A Hamilton tenant says she’s impressed with a “fantastic” judge’s recent decision to fine her former landlord $100,000 for illegally renovicting her and three other tenants, even if they’ll never get their homes back.
“That’s a good place to start to show the landlords of Ontario they can’t just throw their tenants out,” Darlene Wesley told CBC Hamilton.
The senior had lived in her downtown apartment for nearly 20 years and never missed a rent payment when, in February 2023, the building’s owner Kevin Moniz evicted her in order to carry out extensive renovations.
Wesley informed him in writing and in person she intended to move back in after the work was done — as is her right under Ontario law. But within months, he’d rented it out to someone else.
He did the same to three other tenants living in the five-unit building, including Wesley’s daughter. The tenants testified during a trial against Moniz and property management company Cornerstone Select Properties at Hamilton’s provincial offences courthouse on May 12.
Justice of the Peace Linda Crawford found Moniz guilty on four counts of knowingly failing to give the tenants the right of first refusal for their units and fined him $25,000 for each.
“A general deterrent in my view is very important in these kinds of circumstances, where there’s a landlord with a small building that was once affordable for people,” Crawford told the court.
Moniz was not present for the trial and did not respond to requests for comment.
Crawford gave him two weeks to pay the $100,000 — a high amount for Residential Tenancy Act violations.
The charges against Moniz were laid last year by Ontario’s Rental Housing Enforcement Unit (RHEU), which is mandated to uphold landlord and tenant rights and investigate complaints. It works independently from the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB).
By comparison, in all of 2022, fines stemming from charges laid by RHEU totalled $121,800.
Crawford found Moniz acted deliberately and the impacts on the tenants have been “devastating.”
“In my view, there was quite a bit of foresight to renovate apartments and he made a decision to essentially flip them and rent them out more than double what he had been getting before,” she said.
Before being evicted, the four tenants said they each paid less than $700 a month in rent. A new tenant who moved into one of the units after the renovations told the court she currently pays $1,500.
The eviction process began for the four tenants in March 2021, when they received N13 notices from Moniz. Their cases went to the LTB, which ruled in Moniz’s favour that the units did need to be empty for him to complete renovations.
Three of the tenants moved out before Wesley. They all testified they told Moniz in writing that they’d move back into their units when the work was done.
Tenant Robert Jewel said he had no other option.
He worked a minimum wage job and wanted to keep the unit he’d been able to afford for 25 years, he testified. But one night, when renovations were supposed to still be happening, he walked by the building and through a window saw someone in his unit’s living room, watching TV. He later learned it was a new tenant.
“And to be honest, I cried that night when I discovered my apartment had been taken away from me,” Jewel said. “It’s like I’m a second class citizen all of the sudden just because this greedy person comes along.”
Unable to afford to rent a new place, Jewel said he has been couch surfing at friends and family’s homes since he was evicted.
“I’m almost out on the street and I don’t have my own place anymore and that loss of freedom, I really, keenly feel,” Jewel said.
Wesley and her daughter had no choice but to find a place together and now pay $2,000 a month, an arrangement Wesley described as a “nightmare.”
“Now I’ve got nothing because all my money goes to rent,” she told the court.
She said she left her place in 2023 thinking she’d definitely be coming back as she took all the steps she was supposed to.
In the weeks before she moved, she had provided Moniz with several copies of a signed letter stating her intentions, and verbally told him the same thing in front of a representative from Cornerstone — the property management company Moniz had hired to find new tenants.
Welsey testified that on another occasion somebody from Cornerstone was showing a unit to prospective tenants. She told that person, “‘all of the apartments … have the right of first refusal’ and he said, ‘I know, I know, I know.'”
Company president Jeff Varcoe represented Cornerstone in court.
He denied the allegations, saying nobody at his company knew about the “entire building being renovicted” and he hasn’t been able to substantiate Wesley’s account.
Crawford said she did not find Varcoe’s testimony credible and fined Cornerstone $25,000, plus a $6,250 victim surcharge, for not ensuring Wesley had the opportunity to move back into her unit.
“That’s not something we have the financial ability to cover at all,” Varcoe said. “This will bankrupt us.”
Crawford gave the company a year to pay.
