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.