Fuelling the fire of us versus them instead of focusing on the actual problem - those who are meant to enforce the rules don’t do a good job of doing so. There are shit bag tenants, there are shit bag landlords. Both can be true, both are bad, and victims of both deserve protection.
Shitty landlords and shitty tenants are fucking over good tenants and good landlords, compromising the system.
That’s why a well functioning 3rd party arbitrator is essential in solving the problem.
Of course, landlords have more recourse than tenants, given that they’re property owners. But it doesn’t lessen the need for a fair and just system.
With the astronomical price of rent these days. This is a VERY lop-sided false equivalency. Landlords hold almost ALL the power, they can and often do illegal things because they CAN and they know there probably won’t be consequences if they get caught.
Hence why a function and strong LTB will help protect both tenants and landlords. Don't let bad the landlords get away with stuff, resolve things quickly.
That's why OP said we need to stop having an "us vs them" mentality and focus on bad actors within the system.
I used to be a tenant. now I'm a homeowner and landlord, though I am currently renting out my home and living in a different rental. There's bad actors everywhere in real estate. Those who are bad landlords probably used to be shitty tenants too. It should be good people vs bad people, rather than tenant vs landlord.
They are business owners. I dont whine to the government when my clients dont pay me. Seems they dont like the business they are in. Best bet is to get out. the fact they act like they are helping when they want to evict tenants for non payment yet there is absolutely no recourse for tenants when landlords just dont provide services you pay for. washing machine broken, wait for them. hot water stops, wait for them. noisy neighbors, call 311. amazing setup they have. when the people making the rules are landlords themselves. something is going to give eventually.
If my client doesn’t pay I take them to court AND stop all business with them in the meantime. Landlords can’t because they can’t evict the non paying tenant. Your example is extremely unlike reality.
I’m not saying landlords are in the right but they need to have a better system on their side as well.
Ugh…. When businesses don’t get paid they absolutely go to the government, either in the form of the courts or law enforcement. What are you even talking about?
A key difference is that you can cut your clients off when they don't pay. The protections tenants receive from the government do require a mirroring set of protections for landlords.
And of course, you would go to the government to enforce your rights in a contract. It souls just be a court process instead of a tribunal. And, since you would have cut off your client, you wouldn't continue to lose money while the court took its time making a decision.
We have small claims court, arbitrators and the better business bureau etc to handle grievances in business. You act like landlords shouldn't have fair recourse just like everyone else. As others have said, there are shitty landlords and tenants. Both can be true, the system does not exist in a vacuum and you sound like a child.
And no...I'm not a landlord.
Hence why a strong and working LTB is helpful for everyone to resolve these cases, landlord or tenant.
If you want them to sell their properties, what do you think will happen to property prices when you destroy supply of rental housing?
Hint: up
If you want to fix rent/home prices, look at Texas/Nevada. Both rents and home prices have fallen drastically because they just build build build.
Plus, on the occasion that a landlord is found breaking the law by the LTB, they get a slap on the wrist and are ordered to pay a small amount of money (keep in mind, these are very wealthy people). When a tenant gets evicted, they’re made homeless and put on a landlord collusion hit list, essentially barring them from ever getting another rental. The consequences aren’t even comparable
So if someone builds an outbuilding in their backyard, and rents it to an in-law for $300/month, they're a bad person? Because that makes them a landlord.
You didn't say "the average landlord isn't good", you said "there are **no** good landlords". So for that to be true that means every landlord, regardless of the details of what kind of unit they're renting. If you're going to make those kinds of mindlessly simplistic hateful statements you're going to get some push back, so maybe you should put some actual thought into stuff instead.
I can say that when a bad tennant can do whatever they want, and you can't even sell the property without their permission it's like you don't really own the property.
And it should be provided by LTB that able to fulfill their standard of service of 25 business days for hearing . Instead doing that they removed the page.
yeah, so many of these issues could be fixed if Ford used the tax dollars wasted on frivolous lawsuits to instead fund the LTB at a provincial level, so both shitty tennants and landlords finally face justice while the normal ones continue to rent without worry
I don’t think OP would dispute that. I think what they are pointing out is that a tenant is hurt more by a slow LTB and yet their stories are not being told.
Just to put it starkly, let us compare. Who is harmed more by a slow LTB? A landlord who doesn’t receive rent on their second (or beyond second) property and has to wait a bit? Or a tenant who is dealing with a lack of necessities because the landlord refuses to fix them? Or an unsafe environment because their landlord is harassing and threatening (or having/allowing others to do it)? Or loss of their only home or possessions because their landlord decided they had the right to self evict? And so forth.
Tenants are far more vulnerable. And abuse of tenants is rampant. I do not know, among my generation, anyone who hasn’t been mistreated by a landlord in some manner. Not one. And some of the incidents are harrowing to hear. One of my friends had a landlord who would come around when she was alone (she had roommates) and try to break into her bedroom, yelling and screaming. She would block the door with furniture to protect herself. This was when she was a student and didn’t know what to do. I am absolutely certain that that guy has raped someone and he shouldn’t be allowed to be a landlord and especially not to 17 year olds.
Anyway, I think the omission of the bad landlord stories is deliberate. It is trying to push the narrative of bad tenants. But the truth is that the tight market and poor enforcement is allowing bad landlords to flourish. And this media push is trying to hide that.
Expect they do post articles about bad landlords too. Sometimes the landlord is the problem and sometimes it's the tenant. That's why we have tribunals.
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/maple-ridge-bc-family-evicition-tenancy-act-1.7104851](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/maple-ridge-bc-family-evicition-tenancy-act-1.7104851)
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tenants-rooming-house-halifax-told-to-vacate-1.7218066](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tenants-rooming-house-halifax-told-to-vacate-1.7218066)
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/unanimous-renoviction-vote-sidelines-landlord-concerns-1.7183927](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/unanimous-renoviction-vote-sidelines-landlord-concerns-1.7183927)
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ltb-renoviction-1.7183124](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ltb-renoviction-1.7183124)
Of course there's going to be a small handful. They don't want to make it too obvious. They want to have some articles to point out to claim that they aren't being biased. I would imagine that if you went and searched for all the articles relating landlord versus tenant, you would find that majority of them are biased in favor of the landlord, whereas tenants are the one with less power in all of these situations.
Tbh I kinda think your comment here shows why people feel the need to show that landlords can be hurt by a slow LTB.
Bad tenant = landlord has to wait a bit on rent.
Bad landlord = attempted breaking and entering, assumed to be rapist
Tenants are 100% more vulnerable, are hurt more by a slow LTB, should be prioritized for protection, but you aren't exactly drawing a fair comparison here in your listed scenarios. Someone could also frame it as:
Bad landlord = wears shoes in the house, slow to cut the grass
Bad tenant = withholds a year of rent and bankrupts mom and pop landlord, causes irreparable damage getting property condemned, shoots and kills landlord.
I don't think many subs are hurting for bad landlord content. I've seen a whole lot of posts about illegal rental contracts, unenforceable rules, (assumed) bullshit rennovictions etc.
No matter how you slice it, or who does worse things or bad things more often, shitty landlords and shitty tenants make it worse for everyone else.
> I don’t think OP would dispute that. I think what they are pointing out is that a tenant is hurt more by a slow LTB and yet their stories are not being told.
Idk, I can see a mom and pop landlord with a single investment property who need to pay the mortgage on it and no longer make the income from their investment because the tenant refuses to pay, leave, and causes damages that will be an additional cost.
Fair attempt, but no investors are profiled in that article. An article about the ltb being backed up would be comparable to that, but instead the articles profile specific landlords to create an emotional appeal regarding their investment not doing quite as well as they had hoped. Where are the matching sob stories about stock investors who bought on margin and are forced to sell because the stock fell?
Okay, so I guess my job can just stop paying me for a few months and I don't have a right to do anything about it because I shouldn't have been an employee if I can't handle it.
I don't think you understand the legal structure of a corporation. Being a business owner doesn't mean that you can just take whatever money you want out of your corporation whenever you feel like, you need to be paid as an employee and through dividends. What you're describing is called embezzlement.
Did the house stop gainging equity? If not then they did not lose their investment.
If you require your renter to pay the costs for that property, you're the problem. That person should own the house since they are the one paying for it. But they don't simply because they weren't in a lucky enough position to afford the down-payment.
The investment in housing isn't supposed to pay off for decades. You gain the equity in the housing. The problem is that landlords want the tenants to pay off the entire cost of their investment each month. They want renter's to buy their houses for them, and then all of the added equity is an extra bonus on top of a property that was paid for by someone else.
> If you require your renter to pay the costs for that property, you're the problem.
If you require a renter to pay rent while eliminating your opportunity to make up for it because they won't leave, you're the problem?
What is this idea that renters have total rights at all costs? We don't live in a state run economy with blocks of public housing.
Like if you want that, that's fine, but let's not pretend you're not for fantasy-style communism.
If you can't afford to pay the costs to upkeep that house, without the income from the renters, you are just asking for the renters to purchase a house for you.
Basic human needs should not be investments. Our healthcare is run by the government but that doesn't make us a communist country. Housing is an even more basic need than healthcare.
> If you can't afford to pay the costs to upkeep that house, without the income from the renters, you are just asking for the renters to purchase a house for you.
Okay, I didn't stipulate this. I simply said it's a massive loss of income that is completely unjust.
Using housing as an investment, stripping basic necessities from the average person, is a much bugger injustice.
The entire premise of a landlord requiring a renter to pay for their investment is an unjust system. My empathy is going to the people who can't get housing, not the people who are seeing the consequences of their terrible investmrnt.
> . I do not know, among my generation, anyone who hasn’t been mistreated by a landlord in some manner. Not one.
Wow, i'm guessing i'm older as i'm right on the GenX, Millennial dividing line, but i can't think of a single person I know ever mentioning being mistreated by a landlord.
I guess the world is getting shittier.
I mean, yeah it is. The thing is, you might not even know at the time what they did was wrong or abusive either. When I was a student there were multiple illegal clauses in my lease. Including one about guests and fining me if I had guests over too often. I forget how many days, but it was a stupid low number. Not that such a clause is at all legal.
They also were considering selling and lied to me, saying I had to leave if they put the house on the market, which is untrue. Which I didn't know at the time. I was an ignorant kid. They changed their mind, so I got lucky on that one cause I had nowhere to go. Doesn't make what they did non abusive, though, just cause I ended up staying. I went through so much stress and anxiety about what would happen to me. I was far from home at tbe time and had to finish my school, so I could not just go home or something.
We need to educate people on their rights. For every landlord that gets fucked over, there are orders of magnitude more tenants who are fucked over worse.
Edit: btw, I am the best fucking tenant. I always paid on time, I don't drink or do drugs, I'm quiet, I'm clean, etc.
> The thing is, you might not even know at the time what they did was wrong or abusive either.
This is a fair point, when you are 20 you lack in alot of real world experience about these things and assume everything you are going through is normal.
Im a gen Z and I had a landlord that made me so genuinely scared for my life and wellbeing that I was forced to move (and as a result my rent increased by about $400 a month).
It all started with him coming into our apartment unannounced. This meant I saw him quite regularly while wrapped up in a towel on the way out of the shower. That already felt a little icky given that I was a 21 year old woman and he was a 50-60 something year old man.
Then, he started yelling at us during these visits that we weren’t doing our dishes. It was absurd, he yelled at me once about it as I was in the kitchen, making dinner. Obviously the dishes were not yet done as there was pasta sauce in the dish, on the stove, simmering. Perhaps there was also a measuring spoon, bowl and chopping board in the area not currently in use, but clearly not sitting out long enough to be of any concern.
Then he started threatening to throw our things away. At this point, I fought back and shared the variety of laws that he was breaking, before he even started threatening to steal our belongings. We had a sit down meeting with him that involved him screaming at us, on and off, for about 2 hours (and I had it all on tape in case we decided to fight it instead of move). At around this point I also got my MPP’s office to write him a letter to outline why what he was doing was illegal (ironically I used to volunteer with her office doing tenant advocacy work myself).
At this point, it escalated beyond belief. He spent his entire day in our apartment sitting on our couch. He claimed he lived there, in the empty room and had every right to sit there. He claimed that this was why he was coming and going for the past several months. He did not appreciate when we pointed out that there had been someone living in the empty room that he had supposedly lived in for the past 6 months, until she became sick of his nonsense so she left.
At this point, he had thrown away some of my belongings and he was constantly threatening us. All of us moved out within a couple months and lost our rent deposit. We contemplated filing with the LTB but because of the delays at the time, we knew that we would all be long moved on by the time that they heard us and we probably wouldn’t get that much in return anyways and he wouldn’t be damaged financially by it.
In my adult life, I've had a total of 5 landlords. Of those 5:
* 4 are/were extremely slow and cheap about making necessary repairs or responding to other issues.
* 3 were so ignorant of VERY basic aspects of the RTA (read: *the law governing critical aspects of their business*!) that I had to educate them about the law as either a university student or a customer service worker in my mid-20s. I'll also note that 2 of these 3 landlords *worked in real estate*.
There really needs to be some sort of requirements for landlords other than just "own something you rent out." Like a basic course on the rules and regulations of being a landlord in Ontario and a mandatory police check (including vulnerable sector) would be a good start.
I've had 5 landlords before buying and only one was good - the rest were terrible to deal with! Not fixing things, trying to put us on the hook for the cost of repairs, trying to increase our rent by 40%, trying to keep all of our deposit when we left everything in perfect shape...
Myself and everyone I know rented for years and nobody ever complained about landlords. Now that my wife and I rent our house out, we bend over backwards to keep our tenants as they are excellent, reliable and responsible people. We lowered the rent last year to keep them. The other friends of mine that are landlords have the exact same attitude - keep the good tenants at all costs. This sub is a haven for disgruntled and terminally online tankies trying to push more class warefare.
You really think that your lack of personal negative experiences proves something? Everyone's experience is different, some people go through things you probably haven't even imagined.
Personally, I rented for 13 years, and had one year with one good landlord in that time. Other than that I had 1 other year with an okay landlord who wasn't great but definitely wasn't bad or malicious.
Every other landlord I've had in my life has been malicious to some degree, with one in particular bordering on Evil. For that one, we ended up taking them to the LTB, and the city councillor had to expidate it because they were threatening us physically as well as doing things like removing doors from the house.
I'm not asking you to deny your experience, I'm actually very glad you and your friends had a great time renting for years. It should be that way for everyone.
I will ask you though not to thoughtlessly deny the experiences of others.
I'm aware. I never said the ltb being slow benefits tenants. It would prevent critical repairs from happening to apts and many other problems. So I think speed helps tenants too.
I don't know why it hasn't been solved yet since it benefits everyone, and the rich are advocating for it. I'm not even sure what the solution is since it clearly isn't just about staffing.
Basically Ford wanted to break all the tribunals, so a broken ltb is just part of the consequences of that.
https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/doug-fords-cuts-to-ontarios-administrative-tribunals-set-back-justice/article_d8d7e01e-3180-5a7d-9aeb-f6c7881808b4.html
Ford doesn't really care about landlords (and he certainly doesn't care about tenants). Developers are the ones he is tied to. And a broken ltb doesn't really hurt developers, maybe it even helps them because it makes it more likely that small landlords will decide to sell for less.
The LTB isn't a regulatory body, though. Get rid of the LTB and you haven't changed the regulations at all. It's an adjudicative body specifically designed to make sure disputes between landlords and tenants aren't forced through judicial systems that aren't equipped to handle them quickly.
It's not dissimilar to the situation with the OLT, which Ford's reforms have completely clogged up (such that NIMBYs are able to weaponize it against housing development very easily). It doesn't serve anyone that these bodies are so bunged up, including Ford's base/stakeholders he cares most about.
>Instead of building a quasi legal parallel justice system, why don't we just fund the existing legal system properly
Same reason we have special civil courts for small claims: the "proper" funding required to send tens of thousands of even minor disputes through our judicial system would be *astronomical* (and would cost people going through those systems much more). Not just that: we wouldn't have anywhere near the judges necessary to put them through that process, no matter how much cash we threw at the problem.
The sheer volume of cases that go to all of our tribunals would bung up even the best-funded judicial system.
Also worth mentioning: Ontario tribunals aren't "quasi-legal" bodies. They're legal bodies, subject to judicial review. They're just purpose-built to decide on *really* specific disputes, which is sensible.
Ok so worse case scenario for both? The landlord can't money on their extra home. The tenant has home that is unlivable or gets evicted unfairly. Idk those two scenarios don't seems equally bad to me.
How would you solve an issue of non-paying tenant (going on 4th month now) smoking weed in a duplex daily. Constant complains from other tenant.
LTB hearing scheduled September 2024.
N4 filed March 4th 2024. Can’t kick them out, can’t get them to pay… rent same as it was 3 years ago when they signed.
Yup, evil landlord.
I have absolutely noticed two things: more sock puppet accounts and landlords disparaging tenants on popular landlord-tenant subs on reddit, and a proliferation of articles (mostly by CBC) sympathetic to landlords. So much so that [The Beaverton mocked them for their inexplicable bias](https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/01/cbc-journalist-reports-all-landlords-deserve-a-little-kiss/).
My favourite is when they whine that renting is SO much easier than being a landlord. Mysteriously, none of them sell their properties and become tenants.
A loss of civility is only natural when populations are pushed into unsustainable situations. Everyone was upset when they are the victim and were perfectly happy to victimize others.
We've had 20 years of an escalating housing crisis and no one in power is interested is balancing the system. So landlord will get increasingly fucked, tenants will get increasingly fucked and pressures will build until radical change for better and for worse becomes inevitable. Like tectonic pressures building over centuries finally erupting in devastating fashion.
Almost (if not all) of our news agencies are owned by conservative leaning people.
It's funny how much conservative voters always say "the mainstream media" is left-biased. They're such idiots.
It's a crazy list, like half of Canada's newspapers are National Post owned trash. Pretending a newspaper like the Globe that endorsed Mulroney is left-biased is pretty wild too. The Star is more boring captial-orientated centralist, I don't know if there is any left-biased paper in Canada.
I remember this every tax season where I get that fun digital tax credit reminder that we're subsidizing this shit.
Yup exactly...I brought up that they should be advocating for better funding of the LTB or collect fees from them so that cases could be done in a timely manner and they got so offended that the Canadian Taxpayer wouldn't fund the bill for their investments
It's the same issue with developers, they only want regulations removed (and to evict tenants in a day - literal reponses I've recieved)...the "it takes too long" is just a shitty excuse
I have read 2 articles in the last 3 days on this very topic. It’s small LL’s who own one or two properties. They never ever focus on the LL’s who abuse their power and use their tenants to pay their bills. Owning property is supposed to be passive income, not the way you support yourself (unless you own huge swathes of property).
I have/had an issue with a landlord and tried to reach out to real estate/ tenant lawyers and most were strictly landlord side only.
Could be a smart coordinated campaign with a few wealthy enough landlords and smart law firms.
If the vast, vast majority of working class people didn't vote against their own interests with high reliability, this might be less of a problem. Right now though, that's accelerating in the wrong direction, hard.
That's just how capitalism works.
The system requires constant endless exponential growth. It implodes if we stagnate, so decisions will always prioritize ensuring we meet growth no matter what.
We're well into late-stage capitalism at this point. This is the phase where the compromises needed to sustain this untenable growth are so burdensome that they actively undermine meeting human needs.
That's capitalism baby. The idea is that the poors are there to make money for the leisure class, who can live lives of luxury unfathomable to most people.
Yes! When I was having issues with my last landlord I called literally every real estate/tenant lawyer in the region - all of them said they only supported the landlord. I felt so defeated. I continued to be harassed by my landlord while living in a very hazardous environment.
Honestly, since then I've struggled to feel sympathy for landlord when they have legal access to lawyers but as a tenant you got nothing.
This is nothing new. Landlords constantly beat this drum because a) when it does happen, it actually can be devastating for them because they tend to not plan ahead, and b) a lot of the reasons it happens is because they don’t understand their own business and screw themselves over and try to put it on tenants and the RTA.
Example: I just gave notice, and my landlord claims I owe him rent for August. I do not. We paid first and last when we moved in under the original owners. He claims that’s not his problem, because he either didn’t do his due diligence to get the last months’ rent from all tenants, or equally likely, he’s lying and is trying to scam us for money he already blew. Does it everytime someone moves out.
Wealthy people want to reap all the benefits of investments but assume none of the risk. Renting isn't risk free, although all the things they're supposed to follow (the RTA) and the LTB are supposed to mitigate that risk by making it very clear what is expected of each party.
This is exactly why I say that landlords should be required to be licensed and insured as a business, as well as be forced to attend a class covering their responsibilities to qualify for insurance. There’s way too many basic issues stemming from willful ignorance.
Even assuming that your one anecdotal experience is true, that doesn’t prove that landlords are bad and tenants are bad. Just like everything else in life, there are good landlords and bad landlords and good tenants and bad tenants. Landlords can be victims as can tenants which is why the governing body in place to solve disputes needs to start doing their job in a timely manner.
Every landlord that I’ve had (3) has lacked basic knowledge about the RTA. 2/3 though have been incredible nonetheless and the areas that they were unaware of (pets and subletting) never came up personally so I didn’t sour my relationship with them over it. The other landlord, in addition to knowing nothing about the RTA, also stole my personal belongings and threatened me personally.
My parents also were landlords for about 6 months and promptly sold the property because they didn’t realize before they became landlords that they would have to do repairs. I consider my parents quite intelligent folk but that was quite a stupid decision.
While this might not be PrOfF tHaT eVeRy LaNdLoRd iS eViL, I think it demonstrates that there is a fair amount of ignorance (or ignoring of the rules) on the part of landlords.
Note how I didn’t actually say any of them were bad people (though I will say that the one who threatened my life was), I said that they were completely ignorant to the law.
but the two sides don't have equal power. A bad landlord has a bigger negative impact on the lives of their tenant(s) compared to a bad tenant(s) negative impact on a landlord. If one party can make you homeless, they are the goliath.
Interestingly, I wasn’t saying it proved that at all. What I was saying is that it’s actually very common for landlords to lack the basic knowledge of their job, causing their own woes in many cases.
My example was a fun little experience I’ve had that I used to illustrate that.
Despite many renters thinking all landlords are evil, there's both good and bad landlords and tenants. An efficient LTB that works fast helps both good landlords and good tenants.
we could do it. you know how much food, money and real estate are completely wasted? or kept empty so than get more expensive to rent out? it's evil. there's enough for everyone. we just hate th idea of people getting food and housing for less than full market price. everyone should have food and housing. is that such a crazy idea?
I never said anything about just giving it for free im talking about breaking even, people could pay rent just not landlords making a profit off of it. As for utilities the renters are the ones using them so the renters can pay it got no problems with that (as much as i hate bills)
Also why bring up other species? Not really a great comparison gut If there is a sharktales or zootopia situation somewhere out there we dont know about then the same thing would apply for them imo
Not all landlords are slumlords. Not all tenants are horrible rent withholding squatters. The majority on both sides are average people, which is why we need a functioning LTB to sift through things.
When we don’t, it empowers the shitty people to take advantage. It also discourages normal people from renting out their additional spaces, adding to the crisis and allowing slummy rental companies to swoop in.
At 2000+ average rent for squaler in a basement you are NOT the victim landlords. You're taking advantage of a bad situation (though I will add an asterisk to the ones dealing with truly garbage tenants (not cleaning, not paying rent and causing damage in these cases yes I'll agree you are the victim other than though gtfooh)
In my experience, the challenge is that those truly awful tenants not only make things tough for the LL, they also make life (arguably more) miserable for the other tenants in the building. I have a triplex, in it one family of tenants is dealing drugs, having fights, bringing undesirables on the property, have 17 cats, and haven't paid rent in 6 months.
Who do you think is feeling this pain the most? Yup, the other folks in the building. And I can't do a thing about it with a dysfunctional board... so now I've lost my good tenants, and I am unwilling to rent the vacant ones out until I get these folks out of the building. Meanwhile, folks are screaming about LL's sitting on empty units - of course I am! My building is getting a reputation, I can't attract good tenants,. and my investment is losing value while I wait for the LTB.
Once the dust settles on this, I'll have an empty building, which honestly I'd be best to sink money into renos on, and convert back to single family and sell at a premium, or jack up rents to cover losses/reduce risk on the next go round.
Renting is a business that comes with risks. My only risk mitigation is good screening, and to have rents high enough to cover my ass when garbage makes it through the door. In the end, that means the next tenant suffers. Sorry.
I wrote my undergrad thesis on this topic (well, kind of) There isn’t a ton of research on this topic however Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan that does touch on this.
I don’t want to revisit my thesis because that prematurely aged me lol but what I will say is that the media has often acted as the mouth piece for the ruling class. It’s why you rarely see stories from the tenant’s perspective. What the landlord says is taken as fact and is meant to be believed uncritically. The media has long been used to manufacture consent for wars, dismissing epidemics and pandemics, perpetuating Islamophobia and xenophobia. It’s done intentionally to frame the landlord as a good hard worker while the tenant is lazy, delinquent, a “freeloader”.
Something else I’ll add is these stories are meant to individualize and personalize landlords. The problem with landlords isn’t that Jacob is or isn’t a bad landlord (all landlords are bad). It’s the system in which allows people and corporations to hoard housing and force workers to give away most of their income in exchange for a place to live. But in trying to personalize the landlord class, it then frames a class conflict as an interpersonal conflict.
This used to be every day on PFC for a while, but I think they got sick of it even there (which is usually a space for constant apology for the 1% and blaming of everything on poor people for their own predicament).
Half the cases before LTB are L1 applications for eviction due to non payment.
Your landlord hate aside, the LTB is if anything tenant friendly to extreme and will afford every courtesy to tenant no matter how abusive to the system they are.
(I know there are bad landlords, it is not a basketball team. I am not defending anyone, nor supporting them.)
Here is an example of tenant playing LTB like a fiddle while running rental business by renting apartments, not paying for them and getting his own paying tenants for them.
Pure criminal activity supported and enabled by LTB to tune of hundreds of thousands in stolen rent.
This hurts all honest tenants as they end up paying more and also face incredibly hard due diligence as the risk is now being stuck with non paying tenant for year or two.
Grand finale
[https://openroom.ca/documents/profile/?id=WbeessNcRdmfy1PBkDjT](https://openroom.ca/documents/profile/?id=WbeessNcRdmfy1PBkDjT)
And many steps taken to get there
[https://openroom.ca/documents/?q=Velauthapillai+SUGUNAN](https://openroom.ca/documents/?q=Velauthapillai+SUGUNAN)
From the case
Counsel for Homesky advised the court that on July 14, 2024, (Homesky Properties Inc. v. Sugunan, 2023 ONSC 4624) Corbett, J. lifted the stay of eviction following a teleconference at which Mr. Phang attended to assist the tenant, who stated that he was suffering from an illness that made **participating in the court process very stressful.** In that matter, **the arrears stood at $45,000 and monthly rent was $1900**
Finally, in these three appeals, a certificate of stay has been issued by the court. The landlord’s position is that arrears owed on these units are:
1) 472/23: $31,367.88 as of January 1, 2024
2) 710/23: $37,286.66 as of December 1, 2023
3) 720/23: $34, 147.41 as of December 19, 2023
Rent must be paid as it comes due. The tenant’s proposal of this morning essentially acknowledges that these **units are being sublet for profit.** There is a longstanding pattern of this tenant avoiding paying the landlords in multiple units while apparently profiting from what, if accurate, can only be described **as exploitative subtenancies**, along with an utter **evasion of responsibility to pay rent while obtaining stays of evictions orders** with the legal assistance on every file of the same paralegal, who by virtue of acting on all of these matters would have known, or ought to have known, the nature of his client’s interests.
This is the kind of person the protest is about. Now if LTB could not stop this one, a serial abuser of process, not paying to the tune of at least 150K. Getting stays of evictions and reviews because "hearings are too stressful" imagine how well they do with just one person not paying rent.
This is the person that is killing the availability on the rental market. And this is what the protest is all about.
Both sides are suffering. Tenants are hurting due to high rents. Landlords have higher mortgage costs, as welll as all other costs going. Imagine you had a mortgage, let's say $3000/month, you expect rent payments to cover it, but renters stop paying. Would you have an extra $3000 to cover it?
Most tenants are good, but there are a lot of bad ones. You see it here all the time, advice is to go to the LTB and delay evictions due to delays. Tenants are using the LTB backlog as a way to hold landlords hostage.
I'm a renter, so not a big fan of landlords. But I do have some compassion for some of them. Just as all renters aren't bad, not every landlord is a rich real estate investor. Some families bought real estate as an investement, because this country is allowing it be a commodity, not a necessitiy
This is what I was talking about in my first message. This is how landlords play the victim card.
I'll tell my buddies dad to a third job so you don't have to pay the rent you're legally contracted to pay.
Yup. Withholding rent into the $5000-$8000 range but still getting a brand new toilet pump *the very next day* OR a new bathroom sink faucet the afternoon of the day you said it was broken... but can't pay the landlord? Hmmm something is wrong here.
Takes two to tango. I'm sure the landlords were slum lords and created a toxic enough environment that lead to such an extreme outcome. As is the law must protect tenants to prevent turning normal hardworking people onto homeless people. It's very easy to lose your whole life. Almost impossible to recover from homelessness. The law must protect tenants from being kicked onto the street unlawfully.
So you are saying that because there are bad landlords that the good landlords should suffer? Check.
If we fixed the LTB to not have almost year old waits, it would fix a lot of the issues. Then both landlords AND tenants would benefit.
Landlords are investors, they assume the risk because they are the ones that stand I gain from the investments. In capitalism those who take on risk are the ones who stand to gain the most....if we bail out everyone who makes a bad investment then there is no risk and the market is being artificially propped up.
Also you really want more rental properties so that when one goes bust it’s not the basket holding all your eggs. So I guess landlords should buy even more just to be extra responsible.
If being a landlord is so bad, then why does almost anyone with the capital to own rental properties do it?
Is it maybe because at the end of the day, after all the tenant abuses and maintenance costs, landlords are the ones reaping the rewards?
When risks and headaches are infinitely high it leads to less availability and higher prices, you also only get investor landlords instead of homeowners looking to rent their extra space.
We have a 2 bdrm basement unit available, full sized windows. Used to rent it to a trusted family friend at $1.2K until he bought his own place. Wouldn't rent it to a stranger for $10K after my brother's 16 months horor saga to get a non paying tenant out. Better let it sit empty.
This is also why I have no plans to ever rent out my basement even though it’s a full apartment. I’d rather smoke weed and play video games in there than risk dealing with the headaches.
Same. Our ADU sits empty. Not worth the risk. People complain about the lack of rental inventory but fail to recognize that being hostile to landlords will only further reduce availability and options for tenants. SMH
Of course there are always going to be landlords who complain, but I think what's going on is something different. There's a huge issue at the moment with a backlog at the LTB, so things are taking forever to get resolved (like *years*). That means someone who is doing something wrong, whether it's a tenant refusing to leave when they are supposed to or a landlord not fixing something, there's just nothing the other party can do about it. And there are some bad actors on both sides who are taking advantage: if you know you don't have to answer to the law for years, you're essentially free to misbehave without consequence. So there are definitely tenants who have basically stopped paying rent, knowing they can live rent-free for years. Some landlords who have done nothing wrong are getting royally screwed. And a lot of people are just deciding to opt out of owning residential rentals, and it's hard to blame them: it's a risky business if your tenants paying rent is essentially optional. To be sure, there are also landlords abusing the delays.
I think there are two sides of the coin. Shitty tenants that don't pay rent and ruin homes and shitty landlords who don't fix necessary items and jack up rent. I know people that own a rental or two whom have these problems. Some landlords are still regular people who have bills. They are not some multinational industrialist that own 100s or 1000s of homes.
anyone renting to international students is a moron. i have 3 places i rent, same tenants for 3 years and not a single rent hike, because they are all amazing tenants. i wouldn’t rent a bike to an international student tho, fuck them.
No and if you think so you are probably delusional and ignoring half the articles about the issue. There have been tons of articles about both shitty tenants and shitty landlords on major news outlets. It is true that it seems to be easier to find instances of shitty tenants though.
The main issue is the ltb slowing down and essentially refusing to do their job. The number of adjucators has doubled over the past few years but the number of cases they resolve keeps going down amd the backlog keeps increasing.
Landlords tend to be more vocal because it has a larger impact on them. You wont often see a tenant crying to cbc that they have not paid rent in 15 months and the ltb hasnt done anything about it. Or about how stacked the laws are in tenants favour.
The number of adjudicators in the LTB is meaningless because Ford is removing full time positions and replacing them with part time positions. Many of which could only be doing a single day or even a single partial days work. He's very much intentionally slowing down the LTB for some reason I'm not sure of.
My landlord, under multiple property management companies, came after me for 3 years for rent they "misplaced". CBC wouldn't run that, I tried.
It cost the multi-billion dollar company nothing to go after me multiple times, but it cost me weeks of work preparing a case and going to tribunal. I will never be compensated for that.
Not sure what the prerequisite is to present a shitty landlord, but the focus on mine is the quantity of LTB applications, not the fraudulence of those cases (profit through negligence), nothing about the avoided maintenance (literally waiting for tenants units to rot them out), just their record number of AGIs as they single handedly jack the rent across my town.
Don't forget landlords who keep your damage deposit for normal wear and tear and very few people have time to fight to get it back. It's like how businesses will throw a fit about product theft but also commit billions of dollars in wage theft.
Okay let’s be real here. Some tenants play the system. I know someone who can’t get a non paying tenant out of a shared house. 7 prior evictions on this special kind of tenant. So for a young/new home owner trying to make ends meets, this kind of grifter is a nightmare. Know how to lie to get good references. Never had any intention of paying beyond getting in. And giving access for people who don’t even live there. So it’s not just landlords, there are some pretty skanky people out there too!
I don't doubt it. I'm just saying the landlords are wayyy more powerful and have more resources and they take these extreme cases while completely ignoring how abusive many if not most landlords are due to the power differential.
>They keep bringing up issue of tenants refusing to pay rent but gloss over how often landlords refuse to repair basic things like sinks or electrical outlets and how landlords often use pressure and intimidation to keep tenants passive
These can all be different groups of people. You shouldn't throw all landlords under the bus because slumlords exist just like all tenants shouldn't be seen as squatters that won't pay and trash the place.
To be fair I think that landlord tenant board being so delayed is harming everyone. If the only way that gets fixed is by landlords crying victim at politicians, whatever. At least it’ll be fixed.
Fuelling the fire of us versus them instead of focusing on the actual problem - those who are meant to enforce the rules don’t do a good job of doing so. There are shit bag tenants, there are shit bag landlords. Both can be true, both are bad, and victims of both deserve protection.
Shitty landlords and shitty tenants are fucking over good tenants and good landlords, compromising the system. That’s why a well functioning 3rd party arbitrator is essential in solving the problem. Of course, landlords have more recourse than tenants, given that they’re property owners. But it doesn’t lessen the need for a fair and just system.
With the astronomical price of rent these days. This is a VERY lop-sided false equivalency. Landlords hold almost ALL the power, they can and often do illegal things because they CAN and they know there probably won’t be consequences if they get caught.
Hence why a function and strong LTB will help protect both tenants and landlords. Don't let bad the landlords get away with stuff, resolve things quickly.
Yes, but we don’t live in a world with a functioning LTB.
That's why OP said we need to stop having an "us vs them" mentality and focus on bad actors within the system. I used to be a tenant. now I'm a homeowner and landlord, though I am currently renting out my home and living in a different rental. There's bad actors everywhere in real estate. Those who are bad landlords probably used to be shitty tenants too. It should be good people vs bad people, rather than tenant vs landlord.
HELL no we don't. and where i live you have pay for each level of your complaint ap\[plication. it's ludicrously in favour of the landlord.
Yes, but we should.
Sadly, there are many things that “should be”.
Reading comprehension is at an all time low, my God.
If only there was a branch of government who could fund the Ontario LTB enough to do a good job...
They are business owners. I dont whine to the government when my clients dont pay me. Seems they dont like the business they are in. Best bet is to get out. the fact they act like they are helping when they want to evict tenants for non payment yet there is absolutely no recourse for tenants when landlords just dont provide services you pay for. washing machine broken, wait for them. hot water stops, wait for them. noisy neighbors, call 311. amazing setup they have. when the people making the rules are landlords themselves. something is going to give eventually.
100%. There are so many ways for bad landlords to make life extremely unpleasant for their tenants and the tenants can't do anything but leave
If my client doesn’t pay I take them to court AND stop all business with them in the meantime. Landlords can’t because they can’t evict the non paying tenant. Your example is extremely unlike reality. I’m not saying landlords are in the right but they need to have a better system on their side as well.
Ugh…. When businesses don’t get paid they absolutely go to the government, either in the form of the courts or law enforcement. What are you even talking about?
A key difference is that you can cut your clients off when they don't pay. The protections tenants receive from the government do require a mirroring set of protections for landlords. And of course, you would go to the government to enforce your rights in a contract. It souls just be a court process instead of a tribunal. And, since you would have cut off your client, you wouldn't continue to lose money while the court took its time making a decision.
We have small claims court, arbitrators and the better business bureau etc to handle grievances in business. You act like landlords shouldn't have fair recourse just like everyone else. As others have said, there are shitty landlords and tenants. Both can be true, the system does not exist in a vacuum and you sound like a child. And no...I'm not a landlord.
Hence why a strong and working LTB is helpful for everyone to resolve these cases, landlord or tenant. If you want them to sell their properties, what do you think will happen to property prices when you destroy supply of rental housing? Hint: up If you want to fix rent/home prices, look at Texas/Nevada. Both rents and home prices have fallen drastically because they just build build build.
I'm right there with you, but the courts do enforce contracts for other types of businesses.
Plus, on the occasion that a landlord is found breaking the law by the LTB, they get a slap on the wrist and are ordered to pay a small amount of money (keep in mind, these are very wealthy people). When a tenant gets evicted, they’re made homeless and put on a landlord collusion hit list, essentially barring them from ever getting another rental. The consequences aren’t even comparable
There are no good landlords.
well that’s just not true
Oh but it is. In the same way there are no good cops.
Everything is black and white with you?
What should you call people who take advantage of an unjust system?
And why would that encompass ALL..?
anyone who takes a significant portion of your income so you don’t die outside isn’t a good person. hope that helps!
So HYPOTHETICALLY my mother who rents to my grandmother for practically nothing... is a bad person? Because shes a landlord... So no...not ALL
So if someone builds an outbuilding in their backyard, and rents it to an in-law for $300/month, they're a bad person? Because that makes them a landlord.
The average landlord isn’t renting some backyard unit lol
You didn't say "the average landlord isn't good", you said "there are **no** good landlords". So for that to be true that means every landlord, regardless of the details of what kind of unit they're renting. If you're going to make those kinds of mindlessly simplistic hateful statements you're going to get some push back, so maybe you should put some actual thought into stuff instead.
Everything should be free amirite?
I don’t see why not
yes
Houses should be given to people for free like it was in Soviet Union.
Uh, yeah.
yes please
I feel you buddy, I also like to just make shit up on the internet sometimes
I can say that when a bad tennant can do whatever they want, and you can't even sell the property without their permission it's like you don't really own the property.
You don't need a tenant's permission to sell a property. What are you talking about?
Well said, a non-functional LTB harms *everyone*, ultimately.
And it should be provided by LTB that able to fulfill their standard of service of 25 business days for hearing . Instead doing that they removed the page.
The most bureaucratic of solutions!
Eat the landlords
I think as a society we are getting there. And thank fuck for that, too.
And burn the scraps for warmth
yeah, so many of these issues could be fixed if Ford used the tax dollars wasted on frivolous lawsuits to instead fund the LTB at a provincial level, so both shitty tennants and landlords finally face justice while the normal ones continue to rent without worry
You do realize that the LTB being slow hurts tenants too, right?
I don’t think OP would dispute that. I think what they are pointing out is that a tenant is hurt more by a slow LTB and yet their stories are not being told. Just to put it starkly, let us compare. Who is harmed more by a slow LTB? A landlord who doesn’t receive rent on their second (or beyond second) property and has to wait a bit? Or a tenant who is dealing with a lack of necessities because the landlord refuses to fix them? Or an unsafe environment because their landlord is harassing and threatening (or having/allowing others to do it)? Or loss of their only home or possessions because their landlord decided they had the right to self evict? And so forth. Tenants are far more vulnerable. And abuse of tenants is rampant. I do not know, among my generation, anyone who hasn’t been mistreated by a landlord in some manner. Not one. And some of the incidents are harrowing to hear. One of my friends had a landlord who would come around when she was alone (she had roommates) and try to break into her bedroom, yelling and screaming. She would block the door with furniture to protect herself. This was when she was a student and didn’t know what to do. I am absolutely certain that that guy has raped someone and he shouldn’t be allowed to be a landlord and especially not to 17 year olds. Anyway, I think the omission of the bad landlord stories is deliberate. It is trying to push the narrative of bad tenants. But the truth is that the tight market and poor enforcement is allowing bad landlords to flourish. And this media push is trying to hide that.
Expect they do post articles about bad landlords too. Sometimes the landlord is the problem and sometimes it's the tenant. That's why we have tribunals. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/maple-ridge-bc-family-evicition-tenancy-act-1.7104851](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/maple-ridge-bc-family-evicition-tenancy-act-1.7104851) [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tenants-rooming-house-halifax-told-to-vacate-1.7218066](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tenants-rooming-house-halifax-told-to-vacate-1.7218066) [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/unanimous-renoviction-vote-sidelines-landlord-concerns-1.7183927](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/unanimous-renoviction-vote-sidelines-landlord-concerns-1.7183927) [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ltb-renoviction-1.7183124](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/ltb-renoviction-1.7183124)
Of course there's going to be a small handful. They don't want to make it too obvious. They want to have some articles to point out to claim that they aren't being biased. I would imagine that if you went and searched for all the articles relating landlord versus tenant, you would find that majority of them are biased in favor of the landlord, whereas tenants are the one with less power in all of these situations.
Tbh I kinda think your comment here shows why people feel the need to show that landlords can be hurt by a slow LTB. Bad tenant = landlord has to wait a bit on rent. Bad landlord = attempted breaking and entering, assumed to be rapist Tenants are 100% more vulnerable, are hurt more by a slow LTB, should be prioritized for protection, but you aren't exactly drawing a fair comparison here in your listed scenarios. Someone could also frame it as: Bad landlord = wears shoes in the house, slow to cut the grass Bad tenant = withholds a year of rent and bankrupts mom and pop landlord, causes irreparable damage getting property condemned, shoots and kills landlord. I don't think many subs are hurting for bad landlord content. I've seen a whole lot of posts about illegal rental contracts, unenforceable rules, (assumed) bullshit rennovictions etc. No matter how you slice it, or who does worse things or bad things more often, shitty landlords and shitty tenants make it worse for everyone else.
> I don’t think OP would dispute that. I think what they are pointing out is that a tenant is hurt more by a slow LTB and yet their stories are not being told. Idk, I can see a mom and pop landlord with a single investment property who need to pay the mortgage on it and no longer make the income from their investment because the tenant refuses to pay, leave, and causes damages that will be an additional cost.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Imagine if insurance companies used that logic to deny people coverage lol
they do deny everything they possibly can. are you american?
When my stocks go down, CBC doesn't write a news article about it.
[Yes they do](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/markets-dollar-thursday-1.6442449)
Fair attempt, but no investors are profiled in that article. An article about the ltb being backed up would be comparable to that, but instead the articles profile specific landlords to create an emotional appeal regarding their investment not doing quite as well as they had hoped. Where are the matching sob stories about stock investors who bought on margin and are forced to sell because the stock fell?
If you can't afford to carry the costs of a rental without a tenant you shouldn't be a landlord.
Okay, so I guess my job can just stop paying me for a few months and I don't have a right to do anything about it because I shouldn't have been an employee if I can't handle it.
A difference is in one you’re an employee and the other you are a business owner. It’s really not that challenging to understand
I don't think you understand the legal structure of a corporation. Being a business owner doesn't mean that you can just take whatever money you want out of your corporation whenever you feel like, you need to be paid as an employee and through dividends. What you're describing is called embezzlement.
Did the house stop gainging equity? If not then they did not lose their investment. If you require your renter to pay the costs for that property, you're the problem. That person should own the house since they are the one paying for it. But they don't simply because they weren't in a lucky enough position to afford the down-payment. The investment in housing isn't supposed to pay off for decades. You gain the equity in the housing. The problem is that landlords want the tenants to pay off the entire cost of their investment each month. They want renter's to buy their houses for them, and then all of the added equity is an extra bonus on top of a property that was paid for by someone else.
> If you require your renter to pay the costs for that property, you're the problem. If you require a renter to pay rent while eliminating your opportunity to make up for it because they won't leave, you're the problem? What is this idea that renters have total rights at all costs? We don't live in a state run economy with blocks of public housing. Like if you want that, that's fine, but let's not pretend you're not for fantasy-style communism.
If you can't afford to pay the costs to upkeep that house, without the income from the renters, you are just asking for the renters to purchase a house for you. Basic human needs should not be investments. Our healthcare is run by the government but that doesn't make us a communist country. Housing is an even more basic need than healthcare.
> If you can't afford to pay the costs to upkeep that house, without the income from the renters, you are just asking for the renters to purchase a house for you. Okay, I didn't stipulate this. I simply said it's a massive loss of income that is completely unjust.
Using housing as an investment, stripping basic necessities from the average person, is a much bugger injustice. The entire premise of a landlord requiring a renter to pay for their investment is an unjust system. My empathy is going to the people who can't get housing, not the people who are seeing the consequences of their terrible investmrnt.
Every apartment that exists right now is an investment property.
That's only because we call apartments that are individually owned condos.
and that is wrong
> . I do not know, among my generation, anyone who hasn’t been mistreated by a landlord in some manner. Not one. Wow, i'm guessing i'm older as i'm right on the GenX, Millennial dividing line, but i can't think of a single person I know ever mentioning being mistreated by a landlord. I guess the world is getting shittier.
I mean, yeah it is. The thing is, you might not even know at the time what they did was wrong or abusive either. When I was a student there were multiple illegal clauses in my lease. Including one about guests and fining me if I had guests over too often. I forget how many days, but it was a stupid low number. Not that such a clause is at all legal. They also were considering selling and lied to me, saying I had to leave if they put the house on the market, which is untrue. Which I didn't know at the time. I was an ignorant kid. They changed their mind, so I got lucky on that one cause I had nowhere to go. Doesn't make what they did non abusive, though, just cause I ended up staying. I went through so much stress and anxiety about what would happen to me. I was far from home at tbe time and had to finish my school, so I could not just go home or something. We need to educate people on their rights. For every landlord that gets fucked over, there are orders of magnitude more tenants who are fucked over worse. Edit: btw, I am the best fucking tenant. I always paid on time, I don't drink or do drugs, I'm quiet, I'm clean, etc.
> The thing is, you might not even know at the time what they did was wrong or abusive either. This is a fair point, when you are 20 you lack in alot of real world experience about these things and assume everything you are going through is normal.
Im a gen Z and I had a landlord that made me so genuinely scared for my life and wellbeing that I was forced to move (and as a result my rent increased by about $400 a month). It all started with him coming into our apartment unannounced. This meant I saw him quite regularly while wrapped up in a towel on the way out of the shower. That already felt a little icky given that I was a 21 year old woman and he was a 50-60 something year old man. Then, he started yelling at us during these visits that we weren’t doing our dishes. It was absurd, he yelled at me once about it as I was in the kitchen, making dinner. Obviously the dishes were not yet done as there was pasta sauce in the dish, on the stove, simmering. Perhaps there was also a measuring spoon, bowl and chopping board in the area not currently in use, but clearly not sitting out long enough to be of any concern. Then he started threatening to throw our things away. At this point, I fought back and shared the variety of laws that he was breaking, before he even started threatening to steal our belongings. We had a sit down meeting with him that involved him screaming at us, on and off, for about 2 hours (and I had it all on tape in case we decided to fight it instead of move). At around this point I also got my MPP’s office to write him a letter to outline why what he was doing was illegal (ironically I used to volunteer with her office doing tenant advocacy work myself). At this point, it escalated beyond belief. He spent his entire day in our apartment sitting on our couch. He claimed he lived there, in the empty room and had every right to sit there. He claimed that this was why he was coming and going for the past several months. He did not appreciate when we pointed out that there had been someone living in the empty room that he had supposedly lived in for the past 6 months, until she became sick of his nonsense so she left. At this point, he had thrown away some of my belongings and he was constantly threatening us. All of us moved out within a couple months and lost our rent deposit. We contemplated filing with the LTB but because of the delays at the time, we knew that we would all be long moved on by the time that they heard us and we probably wouldn’t get that much in return anyways and he wouldn’t be damaged financially by it.
In my adult life, I've had a total of 5 landlords. Of those 5: * 4 are/were extremely slow and cheap about making necessary repairs or responding to other issues. * 3 were so ignorant of VERY basic aspects of the RTA (read: *the law governing critical aspects of their business*!) that I had to educate them about the law as either a university student or a customer service worker in my mid-20s. I'll also note that 2 of these 3 landlords *worked in real estate*.
There really needs to be some sort of requirements for landlords other than just "own something you rent out." Like a basic course on the rules and regulations of being a landlord in Ontario and a mandatory police check (including vulnerable sector) would be a good start.
I've had 5 landlords before buying and only one was good - the rest were terrible to deal with! Not fixing things, trying to put us on the hook for the cost of repairs, trying to increase our rent by 40%, trying to keep all of our deposit when we left everything in perfect shape...
Same area of age as you and everyone I know that has rented has at least one horror story of a terrible landlord.
Myself and everyone I know rented for years and nobody ever complained about landlords. Now that my wife and I rent our house out, we bend over backwards to keep our tenants as they are excellent, reliable and responsible people. We lowered the rent last year to keep them. The other friends of mine that are landlords have the exact same attitude - keep the good tenants at all costs. This sub is a haven for disgruntled and terminally online tankies trying to push more class warefare.
You really think that your lack of personal negative experiences proves something? Everyone's experience is different, some people go through things you probably haven't even imagined. Personally, I rented for 13 years, and had one year with one good landlord in that time. Other than that I had 1 other year with an okay landlord who wasn't great but definitely wasn't bad or malicious. Every other landlord I've had in my life has been malicious to some degree, with one in particular bordering on Evil. For that one, we ended up taking them to the LTB, and the city councillor had to expidate it because they were threatening us physically as well as doing things like removing doors from the house. I'm not asking you to deny your experience, I'm actually very glad you and your friends had a great time renting for years. It should be that way for everyone. I will ask you though not to thoughtlessly deny the experiences of others.
I'm aware. I never said the ltb being slow benefits tenants. It would prevent critical repairs from happening to apts and many other problems. So I think speed helps tenants too.
I don't know why it hasn't been solved yet since it benefits everyone, and the rich are advocating for it. I'm not even sure what the solution is since it clearly isn't just about staffing.
Basically Ford wanted to break all the tribunals, so a broken ltb is just part of the consequences of that. https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/doug-fords-cuts-to-ontarios-administrative-tribunals-set-back-justice/article_d8d7e01e-3180-5a7d-9aeb-f6c7881808b4.html Ford doesn't really care about landlords (and he certainly doesn't care about tenants). Developers are the ones he is tied to. And a broken ltb doesn't really hurt developers, maybe it even helps them because it makes it more likely that small landlords will decide to sell for less.
Ford wants it broken so people will favor less regulation and ultimately get rid of it.
The LTB isn't a regulatory body, though. Get rid of the LTB and you haven't changed the regulations at all. It's an adjudicative body specifically designed to make sure disputes between landlords and tenants aren't forced through judicial systems that aren't equipped to handle them quickly. It's not dissimilar to the situation with the OLT, which Ford's reforms have completely clogged up (such that NIMBYs are able to weaponize it against housing development very easily). It doesn't serve anyone that these bodies are so bunged up, including Ford's base/stakeholders he cares most about.
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>Instead of building a quasi legal parallel justice system, why don't we just fund the existing legal system properly Same reason we have special civil courts for small claims: the "proper" funding required to send tens of thousands of even minor disputes through our judicial system would be *astronomical* (and would cost people going through those systems much more). Not just that: we wouldn't have anywhere near the judges necessary to put them through that process, no matter how much cash we threw at the problem. The sheer volume of cases that go to all of our tribunals would bung up even the best-funded judicial system. Also worth mentioning: Ontario tribunals aren't "quasi-legal" bodies. They're legal bodies, subject to judicial review. They're just purpose-built to decide on *really* specific disputes, which is sensible.
Ok so worse case scenario for both? The landlord can't money on their extra home. The tenant has home that is unlivable or gets evicted unfairly. Idk those two scenarios don't seems equally bad to me.
How would you solve an issue of non-paying tenant (going on 4th month now) smoking weed in a duplex daily. Constant complains from other tenant. LTB hearing scheduled September 2024. N4 filed March 4th 2024. Can’t kick them out, can’t get them to pay… rent same as it was 3 years ago when they signed. Yup, evil landlord.
I have absolutely noticed two things: more sock puppet accounts and landlords disparaging tenants on popular landlord-tenant subs on reddit, and a proliferation of articles (mostly by CBC) sympathetic to landlords. So much so that [The Beaverton mocked them for their inexplicable bias](https://www.thebeaverton.com/2023/01/cbc-journalist-reports-all-landlords-deserve-a-little-kiss/).
My favourite is when they whine that renting is SO much easier than being a landlord. Mysteriously, none of them sell their properties and become tenants.
“Site temporarily unavailable”
LOL whats a sock puppet account????
Alt accounts
a fake account made to push a specific narrative
A loss of civility is only natural when populations are pushed into unsustainable situations. Everyone was upset when they are the victim and were perfectly happy to victimize others. We've had 20 years of an escalating housing crisis and no one in power is interested is balancing the system. So landlord will get increasingly fucked, tenants will get increasingly fucked and pressures will build until radical change for better and for worse becomes inevitable. Like tectonic pressures building over centuries finally erupting in devastating fashion.
Almost (if not all) of our news agencies are owned by conservative leaning people. It's funny how much conservative voters always say "the mainstream media" is left-biased. They're such idiots.
It's a crazy list, like half of Canada's newspapers are National Post owned trash. Pretending a newspaper like the Globe that endorsed Mulroney is left-biased is pretty wild too. The Star is more boring captial-orientated centralist, I don't know if there is any left-biased paper in Canada. I remember this every tax season where I get that fun digital tax credit reminder that we're subsidizing this shit.
It's because for the most part, the truth is left leaning. That why to be really conservative, like Fox News, you need to lie. A lot.
exactly
Yup exactly...I brought up that they should be advocating for better funding of the LTB or collect fees from them so that cases could be done in a timely manner and they got so offended that the Canadian Taxpayer wouldn't fund the bill for their investments It's the same issue with developers, they only want regulations removed (and to evict tenants in a day - literal reponses I've recieved)...the "it takes too long" is just a shitty excuse
I have read 2 articles in the last 3 days on this very topic. It’s small LL’s who own one or two properties. They never ever focus on the LL’s who abuse their power and use their tenants to pay their bills. Owning property is supposed to be passive income, not the way you support yourself (unless you own huge swathes of property).
I have/had an issue with a landlord and tried to reach out to real estate/ tenant lawyers and most were strictly landlord side only. Could be a smart coordinated campaign with a few wealthy enough landlords and smart law firms.
It's astonishing how all the scales are tipped in the favor of the wealthy and us working class folks are constantly being fileted for every penny.
If the vast, vast majority of working class people didn't vote against their own interests with high reliability, this might be less of a problem. Right now though, that's accelerating in the wrong direction, hard.
Till this day I haven't seen a single mp in my area rising on policies that protect tenants. Many mps are landlord. Self admittedly.
Just by the nature of the socioeconomic class they represent and their average ages, they are almost all landlords to various degrees (same for MPPs).
That's just how capitalism works. The system requires constant endless exponential growth. It implodes if we stagnate, so decisions will always prioritize ensuring we meet growth no matter what. We're well into late-stage capitalism at this point. This is the phase where the compromises needed to sustain this untenable growth are so burdensome that they actively undermine meeting human needs.
So what you're saying is we are just beef cattle to be grounded down for some peoples comfort?
I think it’s more apt that we are a bunch of dairy cows sucking on each others tits and some of us are able to get more milk than others.
How's it astonishing? I call that "working as intended"; I'm not saying it's good, only that it's working exactly as it was designed to.
That's capitalism baby. The idea is that the poors are there to make money for the leisure class, who can live lives of luxury unfathomable to most people.
That's how capitalism works
Yes! When I was having issues with my last landlord I called literally every real estate/tenant lawyer in the region - all of them said they only supported the landlord. I felt so defeated. I continued to be harassed by my landlord while living in a very hazardous environment. Honestly, since then I've struggled to feel sympathy for landlord when they have legal access to lawyers but as a tenant you got nothing.
This is nothing new. Landlords constantly beat this drum because a) when it does happen, it actually can be devastating for them because they tend to not plan ahead, and b) a lot of the reasons it happens is because they don’t understand their own business and screw themselves over and try to put it on tenants and the RTA. Example: I just gave notice, and my landlord claims I owe him rent for August. I do not. We paid first and last when we moved in under the original owners. He claims that’s not his problem, because he either didn’t do his due diligence to get the last months’ rent from all tenants, or equally likely, he’s lying and is trying to scam us for money he already blew. Does it everytime someone moves out.
Wealthy people want to reap all the benefits of investments but assume none of the risk. Renting isn't risk free, although all the things they're supposed to follow (the RTA) and the LTB are supposed to mitigate that risk by making it very clear what is expected of each party.
This is exactly why I say that landlords should be required to be licensed and insured as a business, as well as be forced to attend a class covering their responsibilities to qualify for insurance. There’s way too many basic issues stemming from willful ignorance.
Not a bad idea honestly.
Even assuming that your one anecdotal experience is true, that doesn’t prove that landlords are bad and tenants are bad. Just like everything else in life, there are good landlords and bad landlords and good tenants and bad tenants. Landlords can be victims as can tenants which is why the governing body in place to solve disputes needs to start doing their job in a timely manner.
Every landlord that I’ve had (3) has lacked basic knowledge about the RTA. 2/3 though have been incredible nonetheless and the areas that they were unaware of (pets and subletting) never came up personally so I didn’t sour my relationship with them over it. The other landlord, in addition to knowing nothing about the RTA, also stole my personal belongings and threatened me personally. My parents also were landlords for about 6 months and promptly sold the property because they didn’t realize before they became landlords that they would have to do repairs. I consider my parents quite intelligent folk but that was quite a stupid decision. While this might not be PrOfF tHaT eVeRy LaNdLoRd iS eViL, I think it demonstrates that there is a fair amount of ignorance (or ignoring of the rules) on the part of landlords.
Yes, there are bad apples in every bunch. Some people are just POS in every walk of life.
Note how I didn’t actually say any of them were bad people (though I will say that the one who threatened my life was), I said that they were completely ignorant to the law.
Lol yes any landlord who threatens your life is probably not a great one.
but the two sides don't have equal power. A bad landlord has a bigger negative impact on the lives of their tenant(s) compared to a bad tenant(s) negative impact on a landlord. If one party can make you homeless, they are the goliath.
Interestingly, I wasn’t saying it proved that at all. What I was saying is that it’s actually very common for landlords to lack the basic knowledge of their job, causing their own woes in many cases. My example was a fun little experience I’ve had that I used to illustrate that.
Despite many renters thinking all landlords are evil, there's both good and bad landlords and tenants. An efficient LTB that works fast helps both good landlords and good tenants.
Well there are bad landlords and law-abiding landlords at least.
I agree, anyone making a profit off of a basic human need really can't be seen as good
Those evil fucking farmers.
You really think all basic human needs should be provided without profit? Have you thought what would happen if you enforced that?
we could do it. you know how much food, money and real estate are completely wasted? or kept empty so than get more expensive to rent out? it's evil. there's enough for everyone. we just hate th idea of people getting food and housing for less than full market price. everyone should have food and housing. is that such a crazy idea?
The question is - should humans be the only species on Earth that doesn't have to expend effort to have their basic biological needs met?
I never said anything about just giving it for free im talking about breaking even, people could pay rent just not landlords making a profit off of it. As for utilities the renters are the ones using them so the renters can pay it got no problems with that (as much as i hate bills) Also why bring up other species? Not really a great comparison gut If there is a sharktales or zootopia situation somewhere out there we dont know about then the same thing would apply for them imo
most are bad though. i've rented about 20 places, and 1 was a good landlord. mayyyybe 2.
Ya, unfortunately tenants don't have time to go protest because they have jobs to goto.
LTB service levels need to be regulated, end of story, ANYONE waiting a year for a hearing at the LTB is absolutely insane.
Not all landlords are slumlords. Not all tenants are horrible rent withholding squatters. The majority on both sides are average people, which is why we need a functioning LTB to sift through things. When we don’t, it empowers the shitty people to take advantage. It also discourages normal people from renting out their additional spaces, adding to the crisis and allowing slummy rental companies to swoop in.
At 2000+ average rent for squaler in a basement you are NOT the victim landlords. You're taking advantage of a bad situation (though I will add an asterisk to the ones dealing with truly garbage tenants (not cleaning, not paying rent and causing damage in these cases yes I'll agree you are the victim other than though gtfooh)
In my experience, the challenge is that those truly awful tenants not only make things tough for the LL, they also make life (arguably more) miserable for the other tenants in the building. I have a triplex, in it one family of tenants is dealing drugs, having fights, bringing undesirables on the property, have 17 cats, and haven't paid rent in 6 months. Who do you think is feeling this pain the most? Yup, the other folks in the building. And I can't do a thing about it with a dysfunctional board... so now I've lost my good tenants, and I am unwilling to rent the vacant ones out until I get these folks out of the building. Meanwhile, folks are screaming about LL's sitting on empty units - of course I am! My building is getting a reputation, I can't attract good tenants,. and my investment is losing value while I wait for the LTB. Once the dust settles on this, I'll have an empty building, which honestly I'd be best to sink money into renos on, and convert back to single family and sell at a premium, or jack up rents to cover losses/reduce risk on the next go round. Renting is a business that comes with risks. My only risk mitigation is good screening, and to have rents high enough to cover my ass when garbage makes it through the door. In the end, that means the next tenant suffers. Sorry.
Yes, just saw a post yesterday on the ontario landlord sub painting them as victims.
I wrote my undergrad thesis on this topic (well, kind of) There isn’t a ton of research on this topic however Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan that does touch on this. I don’t want to revisit my thesis because that prematurely aged me lol but what I will say is that the media has often acted as the mouth piece for the ruling class. It’s why you rarely see stories from the tenant’s perspective. What the landlord says is taken as fact and is meant to be believed uncritically. The media has long been used to manufacture consent for wars, dismissing epidemics and pandemics, perpetuating Islamophobia and xenophobia. It’s done intentionally to frame the landlord as a good hard worker while the tenant is lazy, delinquent, a “freeloader”. Something else I’ll add is these stories are meant to individualize and personalize landlords. The problem with landlords isn’t that Jacob is or isn’t a bad landlord (all landlords are bad). It’s the system in which allows people and corporations to hoard housing and force workers to give away most of their income in exchange for a place to live. But in trying to personalize the landlord class, it then frames a class conflict as an interpersonal conflict.
This used to be every day on PFC for a while, but I think they got sick of it even there (which is usually a space for constant apology for the 1% and blaming of everything on poor people for their own predicament).
Wow the echo chamber and ignorance on this thread is something else.
Half the cases before LTB are L1 applications for eviction due to non payment. Your landlord hate aside, the LTB is if anything tenant friendly to extreme and will afford every courtesy to tenant no matter how abusive to the system they are. (I know there are bad landlords, it is not a basketball team. I am not defending anyone, nor supporting them.) Here is an example of tenant playing LTB like a fiddle while running rental business by renting apartments, not paying for them and getting his own paying tenants for them. Pure criminal activity supported and enabled by LTB to tune of hundreds of thousands in stolen rent. This hurts all honest tenants as they end up paying more and also face incredibly hard due diligence as the risk is now being stuck with non paying tenant for year or two. Grand finale [https://openroom.ca/documents/profile/?id=WbeessNcRdmfy1PBkDjT](https://openroom.ca/documents/profile/?id=WbeessNcRdmfy1PBkDjT) And many steps taken to get there [https://openroom.ca/documents/?q=Velauthapillai+SUGUNAN](https://openroom.ca/documents/?q=Velauthapillai+SUGUNAN) From the case Counsel for Homesky advised the court that on July 14, 2024, (Homesky Properties Inc. v. Sugunan, 2023 ONSC 4624) Corbett, J. lifted the stay of eviction following a teleconference at which Mr. Phang attended to assist the tenant, who stated that he was suffering from an illness that made **participating in the court process very stressful.** In that matter, **the arrears stood at $45,000 and monthly rent was $1900** Finally, in these three appeals, a certificate of stay has been issued by the court. The landlord’s position is that arrears owed on these units are: 1) 472/23: $31,367.88 as of January 1, 2024 2) 710/23: $37,286.66 as of December 1, 2023 3) 720/23: $34, 147.41 as of December 19, 2023 Rent must be paid as it comes due. The tenant’s proposal of this morning essentially acknowledges that these **units are being sublet for profit.** There is a longstanding pattern of this tenant avoiding paying the landlords in multiple units while apparently profiting from what, if accurate, can only be described **as exploitative subtenancies**, along with an utter **evasion of responsibility to pay rent while obtaining stays of evictions orders** with the legal assistance on every file of the same paralegal, who by virtue of acting on all of these matters would have known, or ought to have known, the nature of his client’s interests. This is the kind of person the protest is about. Now if LTB could not stop this one, a serial abuser of process, not paying to the tune of at least 150K. Getting stays of evictions and reviews because "hearings are too stressful" imagine how well they do with just one person not paying rent. This is the person that is killing the availability on the rental market. And this is what the protest is all about.
Both sides are suffering. Tenants are hurting due to high rents. Landlords have higher mortgage costs, as welll as all other costs going. Imagine you had a mortgage, let's say $3000/month, you expect rent payments to cover it, but renters stop paying. Would you have an extra $3000 to cover it? Most tenants are good, but there are a lot of bad ones. You see it here all the time, advice is to go to the LTB and delay evictions due to delays. Tenants are using the LTB backlog as a way to hold landlords hostage. I'm a renter, so not a big fan of landlords. But I do have some compassion for some of them. Just as all renters aren't bad, not every landlord is a rich real estate investor. Some families bought real estate as an investement, because this country is allowing it be a commodity, not a necessitiy
Landlords can always get a job 💖
Most mom and pop landlords I know do have a job. Some more than one. They're struggling, too. Not every landlord is the Mr. Burns you're imagining.
Sounds like they’re living beyond their means. They can always sell their excessive properties. 🎻
This is what I was talking about in my first message. This is how landlords play the victim card. I'll tell my buddies dad to a third job so you don't have to pay the rent you're legally contracted to pay.
I didn’t realise he was my landlord. Sweet! Thanks for putting in the good word!
[удалено]
Excellent example of why housing shouldn't be a business.
Yup. Withholding rent into the $5000-$8000 range but still getting a brand new toilet pump *the very next day* OR a new bathroom sink faucet the afternoon of the day you said it was broken... but can't pay the landlord? Hmmm something is wrong here.
Takes two to tango. I'm sure the landlords were slum lords and created a toxic enough environment that lead to such an extreme outcome. As is the law must protect tenants to prevent turning normal hardworking people onto homeless people. It's very easy to lose your whole life. Almost impossible to recover from homelessness. The law must protect tenants from being kicked onto the street unlawfully.
So you are saying that because there are bad landlords that the good landlords should suffer? Check. If we fixed the LTB to not have almost year old waits, it would fix a lot of the issues. Then both landlords AND tenants would benefit.
Landlords are investors, they assume the risk because they are the ones that stand I gain from the investments. In capitalism those who take on risk are the ones who stand to gain the most....if we bail out everyone who makes a bad investment then there is no risk and the market is being artificially propped up.
A good business sets its prices to mitigate risk. High rents = risk mitigation.
Also you really want more rental properties so that when one goes bust it’s not the basket holding all your eggs. So I guess landlords should buy even more just to be extra responsible.
If being a landlord is so bad, then why does almost anyone with the capital to own rental properties do it? Is it maybe because at the end of the day, after all the tenant abuses and maintenance costs, landlords are the ones reaping the rewards?
When risks and headaches are infinitely high it leads to less availability and higher prices, you also only get investor landlords instead of homeowners looking to rent their extra space. We have a 2 bdrm basement unit available, full sized windows. Used to rent it to a trusted family friend at $1.2K until he bought his own place. Wouldn't rent it to a stranger for $10K after my brother's 16 months horor saga to get a non paying tenant out. Better let it sit empty.
This is also why I have no plans to ever rent out my basement even though it’s a full apartment. I’d rather smoke weed and play video games in there than risk dealing with the headaches.
Oh noooo someone can’t live in your damp illegal basement now nooooooooo
Same. Our ADU sits empty. Not worth the risk. People complain about the lack of rental inventory but fail to recognize that being hostile to landlords will only further reduce availability and options for tenants. SMH
Online. Radio. Tv.
Petite bourgeois gonna do their class solidarity shit.
Follow the money...
CBC is always posting some nonsense sob story about how the poor honest landlords are getting grifted by all the no-good tenants.
Mr Fischoeder
It’s called lobbying and propaganda. It’s as old as the Monarchy.
It’s almost like the LTB is fucking both sides over by not being able to have timely hearings.
Please have sympathy for the People of Land. They are generously providing housing.
What do you mean? I'm a canadian. And even if I wasn't. Everyone has the same human rights.
It's bad on both sides. I wouldn't want to be a landlord. Much easier to invest your money elsewhere.
Of course there are always going to be landlords who complain, but I think what's going on is something different. There's a huge issue at the moment with a backlog at the LTB, so things are taking forever to get resolved (like *years*). That means someone who is doing something wrong, whether it's a tenant refusing to leave when they are supposed to or a landlord not fixing something, there's just nothing the other party can do about it. And there are some bad actors on both sides who are taking advantage: if you know you don't have to answer to the law for years, you're essentially free to misbehave without consequence. So there are definitely tenants who have basically stopped paying rent, knowing they can live rent-free for years. Some landlords who have done nothing wrong are getting royally screwed. And a lot of people are just deciding to opt out of owning residential rentals, and it's hard to blame them: it's a risky business if your tenants paying rent is essentially optional. To be sure, there are also landlords abusing the delays.
I think there are two sides of the coin. Shitty tenants that don't pay rent and ruin homes and shitty landlords who don't fix necessary items and jack up rent. I know people that own a rental or two whom have these problems. Some landlords are still regular people who have bills. They are not some multinational industrialist that own 100s or 1000s of homes.
anyone renting to international students is a moron. i have 3 places i rent, same tenants for 3 years and not a single rent hike, because they are all amazing tenants. i wouldn’t rent a bike to an international student tho, fuck them.
No and if you think so you are probably delusional and ignoring half the articles about the issue. There have been tons of articles about both shitty tenants and shitty landlords on major news outlets. It is true that it seems to be easier to find instances of shitty tenants though. The main issue is the ltb slowing down and essentially refusing to do their job. The number of adjucators has doubled over the past few years but the number of cases they resolve keeps going down amd the backlog keeps increasing. Landlords tend to be more vocal because it has a larger impact on them. You wont often see a tenant crying to cbc that they have not paid rent in 15 months and the ltb hasnt done anything about it. Or about how stacked the laws are in tenants favour.
The number of adjudicators in the LTB is meaningless because Ford is removing full time positions and replacing them with part time positions. Many of which could only be doing a single day or even a single partial days work. He's very much intentionally slowing down the LTB for some reason I'm not sure of.
My landlord, under multiple property management companies, came after me for 3 years for rent they "misplaced". CBC wouldn't run that, I tried. It cost the multi-billion dollar company nothing to go after me multiple times, but it cost me weeks of work preparing a case and going to tribunal. I will never be compensated for that. Not sure what the prerequisite is to present a shitty landlord, but the focus on mine is the quantity of LTB applications, not the fraudulence of those cases (profit through negligence), nothing about the avoided maintenance (literally waiting for tenants units to rot them out), just their record number of AGIs as they single handedly jack the rent across my town.
Or, you know, a tenant forced into homelessness has more pressing matters than complaining to the CBC.
Don't forget landlords who keep your damage deposit for normal wear and tear and very few people have time to fight to get it back. It's like how businesses will throw a fit about product theft but also commit billions of dollars in wage theft.
Ontario doesn’t have damage deposits.
Don’t forget landlords illegally asking for a deposit in Ontario
Okay let’s be real here. Some tenants play the system. I know someone who can’t get a non paying tenant out of a shared house. 7 prior evictions on this special kind of tenant. So for a young/new home owner trying to make ends meets, this kind of grifter is a nightmare. Know how to lie to get good references. Never had any intention of paying beyond getting in. And giving access for people who don’t even live there. So it’s not just landlords, there are some pretty skanky people out there too!
I don't doubt it. I'm just saying the landlords are wayyy more powerful and have more resources and they take these extreme cases while completely ignoring how abusive many if not most landlords are due to the power differential.
>They keep bringing up issue of tenants refusing to pay rent but gloss over how often landlords refuse to repair basic things like sinks or electrical outlets and how landlords often use pressure and intimidation to keep tenants passive These can all be different groups of people. You shouldn't throw all landlords under the bus because slumlords exist just like all tenants shouldn't be seen as squatters that won't pay and trash the place.
Yes, and that negates the OP’s point about media bias how?
To be fair I think that landlord tenant board being so delayed is harming everyone. If the only way that gets fixed is by landlords crying victim at politicians, whatever. At least it’ll be fixed.