'A big step for tenants rights': small claims court awards renovicted tenant more than $13,000

A Halifax small claims court has upheld a $13,662.15 award to tenant Brandy McGuire, ruling that her landlord violated the province's renoviction legislation.

The appeal ruling follows a year of McGuire going head-to-head with a Halifax developer.

But McGuire doesn't just see this as a victory for herself. 

"This is a big step for tenants rights," she said in an interview Wednesday. "And that was one of the main important things for me, was standing up for tenants and their rights."

Katie Brousseau, McGuire's legal counsel, said this decision sets a precedent in Nova Scotia. 

"It is certainly amongst the largest awards and amongst the very few, if only, decisions interpreting the renoviction provisions," said Brousseau, a community legal worker with Dalhousie Legal Aid Service.

McGuire, her partner, and her children were living at the Bluenose Inn and Suites on the Bedford Highway last year when the owners sent out a letter telling all tenants they had 60 days to leave. More than 20 people lived there on a monthly basis, and were told the building was beyond repair and the property would be "retired".

This didn't sit right with McGuire. She knew about the province's renoviction legislation, and took the matter to a residential tenancies hearing. 

In March 2021, the ban on renovictions — the act of evicting tenants to renovate a building and then increase the rent charged to new tenants — was lifted when the province's state of emergency ended. However, new protections for tenants were added to the Residential Tenancies Act. 

The protections include that the tenant must be given at least three months notice and the landlord must give the tenant between one and three months rent as compensation, depending on the size of the building. Additional compensation may be awarded to the tenant if the landlord does not follow the new rules or is found to have acted in bad faith.

The residential tenancies hearing ruled in McGuire's favour, but her landlord, John Ghosn appealed the decision and the matter went to small claims court. 

Ghosn argued that it wasn't a renoviction because his company, Enqore Developments Ltd., didn't have imminent plans to redevelop the property. 

Months went by, and last week McGuire received news that the decision was being upheld by the small claims court. The adjudicator ruled that though it wasn't a renoviction in the colloquial sense of the term, it does fall under the province's renoviction legislation.

The decision noted that the long-term plan for the property is to demolish the existing buildings and redevelop the site into a "modern mixed-use project" which has been showcased on Enqore Developments' website.