#tenant rights and eviction

[lawofficeofryansshipp]

St. Lucie County Eviction Lawyers | Law Office of Ryan S. Shipp, PLLC

St.-Lucie-County-Landlord-Lawyers Are you a commercial or residential landlord in St. Lucie County, Florida, facing tenant issues that require eviction? Look no further than Law Office of Ryan S. Shipp, PLLC. Our experienced team understands the complexities of Florida eviction laws and is committed to helping property owners, landlords, property managers, and investors, navigate these…

[allthecanadianpolitics]

"Quebec Solidaire (QS) considers it intolerable for landlords to evict tenants in order to convert their homes to Airbnb, especially in the midst of a housing crisis.

QS spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is calling on the Legault government to quickly amend the Civil Code to prohibit evictions for the purpose of converting to tourist accommodation."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[cigarettesandcommunism]

Hey people,

I will be officially homeless on March 31st.

I've been trying to keep up with everything and not quite making it for months. It's finally caught up to me.

I've learned a pretty huge lesson... or rather many lessons. But because I have this current eviction process on my record, prospects for housing are extremely bleak.

I have no idea where to go after that date. I may have to get a motel.

Any and all help is super appreciated. Both my Ppal and $app are TransManDragQueen.

Please also share this, I would truly appreciate it.

Thank you all I hope you smile today

[newsfromstolenland]

Earlier this month, Toronto and East York Community Council unanimously approved a rental housing demolition application for 25 St. Mary St., which is just south of Bloor Street East between Bay and Yonge streets. The property’s owner, Tenblock, wants to construct two new towers that are 54 and 59 storeys in place of the current v-shaped structure on that site. City council is set to consider the matter at its May 10 meeting.

[...]

Under City of Toronto Act, renters who are displaced by a building’s demolition are entitled to return to their unit and pay similar rent once the building is redeveloped. They’re also entitled to be compensated for their moving expenses as well as the gap in rent for a comparable temporary unit, and notice before vacating.

Those rights could, however, be compromised by newly introduced provincial legislation, which if passed, would weaken municipal rental replacement bylaws and give the province greater authority.

Full article

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

[defleftist]

The most helpless I feel as a mental health counselor is when my clients are at risk of losing their housing. It’s so fucked up. Housing is a human right.

[girlscience]

screaming crying blowing up

[milkweedman]

managed to fuck up my wrist to the point that i can pop the radius back into place but it just comes right back out as soon as i stop putting tons of pressure on it. also it hurts so bad :/

have caught myself genuinely considering breaking my wrist several times now so that i can get some kind of treatment or medication for it. bc the baby tylenol level shit that pain management gives me is um. literally not doing a single goddamn thing. as always.

[podracerbarrelroll]

I finished reading Evicted, and it made me think a lot about the concept of landlords and work. The argument from landlords that their job is property maintenance, vs. the claim that maintaining a property you own isn't a job at all.

Both of the landlords that feature prominently in the book manage their own properties. The author describes one that traveled around on the first of the month to collect rents from tenants, how she kept accounts, how frequently she had to appear in eviction court. How her husband quit his job to manage properties for her and spent his time renovating units, finding people who would work for cheap, and getting them ready for move-in. This encompassed their whole lives, and probably would not have left time for wage labor, even if it was something either one of them were inclined to do.

And they did have bills, taxes and fees they had to pay the city. The author describes a bill for over $11K one time, for $20K another time that almost cleared out the landlord's account before the first of the month rolled around and gave her more money. If they let the rent slide, they would be in the red.

The author also described how this landlord shirked on maintenance, how she rented units that were definitely not up to code to desperate people, how she evicted a woman who asked to have a broken window fixed because the woman's mother called the inspector. By doing as little as possible to maintain units and charging as much as possible, this landlord and her husband were able to make a killing off of poor, desperate people. They had a second house in Florida and took vacations to Jamaica while their tenants lived in apartments full of bugs and without appliances and with sinks and tubs that wouldn't drain. A young woman living in one of these units had never seen Lake Michigan, despite living 30 minutes away by bus.

I think the landlord and her husband would claim that they put a lot of work into their properties, that it's a job, and honestly, I think they're right, and I don't think that matters. What matters is the kind of work they chose. Before the landlord became a landlord, she was a teacher. One of her tenants was a former student. She decided to leave this work and become a landlord instead, a lifestyle that allowed her to keep a nice home she never had to worry about losing, with a fridge full of take-out bags in a kitchen she and her husband were almost never home to actually cook in. It allowed her to pay for vacations and second homes and stay at the casino until 4am.

It required putting her boot on other people's necks. Because if she lifted it even a little, if she let someone breathe, those bills in the tens of thousands would come for her, and she wouldn't be able to pay. But she chose that, she put herself there. She made the choice of the property owner, the choice of the capitalist, who may spend long hours managing a workforce or a business, but ultimately lives better by taking from others.

The work landlords choose is the work of exploitation, which makes them the enemy of the working class and the renting class in the same manner as capitalists. I find that a better and more important distinction than how we should categorize the nature of their 'work'.

[reasonsforhope]

“With pressure mounting and the clock ticking, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Friday to dramatically expand protections for renters, heading off what advocates had feared could become a wave of evictions.

The vote comes just 11 days before the city’s long-standing COVID-19 anti-eviction rules were set to expire. The new policy is expected to go into effect before the Jan. 31 deadline.

Friday’s vote underscores the growing political might of the council’s progressive bloc, which successfully championed a more aggressive set of policies. The new legislation is also widely viewed as a victory for tenant rights advocates.

The COVID-19 emergency rules were passed amid unprecedented disruption at the start of the pandemic, along with similar measures at other levels of government. But Los Angeles’ anti-eviction protections remained in place even as other measures expired, with local leaders wary of exacerbating homelessness and overcrowding problems that had already reached crisis proportions.

The council’s action was preceded by more than two hours of public comment, with dozens of renters elucidating fears and making impassioned pleas to the council to pass a muscular policy before the emergency order sunsets.

“I’m in a wheelchair. I’m 67 years old. And as soon as you guys lift the protections, I’ll be out on the street. ... We are human beings and we deserve to live with dignity,” Maria Briones told the council, imploring members  to pass the legislation...

The new policy will establish a minimum threshold for eviction for tenants who fall behind on rent, and require landlords to pay relocation fees in some situations in which a large rent increase would result in the tenant’s displacement.

Landlords will no longer be allowed to evict tenants in any rental property, including single-family homes, unless there was unpaid rent, documented lease violations, owner move-ins or other specific reasons. That provision will go into effect after six months or when a lease expires, whichever comes first.

Some renters, including those in rent-stabilized units, already have “just cause” eviction protections, but making them universal expands the protections to about 400,000 additional units, according to the city’s Housing Department, [which in the densely packed city will likely protect well over 1 million people].

The new policy will also block evictions until February 2024 for tenants who have unauthorized pets or who added residents who aren’t listed on leases, and create a new timeline for paying rent owed from the emergency period. Tenants would have until Aug. 1 to pay back-rent accumulated between March 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, and until Feb. 1, 2024, to pay back-rent accumulated between Oct. 1, 2021, and Jan. 31, 2023...

Mayor Karen Bass plans to sign the ordinance in the coming days.

“I want to congratulate our City Council — especially the Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee Councilmember Nithya Raman — on passing these important protections, which are crucial to combatting a potential spike in homelessness in our city,” Bass said in a statement. “In order to confront this crisis, we must continue [to] get people housed but we also must stop people from becoming homeless in the first place.”” -via Los Angeles Times, 1/20/23

[tenaciousgay]

Hot-take: Landlords are the scum of the Earth. Think you, a landlord, are above the law? You are less than scum, a parasite on society. I despise you. If you are a landlord or a landlord apologist, and think I'm being too harsh on landlords? Fuck you! All landlords are bastards (ALAB).

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The release of the Ontario Ombudsman’s new report on the province’s Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) warrants reflection on the primary role of the tribunal: evictions.

The Ombudsman wrote that tenants and landlords share a common interest in making the LTB run smoothly. In truth, a more efficient approach to processing cases at the LTB will only further speed up evictions and serve to facilitate the profit-making of landlords who can raise rents on vacant units once sitting tenants have been removed.

Despite the LTB’s many internal issues, the main reason the tribunal is overwhelmed is due to the sheer volume of eviction cases landlords file against tenants. Tribunals Ontario reported that in 2021-2022, 88 per cent of all applications received by the LTB were filed by landlords against tenants, and in 89 per cent of those applications (more than 48,500), landlords sought to evict tenants.

Landlords also added to the much-discussed backlog of cases at the LTB throughout the entirety of the pandemic, as the Ontario government allowed them to continue to file for eviction against tenants uninterrupted. In fact, the Ombudsman reported that during the first pandemic lockdown in March 2020, when eviction hearings were paused for a short time, the LTB still struggled to process the high number of applications it continued to receive.

The discussion surrounding the problems at the LTB often neglects to mention the political history of the tribunal. In 1997, the Mike Harris Conservative government enacted the Tenant Protection Act, which eliminated rent control on vacant units between tenants, instituting what is known as vacancy decontrol. At the same time, the law removed landlord-tenant cases from the provincial court system and created the precursor to the LTB to handle them, the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal.

During the legislative debate at the time, the minister of housing said that his government’s goal was to create favourable conditions for investment in housing. In reality, his government made it more potentially profitable for landlords to evict tenants, and failed to encourage the construction of any significant amount of new, purpose-built rental housing."

////

A friend added this:

"According to this article and the Ombudsman's report, in 2021-22, 88 percent of applications to LTB were by landlords against tenants. Of that 88 percent, 89 percent were landlords seeking evictions. In other words, 78 percent of all LTB applications are for evictions!

I can hear the cries now: "If tenants have problems, they can also file with the LTB!" The vast majority of tenant problems are immediate problems, like shit that needs fixing and harassment and illegal behaviour by landlords. Most tenant problems are not solved by the LTB and often not even solved by landlords. Many tenants fix their own problems because waiting for the landlord is a hassle. The LTB is a virtual non-factor in the lives of tenants, but the landlord's means of getting rid of tenants they don't want or who stand in the way of a profitable new redevelopment.

The above numbers put into perspective the grievance of landlords that the LTB has too long a backlog. It is the volume of eviction applications that is the source of the backlog. And by pure coincidence we've been pelted with news story after story since the start of the pandemic of the worst possible tenants living rent-free for many months while the poor landlord's family is caught in the lurch while establishing their little neo-feudal exploitation scheme. You don't even need to read the press. The Terrorizing Tenant is a story you'll hear often enough.

Are the landlords calling for the LTB to be expanded to meet needs? No, their intimate collaborators in government are seeking efficiencies! You see, the the backlog is a problem to be solved by efficiency! Never mind the avalanche of eviction applications from landlords!

How many of these evictions are the disgusting and widely-abused practice of renovictions? Aren't renovictions an unnecessary burden to the LTB? And if the LTB is so burdened, why isn't it the LTB expanded to meet the demand? None of it makes sense because what's really at play here is setting up a public institution to fail because it insufficiently serves the interests of those parasitically profiting off other people's wages and basic need for shelter.

The pattern is pretty similar in healthcare and education and numerous other public institutions that are starved into failure, populated with wrecker-managers, and then reorganized (or contracted out) in the interests of profit-seeking sections of the business class.

Combined with a raft of new developer-demanded rules on housing (the end of municipal oversight in the development of new buildings of 12 or fewer units; the end of environmental protection and conservation), the renoviction blitzkrieg will only continue to throw thousands of people out of their homes while spoiling the environment - all for the profit and power of people who are driving this province to hell.

The landowning class won decisive battles in the 1990s and now we live in the aftermath of their class war victory. A new and restored publicly-financed co-operative and public housing program is decades overdue. The abolition of landlordism is centuries overdue."

[lets-talk-about-law]

Slumlords want tenants to remain ignorant of the law because if you realize you have renter’s rights, they stand to lose a lot – namely, your rent money.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau refused to improve the "Loi Françoise David" aimed at better protecting seniors from eviction, despite amendments tabled by Québec solidaire (QS) and the Parti québécois (PQ) on Tuesday.

According to Duranceau, her bill already contains several measures to protect people from evictions, regardless of age.

In 2016, Françoise David -- then a QS MNA for Gouin -- unanimously passed the "Act to amend the Civil Code to protect the rights of senior tenants." The law prevents a landlord from evicting seniors aged 70 and over who have occupied their dwelling for at least 10 years and whose income is equivalent to or below the maximum threshold to qualify for social housing.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[bi-tchsexual]

Everytime I get a headache I think it is possibly the worst headache I've ever had but THIS time I'm not lying this is definitely so so painful head ouchie :(

[newsfromstolenland]

A new report issued by a Toronto tenant advocacy group is detailing “the landlord’s playbook” on renovictions – a term used to describe the practice of evicting a tenant with the intention to renovate a unit – and providing guidance for tenants facing similar scenarios.

The RenovictionsTO report, released on Wednesday, argues these evictions are primarily used as a strategy to “permanently displace” tenants, rather than as a necessary means to renovate aging units. The move has become common in Toronto over recent years, the report states, and is often seen when low-rise apartment buildings or apartments above storefronts switch ownership.

In these cases, existing longtime tenants are often paying rent below market, creating a situation in which the landlord is able to generate significant returns by evicting the tenants and bringing in new ones on contracts with higher rental fees.

Full article

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

[jamaicahomescom]

Comprehensive Guide to the Rent Restriction Act

The Rent Restriction Act is a crucial piece of legislation that governs the rental of residential properties in Jamaica. Its primary aim is to protect tenants from exorbitant rents and unfair evictions, while also ensuring that landlords receive a fair return on their properties. This guide is designed to provide a clear and easy-to-understand overview of the Act, with practical examples to…