Small landlords who became homeless during pandemic blame 'broken' system

Some landlords in Ontario are becoming homeless — a situation legal experts say they've never seen happen before the COVID-19 pandemic, and they blame a "broken" tribunal system with significant delays to obtain eviction orders.

Franchesca Ranger, a small business owner in Ottawa, found herself homeless during the pandemic after selling her marital home due to a divorce. She decided to move into her rental unit, a townhouse in Barrhaven, and gave her tenant a 75-day termination notice with a move-out date of Aug. 31, 2020.

She says her tenant of four years refused to leave, stopped paying rent, and she was left to pay thousands a month in mortgage, property taxes, bills, and storage for her belongings — all while running a small restaurant that was hit hard by lockdowns and pandemic restrictions.

"All I could think about was everything I've worked for, and everything I've saved for, my future just being torn away," said Ranger, who was "living out of a suitcase" from September 2020 until this year.

"I felt so let down and so violated."

She was finally able to move back into her home this February, after alternating stays with friends and family every few days.

"My life wasn't my own," she said.

Small landlords — those who typically own just one or two rental units — can become homeless when a tenant refuses to leave a space the landlord needs for their own accommodations.

CBC spoke to two other landlords in Ontario who were homeless, or are at risk of homelessness, due to delays in getting a hearing and eviction order from Ontario's Landlord Tenant Board (LTB) — the body that makes decisions when disputes arise between landlords and tenants.

Experts and organizations who work with landlords say they've seen dozens homeless during the pandemic, often accessing homeless shelters, living in vehicles, couch surfing, and even forfeiting their properties to banks due to bankruptcy — all as they wait for the LTB to hear their case and make a final decision.

During the pandemic, the province paused evictions and hearings for months at a time, leaving some landlords with nowhere else to go until they're legally able to evict their tenant.

"We're trying to navigate our clients through a system that has become so broken," says paralegal Kathleen Lovett.

WATCH | Landlord describes how she became homeless: 

From start to finish, the entire process from filing an application to getting a decision should take one to three months, according to LTB's own service standards from before the pandemic.