Help! Tenant won't pay, lawyer won't respond!

[Michelle Black]

I'm going to start off by saying that we've made a lot of mistakes. My husband bought a house many years ago and had a family member live in the house. A year ago this family member came to us and said that she can no longer pay the rent. So we offered to help her by reducing the rent, but asking that she leave in 4 months. When the four months were up, she asked to extend her stay because she was having trouble finding a new place, so we allowed it. She kept doing this for several months till we told her she couldn't go past October. In September we recieved a letter from a lawyer asking us to stop asking her to leave because it's causing her health problems and she claimed that she was on title of the house (which is not true). Since then she has refused to pay even the small amount of rent that we asked. This has forced us to move out of our apartment into my mother's basement so that we can cover the cost of the mortgage.

Once this family member moves out we'd like to move in to do some renos. So our lawyer's plan right now is to apply to the board for an eviction based on us needing to move in. Unfortunately the lawyer is unresponsive and doesn't seem to be doing his job to the level that we would expect.

Our plan now is to try and look for a new lawyer. I was wondering if anyone could suggest a Toronto or GTA lawyer. Or offer any other advice. Thank you. 

[Stephen E.]

I read a blog by a lawyer the other day and he noted that small landlords with a handful of properties or even just one are most likely to be taken advantage of by tenants. This is complicated in this case by renting to a family member, which is a big mistake. As you have discovered, it is hard to evict family members, you just don't want to do it. But look at the results, you have now lost your own home and have had to move into an apartment to help make ends meet. Enough is enough.

There should have been no rent reduction, the tenant should have been told to pay or go. Now that she is refusing to pay any rent at all you have two potential grounds for eviction, failure to pay rent or owner's own use given your plans to move in and renovate. Of the two I know that you have to give a lengthy period of notice before evicting for owner's own use. So it may be better to go for a regular N4 and evict for nonpayment of rent. In that sense the tenant has given you options through their failure to pay. Whatever you do I would search for a lawyer first thing tomorrow, you have suffered enough and there is no more time to waste. You should look for landlords associations as potential sources for referrals. I just checked and the Greater Toronto Apartment Association has a list of suppliers on their website and under legal services they list six law firms.

Do yourself a favour and be sure that you don't try and handle the eviction on your own. The Landlord and Tenant Board is not friendly towards landlords and the tenant is likely to try to exploit the system. You have lost so much time and money already you cannot afford to make any more mistakes. You need to get this tenant served with an eviction notice ASAP and get ready for a board hearing to review your application. Don't get sidetracked by any of the tenant's antics. Just do what is necessary and be persistent.