Burnaby landlords have been upset with my recent spate of columns about the bad behaviour of some of them during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fair enough. I get this they feel a bit like punching bags, but I’ve received so many examples of landlords exploiting the situation that I felt it was important to document it.
Well, here’s an example of a landlord who tried to do something good for his tenant and got betrayed in return.
See? Not all tenants are good and kind.
I have a friend who I will call Gene and he rents out a basement suite in his home. In the early days of the pandemic, his tenant came to him saying she was struggling and would have difficulty paying her rent.
It was unclear if she had lost her job. She was pretty vague about the situation and if she would be receive federal CERB funds.
Gene had every right to ask for more details to at least verify her situation, but he didn’t. He could have tried to negotiate a rent reduction, but he didn’t do that either.
Instead, Gene just decided to let her not pay her rent for April. Then when May came, he said she didn’t have to pay rent then either. (For the record, I’m not saying a landlord is bad if they are still charging rent. What I’ve said in my columns is that landlords should at least try and negotiate an arrangement for people who are out of work, and not condescend or threaten them with eviction.)
Gene is a super nice person. He looked at his finances and decided that the situation was dire enough to just let the rent go unpaid for a few months.
Well, his tenant repaid this kindness by deciding to bolt at the end of the month with the bare minimum of notice. Sure, she is within her rights to do this, but it was within his rights to collect rent as well. I think Gene deserved better treatment after his kindness.
Her leaving has left Gene in the lurch. He now has no tenant in the coming months.
Now if he wants to rent out his basement suite, he has to go through all of the time and expense to find a new tenant – that’s if he can even find one during a pandemic.
Now he’s starting to wonder if she was struggling financially at all in the first place. Was she just saving up so she could move to a different place?
He’ll never know.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
