Category Archives: Day to Day

Chapter 014 & 015 – Saturday June 3, 2017 to Wednesday June 28, 2017

That brings the total to 20 days of entry on 9 separate Notices of Entry, and the repairs aren’t even close to finished.
There have been 5 hearings at the LTB, and three visits from HPS.

Chapter 006 – Wednesday March 8, 2017 to Saturday April 1, 2017

So far, this disagreement with our landlord had used up 3.1 hours of hearing time at the LTB, in 2 hearings, one by telephone, one in person (counting the Case Management Hearing as a hearing). It has also resulted in one response by HPS to a complaint (by the tenants). I’ll keep a running tally.

Chapter 005 – Tuesday March 7, 2017

Finally, we got our day in court (or so we thought at the time). This was a merits hearing for SOT-77864-17, the T2 Application About Tenant Rights that I’d filed in early January 2017 at the advice of a lawyer from the Hamilton Legal Clinic.

Chapter 004 – Friday February 24, 2017 to Monday March 6, 2017

By February 24, 2017, after 12 days of entry by the landlord and/or his agents (not counting two meetings), the repairs completed are:
repairing the toilet (1 hour)
Replacing two interior doors (6 hours)
Installing locking mechanisms on nine windows (4.5 hours)
Weather stripping around the front door (2 hours)
Repairing the front door lock and self closure (2 hours)
Replacing an electric stove (1 hour)
Installing lifts on six windows (1.5 hours)
Foyer light repaired (2 hours, and only because Agostino had to re-wire the light fixture through the building meter, rather than Richard’s meter)

Richard Pollington’s behavior becomes increasingly antagonistic and hostile.

Welcome to Renting in Hamilton, Ontario

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.
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.

Chapter 002 – Wednesday December 14, 2016 to Monday February 20, 2017

At the end of November 2016, after being ignored by our landlord for so long, my roomate and I decided the best approach was to file a T6 application with the Landlord and Tenant Board and to make a complaint to Property Standards in Hamilton. In the first two weeks of December, 2016 the apartment was cold and not properly heated.
I delivered a copy of our disclosure to Richard Pollington, our landlords’ agent. Richard was openly hostile and derogatory, and one of his roomates Larry Norman (also a caretaker of our landlords’ building) advised me to “throw it in the garbage because you’re being evicted anyway”. This was the beginning of our landlord’s attempts to make the necessary steps in an LTB application as legally and personally hazardous and unpleasant as possible.

Chapter 025 – Friday August 11, 2017 to Sunday September 24, 2017

So far, this disagreement with our landlord has resulted in five responses by HPS to a complaint (two by the tenants, two by our landlord and his agents, and one by a family member of our landlord’s agent Richard Pollington). I’ll keep a running tally.