 8, 2023) our T-6 maintenance application was heard by a part time member of the Landlord Tenant Board, Amber Neumann. As of this writing, at 4:04 am April 29, 2023, no final order has been posted to TOP (Tribunals Ontario Portal). Ms. Neumann’s appointment to the LTB ended at midnight on April 28, 2023. She no longer has the legal authority to write that order. Unless this is (yet another) problem with TOP, and the order was written and not yet published, that means those eight hearing days were wasted time and the maintenance application will have to be heard again.

The LTB has become completely dysfunctional. It takes multiple attempts over days (sometimes weeks) to reach their call centre. Emails go unanswered, as do requests for hearing recordings (they will, however, accept payments for those recordings with no problem).

TOP is a barely functional online portal that seems designed for applications with small numbers of submissions. It isn’t possible to upload larger video files, and files must be uploaded individually (somewhat onerous if there is a large volume of evidence). IT support is non-existent (I’m still waiting for the promised contact from their IT people…promised in January of 2023. I haven’t been able to contact them since).

I’ll be updating this blog over the next few weeks. There is another hearing day scheduled for May 18, 2023 for our three T2 applications (the first was in August 2022). It’s turning into a real shitshow, and I invite you to tune in. I’ll post details of the online hearing shortly.

September 13, 2020

I started this blog both to document the difficulties a tenant faces trying to enforce the law. It had become very clear to me over the previous decade that there were some fundamental inequities in the landlord tenant relationship (to put it mildly) in downtown Hamilton.

So I documented it online.

Along the way I’ve some to a few conclusions about the effectiveness of the Landlord and Tenant Board (both as an adjudicative body and as an effective means for a tenant to enforce rights under the law) the effectiveness of Municipal Law Enforcement at curbing landlord misbehavior, the contributions made to the current housing crisis in Hamilton by the ineffectiveness of the LTB and MLE, and the ongoing gong-show (shitshow? bullying douchebaggery? neo-facist sellouts? It’s hard to find the right label…) that passes for city government in Hamilton.

My conclusions about Municipal Law Enforcement are as follows:

  1. They are completely unsympathetic to any tenant complaint. They are unable to action most of them, as they are hampered by ineffective and vague Property Standards bylaws.
  2. They are unwilling to enforce compliance orders, and will routinely grant extensions to a landlord for almost any reason. Even if they have personally witnessed the landlord bullying and intimidating tenants, they will still not enforce compliance orders by using the tools available (ie: fines, using city contractors to do the work, enforcing a reasonable standard of workmanship on the repairs).
  3. They have little knowledge of, or respect for, a tenants rights under the RTA. Some of them have no respect for tenants, period.

My conclusions about Hamilton City Council are as follows:

  1. They serve the taxpayers interest, not the citizens. They do that by serving their own interests first, in some cases.
  2. Many of them are bullying douchebags, using populist (and sometimes downright facist) memes to undermine what’s left of out social safety net. A few aren’t.
  3. They neither listen to, nor respect, any opinion that differs from their own. Their opinions are frequently informed by the interests of large landlords and other business in the city. They frequently conflate “Good for the City” with “Good for Business”.

My conclusions about the Landlord Tenant Board are as follows:

  1. It is biased against self-represented litigants, and that bias usually manifests as a bias against tenants (who are far more likely to be self represented). They appear to be most interested in maintaining a landlord’s income; a dispute over unpaid rent is the only kind of application that receives any urgency. (And this has become blatantly obvious since the pandemic).
  2. The statement on the Tribunals Ontario website “People who appear before our tribunals have a right to fair and accessible dispute resolution, and that is our primary commitment to you” is an Orwellian lie. If that is indeed their primary commitment, they have failed utterly for tenants and landlords both.
  3. Natural justice (as defined as a fair and impartial hearing before and unbiased adjudicator) is unknown there. This is not entirely the Members’ fault. They have far too few resources to do more than rubber stamp evictions for unpaid rent, and try and keep the system from collapsing entirely. If your matter is complicated, it won’t be heard.
  4. The system is ridiculously easy to abuse, for landlords and tenants both. Based on my own observation of any number of LTB hearings over the last three years, it is clear to me that the most egregious abuses of the system are by landlords. This has been made possible in part because of a popular belief that tenants routinely abuse the system and another popular belief that the LTB is biased in favor of tenants. It was complicated in our case by the popular belief that recipients of social assistance, or disability pensions, are “welfare bums” or “scammers”. That attitude pervades the LTB, MLE and Hamilton Police services.

I’ve also reached a few conclusions about the Hamilton Police Services and their practices and policies enforcing the law. I’ll state the most important one here: Hamilton Police Services keep the peace first, and enforce the law second. They are perfectly willing to ignore the law to keep the peace, if they sympathize with one of the parties.

My conclusions about Hamilton Police Services are as follows:

  1. They are uninterested in enforcing a tenant’s rights, or taking criminal action against a landlord on a tenant’s behalf even if it is justified. Their knowledge of a tenant’s rights is non-existent, and their opinions on the matter appear to have been imparted to HPS by a feudal landlord.
  2. Some of them have difficulty accurately recording statements or events (I know, I’ve recorded my interactions with police. The recordings frequently do not match what was reported).
  3. They do not look at video evidence.
  4. Most of them have a strong objection to being recorded, and some are willing to use their authority to intimidate someone recording them.
  5. They have no understanding of, or sympathy for, a victim of harassment. They conflate “fear for my safety” and “fear for my physical safety”. The also routinely conflate fear and cowardice.
  6. They do not enforce recognizances or probation orders, and don’t care if the person harassing you already has a peace bond. They won’t help.
  7. They routinely engage in bullying, and their understanding and respect for the “LGBTQ community” is about what it was in the 1980’s. One of them told me “You’re lucky we let fags live downtown any more”. They ignored complaints (to the extent of not even recording the complaint in their report) about homophobic insults. Another inferred (without actually stating it) that I must be a “pervert” since I was bisexual. Nothing much has changed.
  8. They have no interest in hearing complaints about their behaviour, or any interest in correcting even blatant errors.
  9. Hate crimes aren’t hate crimes unless HPS says they are. They find reasons not to. They’re just some guy “expressing his opinion”, not a hate crime. Even if that guy is doing it on his victim’s front doorstep day after day, and bringing others to join in.
  10. They dislike anyone who stands up to a bully (reasonable, since their entire culture is based on bullying). They frequently sympathize with those displaying bullying behavior, sometimes on the flimsiest pretexts.

So I’ll post the whole mess, and if you come to different conclusions I’d like to hear from you. Be prepared to defend your conclusions. I am.

Some notes on conventions used in this blog:

The narrative tells the story in normal text, with links to documents, audio recordings and videos that support the facts stated in the narrative. Documents are indicated by (Doc xx), where xx is the document number. Clicking on the (Doc xx) will download a pdf of the document in question (although in this example, it just opens Google search). Likewise, audio recordings and videos are indicated by (AR-xx) and (Vid xx) respectively. Videos are hosted on youtube, and the (Vid XX) links will open a new tab in your browser and play the video. Most of the videos have subtitles and/or transcripts of the conversations posted. Audio recordings can be downloaded in their entirety by clicking on the (AR xx) links, and played in almost any media player (I recommend VLC Media Player. It’s freeware, open source and plays anything with minimal system resources). Some audio recordings have associated transcripts which can be downloaded (they’re documents, and labelled as documents with the Doc xx format). Screenshots from videos may not match the exact frame specified in the narrative if you are using the videos posted on youtube. Youtube processes the videos for efficient streaming.

Commentary will be in bold text, and includes background and context necessary to understand the events in question. Not all bold text is commentary, so if there is any question, commentary will begin with “{” and end with “}“.

Text that has been cut and pasted from documents, and transcripts, will be italicized. Rants, political opinions, miscellaneous background, personal observations and a healthy dose of snark will be added later, in this colour.

Here’s what happened:

Join the Conversation

  1. Unknown's avatar

1 Comment

  1. Pingback: Friday, September 4, 2020 – “What a piece of work is man”…Some of Us More Than Others – Hamilton Slumlords

Leave a comment